bakpao's puzzles

    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...

 Like I did during the daily Rassi Silai contest, I'm now playing around with some Voxas variants while the Voxas Vacation contest is ongoing. It's a struggle to come up with interesting combinations, but making the grid toroidal seems to work pretty well. I doubt there will be as many variants as with the Rassi Silai contest, but I should at least manage to set one or two more.  Difficulty: 3/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Divide the grid into 1x2 and 1x3 regions. Borders must separate two different regions. Borders with white dots separate regions with the same size and orientation. Borders with black dots separate regions with neither the same size nor the same orientation. Borders with grey dots separate regions with either the same size or the same orientation, but not both. The grid is toroidal, that is regions are allowed to extend past the edge of the grid to reenter on the other side.  (Technicality: There are two edges given on the side of the grid. For aesthetic...

    Another one of these hybrids between Disconnection and Tapa. I've been made aware this was also known as Tapa (Double Back) in previous TVCs, but honestly I think the association with Disco nnectionworks better since those are both shading genres. In any case, the puzzle shouldn't be too hard, hopefully it's fun! Difficulty: 2.5/5  (rewritten version of base rules for Tapa and Disconnection, both of which are taken from  Puzzle Rules ) Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Each region must contain exactly two separate orthogonally connected groups of shaded cells. No 2x2 area may be entirely shaded. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the lengths of the blocks of consecutive shaded cells in the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue.  Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/y896jl96

Two classic Equality puzzles, one a fair bit more difficult than the other. I started playing around with this genre following a speedset we had in the discord themed around genres containing the letter Q on grids shaped like a Q (bonus points if you can guess who hosted it). I chose to set Equality for it, despite never having solved or set one before. I really liked the genre from the little experience it gave me, so I was very eager to take another look, resulting in these two puzzles. They're not the prettiest grids (mostly a result of, in my experience, symmetrical grids leading to very repetitive logic) but I'm quite happy with the logic they have hidden inside them. Difficulty: 2.5/5 for the first, 3.5/5 for the second (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some cells which passes through each region at least twice. Every visit to a particular region must occupy an equal number of cells. A clue in a region indicates the number of c...

   Here are some variant Fillomino. I think the Quadruple constraint combines well with the genre; it requires a slightly different approach but still maintains that standard Fillomino feel. The 6x6 was more a proof of concept for myself to see if it works well, but it solves nicely and serves as a nice introductory puzzle to the 10x10. Difficulty: 2/5 for the 6x6, 3/5 for the 10x10 Rules: Normal Fillomino rules apply. Digits appearing in clues on intersections must appear in the four surrounding cells.  (If less than four clues are given on an intersection, no information is known about the remaining cells. For example, a single 5 on an intersection means there must be at least one 5 in the four surrounding cells. It does not mean all four cells have to be 5, nor that there is exactly one 5.) Play on penpa (6x6) - https://tinyurl.com/ybraa3h8 Play on penpa (10x10) -  https://tinyurl.com/yazhzb84

  Another Rassi Silai variant, and probably the last one for now, since the contest is coming to a close soon. The past few have all been hybrids, so for this one I wanted to do just a standalone variant. It was hard to come up with a variant that fit well, but I think I landed on something pretty neat in the end. The ambiguity aspect makes for some tricky, thinky deductions, so careful notation is crucial for this one! Difficulty: 3/5 (Classic rules from Puzzle Rules ) Normal Rassi Silai rules apply, except exactly one cell within each region remains empty. (Normal 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.) Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/ybhdsw2f

Something experimental today. I quite like the big clues variation and decided to have a go at setting a TLL with it. The logic doesn't get too complex for this, but I think it's a smooth and fun solve. Difficulty: 2.5/5 Rules Draw a non-intersecting loop through the center of some empty cells. Clues represent the numbers of consecutive cells occupied by the loop each time it enters the cells surrounding the clue. Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/y8rocheg

   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

I've been playing around with various constraints to add on to Rassi Silai, in light of the Rassi Silai contest happening on LMI right now. These are two variants  that I think combine well with the genre. Setting the Skyscraper one gave me a particularly hard time. I'm not sure if I was just a bit out of it or if it's actually hard to construct a decent puzzle using this mechanic, but in the end I managed to set something I was happy with.  Difficulty: 2.5/5 for both Rules (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. For Icebarn: A  path cannot turn on an ice cell, can cross itself on an ice cell and must visit all ice cells in its region. Ice cells cannot be endpoints. For Skyscraper: N umbers outside the grid show the number of separate path segments visible in that direction. A segment of len...

