bakpao's puzzles

Another year, another contribution to the Indian Puzzle Championship! This marks my 4th year in a row contributing to this event. I contributed 5 puzzles this year, which can be found in this post,  along with some rejects and leftovers . Like last year this post only contains the puzzles I wrote for the contest. The full IPC set can be purchased for a small price which helps LMI cover the costs incurred to organize the live event and continue to organize them in the future.  The full set contains all puzzle rounds, full of high quality puzzles, as well as bonus content like the PR Playoff puzzles and a giant interconnected puzzle gift. If you are able to, do consider purchasing the set. More information available  here  (IPC) and  here  (ISC) . Rules are included in the Penpa links, otherwise please refer to  Puzzle Rules . #1 - Star Battle - Round 1 - 30/500 points - Solve on  Penpa Mostly going for a clean theme and a not too difficult solve pa...

After supplying a round to the  offline portion of this year's UK championships , I was also invited to author some puzzles for the online event. This took place a while back, but I never got around to uploading the puzzles - here they are! I supplied five puzzles this time, of which three are in the first round and the other two in the second.  Be sure to also check out the other puzzles here (round 1) and here (round 2) . The puzzles are all good fun! Rues are included in the penpa links for all the puzzles. Enjoy! Round 1 Puzzle 1 - Balance Loop - 26/470 points https://tinyurl.com/2xq37x8s I mostly went for a striking visual theme in this one. A consequence of the lay-out I chose was that the break-in was a bit hard to find - some solvers had trouble getting started. It should be mostly smooth sailing after finding the correct entry point.

I went to participate in the 24 hour puzzle championship in Budapest again last weekend!  This was the 21st edition of the event, and it was my second time participating after my debut last year, in which I ranked 18th. This time I ranked 13th , so a solid improvement! Looking at the attendee list before the event, I thought my best possible result would be 12th, but also felt like I should be getting at least 14th. So, just like in 2023's WPC, I finished exactly where I predicted ahead of the event. Ironically, I didn't receive points for two puzzles that I solved fine, but only noticed it after the event was concluded - had I gotten them, I would have jumped to 12th place... :suseyes: Like last year, the event was tons of fun and a fantastic experience. I wasn't sure for a long while whether I would attend, as the tournament coincided with the Dutch championships. Since I intend to participate in WSPC later this year and our championships serve as the selection process f...

All the way back in October 2022, at WSPC in Krakow, Murat and I had the idea to organise an online contest with a special theme, meant to make solvers do a double take while solving: All puzzles were to be doppelgangers, or puzzles with a similar twist (such as expanding the grid without altering the clues, or inversing clues, like the puzzles below).  Besides the very strict theming, all the puzzles also needed to be fit for a contest and span a suitable difficulty range. Ultimately this lead to many failed attempts and many many hours spent on trying to get pairs of puzzles right. We managed to get to 12 finished puzzles for the contest before we lost the motivation to spend more time on it. We've been sitting on the puzzles ever since, waiting for inspiration to strike again one day, but unfortunately it never did and recently we decided to therefore abandon the project. A shame, but the positive is I get to showcase some of the puzzles I wrote for it here instead.  Revisi...

   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...

    Happy birthday and happy 500 puzzles to me! Here's a loop mashup to celebrate. I kind of made things very difficult for myself with the PGP R4 mock puzzle set I made last weekend. While updating my spreadsheet with all my puzzles afterwards, I noticed I was extremely close to 500 puzzles set. What's more, it's also my birthday today and I turn 27, which also happens to be my favorite number. Too many milestones and reasons for celebration, meaning I couldn't really pass up the opportunity to set something for it.  The problem, however: I only noticed this last Wednesday, and I was to leave for Spain on Friday, where I currently am to enjoy a long overdue holiday. I had to be on standby for work on Thursday and do the usual holiday preparations, so there really wasn't much time to set a puzzle.  Luckily I still managed to find a few focus hours and came up with this puzzle which I'm decently happy with. No doubt in my mind that if I had more time, I would...

    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...

    A classic Balance Loop puzzle. I created this puzzle on 1 June, 2021. Difficulty: 2/5 (rules from GM Puzzles ) Draw a single, non-intersecting loop that passes through all cells with circles; the loop may either go straight through or turn at each circle. All white circles must have loop segments of equal length extending from both sides of the circle before turning. All black circles must have loop segments of unequal length extending from both sides of the circle before turning. Numbers, where given, indicate the sum of the loop segment lengths on both sides of the circle. (Note that the total counts are not affected by other circles being crossed before turning.) Play on puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?balance/8/8/i00j8g11g0o01j1010j01i1k1g00g1j11i

    A classic Balance Loop puzzle. I created this puzzle on 27 May, 2021. Difficulty: 3/5 (rules from GM Puzzles ) Draw a single, non-intersecting loop that passes through all cells with circles; the loop may either go straight through or turn at each circle. All white circles must have loop segments of equal length extending from both sides of the circle before turning. All black circles must have loop segments of unequal length extending from both sides of the circle before turning. Numbers, where given, indicate the sum of the loop segment lengths on both sides of the circle. (Note that the total counts are not affected by other circles being crossed before turning.) Play on puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?balance/10/10/h8i0g1h1n8i8nci1j8i9g1i0m1i8n1l0m0p0