bakpao's puzzles

Last week, the GAPP project in the CTC server reached its 1000th day. To celebrate, the authors (myself included) collaborated on a large shading mashup, which was very positively received by many of our solvers. Feel free to check out the puzzle here , if you are in the CTC discord. Since my 100 blog entries milestone was also coming up, and I never ended up writing a big puzzle when I reached 1000 puzzles authored, I decided to write another puzzle on the same grid we used for GAPP1K, with the same genres and (mostly the same) rules, but without the difficulty cap. I expected the puzzle to take longer to finish, but it seems I got into a groove, and here it is!  Overall I'm very happy with it - I managed to preserve symmetry in all grids except the Half Piece one (where it really wasn't working out no matter what I tried) and built in lots of cool interactions between the various genres.  This puzzle is a fair bit more difficult and narrow than the GAPP one, so if you want t...

Now that pzprxs is merged into puzz.link, I suppose I should really be tweeting these instead of posting them here, but so much time and effort went into these two puzzles that I feel they deserve a space on here. Rail Pool is quickly becoming a favorite - the genre has so many different setups to explore and seemingly endless amounts of fun logic to discover. The first puzzle was a battle against uniqueness. Clueing only two columns was my self-imposed theme and I initially wanted only 4 regions, but I couldn't find a setup that worked well without introducing bypasses or making the puzzle too trivial. I opted for 6 regions in the end, which ended up being a good decision - I'm really happy with this puzzle in particular. This second puzzle was originally a 11x14 grid (a result of playing around with different dimensions to find a size that worked well with my starting setup) that looked a bit weird. I reworked it into a 12x12 the next day, which works nicely.   Difficulty: 3...

This genre keeps drawing me back in - it's so much fun to set and solve. After two relatively straightforward ones, I tried  writing a bigger and harder one this time. I'm particularly fond of the ending (hopefully you'll figure out why)!   Difficulty: 4/5 (rules from  Puzzle Rules ) Shade some cells such that each connected group of shaded cells contains exactly one clue. Clues must be shaded, and indicate the size of their group of shaded cells. Each group of shaded cells must be connected by a corner to at least one other, forming networks. Two shaded groups belonging to the same network may not have the same shape and size, counting rotations and reflections as the same. Play on pzprxs  https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?chainedb/14/14/3m8v5k3g1l5i2i3q6q6p2i3i4r5i4i6p4q2q4i4i4l4g4k4v2m3

   We regularly host speedsetting sessions in the CTC discord. The concept is simple: a host sets a prompt - usually a (pool of) genre(s), a theme or other constraint - to work with, participants then set a puzzle around that prompt in the allotted time, usually one hour. Judges then solve all the puzzles and decide their top three favorites, which are declared the winners! These are always fun events. Not only do they encourage me to set genres or constraints I normally wouldn't, there's also a strategic element involved where you have to make rapid decisions on what genre to go with, grid dimensions, theming - all before and while setting a functional, interesting puzzle. An hour seems like quite some time, but more often than not I find myself battling against the clock. The puzzles that I write during speedsets tend to not be published anywhere other than in Discord, even though they can be quite nice. They're not as refined as my usual puzzles, but that's the charm...

There have been quite a few full midloops lately, which got me in the mood to set a variant for the genre as well. It's not too difficult, but I think it does a nice job at showcasing some interesting logic that comes up in this variant. Difficulty: 2.5/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some cells that passes through every circle. Each circle marks the center of the straight line segment it lies on. No two consecutive straight line segments may be the same length. Play on puzz.link / penpa (puzz.link does not have answer check) puzz.link  / Penpa

   Still having fun with the Rassi Silai variants and hybrids. Here's what's probably my favorite of the bunch (perhaps even over last year's Star Battle one). A symmetrical grid (finally managed one!) with plenty of logical variety. Difficulty: 3/5 (classic rules from Puzzle Rules ) Within each region, draw a non-intersecting path through the centers of all cells. No two cells in the grid containing endpoints of paths may be touching one another, not even diagonally. Clues indicate how many of the edges the clue covers are crossed by the path.  Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/yc8kywdx