   What's this? A classic tapa puzzle on my blog?  A couple posts back I wrote that I intend to publish more puzzles on this space, but that's not why I'm posting this one.  I like playing around with pzprRT, in particular with tapa. I enjoy looking for themed grids (an  example ), but I'll be the first to admit t here's also a very big temptation to make incredibly bashy puzzles. Most of what I set using the tool thankfully never sees the light of day (other than perhaps the CTC discord), but every now and then you stumble upon something special.  This is such a case. A Seeing Double theme (inspired by  this excellent puzzle  by Sam) and an enormous empty middle - yet somehow it's unique. It took an eternity to find, and finding it was only part one - it needed to have logic too. I had to solve it a couple of times and have it tested by Freddie (thank you as always) to convince myself the path through is fair, even though it certainly has i...

    Here's something new and funky - a hybrid between Disconnection and Tapa. I started playing around with Disconnection not too long ago, and came up with some nice puzzles, but it's ridiculously difficult to set. I often needed to give freebies, relied heavily on the same type of deductions and faced uniqueness issues around every corner.  I tried looking for modifications to the ruleset (such as regions with clues denoting the amount of shaded cells in the region) and genres to combine it with, and I particularly liked the logic that came up with Tapa. I decided to try and write a full puzzle around it. There may be more soon, there's tons of interactions to explore here.  Difficulty: 3/5 (more for novelty than complexity, I suppose) (rewritten version of base rules for Tapa and Disconnection, both of which are taken from Puzzle Rules ) Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Each region must contain exactly two separate or...

    A variant Tapa puzzle using bigger clues. We had a speedset on this variant in discord a while ago, and while I wasn't really happy with what I set back then, I did keep it on my list to revisit. I now finally have! Difficulty: 2.5/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) 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 all of the cells which touch the clue orthogonally or diagonally. No 2x2 region may be entirely shaded. Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/ydexg39v

   It's been a bit quiet on here, so I intend to set some more puzzles suitable to be published on my blog. Here's a  Nurikabe-Like Loop puzzle.  Difficulty: 3/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some empty cells. Every orthogonally connected area of cells not visited by the loop contains exactly one clue, the value of which represents the size of the area. Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/yb2w4p93

 Two classic Disorderly Loop puzzles, a relatively new genre created by Eric Fox . Constructing a decent puzzle in this genre feels rather tricky, which I think shows in the first puzzle, which perhaps feels slightly cluttered. Overall, however, I think these are fairly nice for a first attempt at setting the genre. Difficulty: 2/5 for the first, 3/5 for the second (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some cells. Clued cells may not be used by the loop. Clues represent the lengths of the next N line segments appearing in the loop, not necessarily in order, starting with a line in the cell adjacent to the clue in the direction of its arrow and moving in the direction of the arrow, where N is the amount of numbers in the clue. Puzzle #1 - Penpa:  https://tinyurl.com/3j95j4yx Puzzle #2 - Penpa:  https://tinyurl.com/2axbt8mx

Two variant Simple Loops, using the Skyscraper variation. The first puzzle was an entry to our first speedsetting session of the year in the CTC Discord server, taking 2nd place. It inspired me to set a bigger one with more complex logic, without the time pressure of a speedset. While the puzzles are similar in appearance, they have very different solve paths. Difficulty: 2/5 for the first, 3.5/5 for the second Rules: Draw a single, non-intersecting loop through the center of all cells in the grid. Also, numbers outside the grid show the number of separate loop segments visible in that direction. A segment of length N in a given direction is taken as a building of height N. Buildings of height N block the view of all buildings behind them of equal or lesser height. Puzzle 1 (Penpa):  https://git.io/JSDIo Puzzle 2 (Penpa):  https://git.io/J9sV1