    A hybrid between Kurotto and Shimaguni. I was playing around with some shading hybrid ideas today, and liked this puzzle enough to post here. Difficulty: 3/5 Rules (Classic rules from Puzzle Rules ) Normal Shimaguni and Kurotto rules apply. When two regions border a kurotto clue, but not each other, they are allowed to contain the same amount of shaded cells. Kurotto: Shade some cells so that clues represent the total size of the orthogonally connected areas of shaded cells that share an edge with the clue. Clued cells cannot be shaded. Shimaguni: Shade a single group of orthogonally connected cells in each region. Shaded groups may not share a bold border. Each region must contain at least one shaded cell, and no two adjacent regions may contain the same number of shaded cells. Play on penpa: https://git.io/JyBFE

    A hybrid Tapa / LITS puzzle When updating my spreadsheet with all my puzzles yesterday, I noticed I was at exactly 299 puzzles set. Another milestone about to be reached. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to do something for it, and having some free time, I naturally spent the rest of the day working on something a bit larger and celebratory.  To reflect, that's about 250 puzzles created in 2021, so far. Around 5 every week. 62 unique genres and 6 giants. Those are numbers I am extremely happy with and hope I can get to keep up into the new year.  Difficulty: 3/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Normal Tapa and LITS rules apply. Clues cannot be shaded. Tapa: Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the lengths of the blocks of consecutive shaded cells in the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue. No 2x2 region may be entirely shaded. LITS: Shade one tetromino of cells in each region so...

What are these puzzles? A few months ago, I coop solved a few big puzzles with some friends. A very fun experience, but procuring suitable puzzles proved more difficult. Finding them in the first place is no easy task, and I found myself always left hoping they'd be suitable for coop solving, which quite often, they are not.  This gave me the idea to set some giant puzzles across vanilla genres. The idea behind them is simple - present the solvers with a 41x41 grid roughly divided into 4 20x20 quadrants, each with their own entry point, so solvers can work independently on parts of the grid (and a divider row/column for... reasons). With an added bonus that they're in a very easy to find place - right here. And so, after many weeks of on and off working on these puzzles, I present the first three in what will hopefully be a series I manage to keep going for a long while: A Yajilin, Tapa and Shakashaka. The puzzles mostly do not contain overly complex deductions; I found those t...

    A Variant Rassi Silai puzzle. I created this puzzle on 6 August, 2021. Difficulty: 3.5/5 (Classic rules from Eric Fox' Puzzle Rules ) Within each region, draw a non-intersecting path through the centers of all cells. No two cells in the grid containing endpoints of paths may be touching one another, not even diagonally. Additionally, each row and column contains exactly two endpoints of paths. Solve on penpa

    A variant Tapa-Like Loop puzzle. I created this puzzle on 27 July, 2021. It was my entry to a speedsetting contest in the CTC discord revolving around loop puzzles with rotationally symmetrical regions. We were allowed to add one rule into the prompt, I chose a tapa-like loop aspect. The puzzle took first place. Difficulty: 2/5 (TLL rules from Eric Fox' Puzzle Rules ) Draw a single non-intersecting, non-crossing and non-branching loop in the grid. The loop must travel through all grey areas and must follow a rotationally symmetric path in each grey area.  Numbers inside grey regions indicate how many cells in the area are used by the loop.  Clues in the grid are regular tapa-like loop clues:  Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some empty cells. Clues represent the numbers of consecutive cells occupied by the loop each time it enters the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue. Solve on penpa

    This is a 30x30 Loop puzzle, combining 9 different genres. This puzzle was created over the course of a couple of weeks in June 2021.  While not matching the amount of posts on my blog - this is in fact the 100th puzzle I have set so far. A milestone I didn't want to let pass unnoticed, so I decided to combine as many genres from my favorite puzzle genre category as I felt comfortable with into one giant puzzle. It contains Masyu, Shingoki, Balance Loop, Country Road, Maxi Loop, Ovotovata, Yajilin, Regional Yajilin and Castle Wall.  Setting this puzzle was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences I have had along my journey, and I definitely look forward to writing many more of these sorts of puzzles. While there is certainly room for improvement, I am incredibly proud of the end result and I hope you enjoy solving it. I am also very much indebted to Prasanna Seshadri for extensively testing the puzzle and offering useful advice, amidst a hundred ot...