bakpao's puzzles

Like ìn 2021, I was invited to write puzzles for the Indian Puzzle Championship again this year. This was a great experience last year and writing for 'official sources' such as the IPC and Pulze  continues to be one of my favorite parts of puzzle setting, so naturally I jumped at the opportunity. This year I supplied 6 puzzles, which can be found in this post, in order of appearance throughout the rounds. This post only contains the puzzles I wrote for the contest. Unlike last year, when IPC took place online, the full sets aren't available for free, but instead can be obtained 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 the puzzle rounds, each of which are stacked with high quality puzzles by fantastic authors, as well as bonus content like the PR Playoff puzzles and a giant interconnected puzzle gift. If you are able to, I highly recommend purchasing the full...

Nothing much to mention, just a fun little variant tapa. Probably on the easy side if you're already familiar with the clue patterns that occur in this variant. Difficulty: 3/5 (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 the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue. No 2x2 region may be entirely shaded.  Regions of unshaded cells may contain at most one clue, and the number of cells in an unshaded region with a clue must be equal to one of the numbers in the clue. (Regions are allowed to have no clues) Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/2n822jae

Some more blocks to chain! Having a lot of fun exploring the different things one can do with this genre.  Difficulty: 2.5/5 (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/11/11/l4g4j4n5n4i5i3t5q3t3i1i6n4n5j6g3l

    Chained Block has been on my to-set list for a while, but I never got around to trying to write one - until now! I went for deductions a bit different from what I usually see in these puzzles, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Difficulty: 2.5/5 (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/11/11/g3j3h4g2u5j2w4h3s3h6w5j3u4g3h4j4g

   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...

   I was setting Dominion earlier today and thought it might be interesting to combine with Norinori. It's not a new concept - I found mention of the idea over a year ago (but couldn't actually find any puzzles).  The puzzle came out a bit easy and silly, but fun enough. One genre is definitely much more powerful than the other - even more so because of the theme I went with. Maybe I'll explore the combination some more at a later stage. Difficulty: 2/5 Base rules from Puzzle Rules Shade some dominoes of cells to divide the grid into unshaded areas. Every region contains exactly two shaded cells. Shaded dominoes may not touch orthogonally.  Clues cannot be shaded, and each orthogonally connected area of unshaded cells contains exactly one type of clue, and all instances of it. Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/22cugux4

 Line of Sight is a genre that recently caught my eye thanks to its feature in the 2022 UK Puzzle Championship . I quite enjoy solving the genre and setting this puzzle was tons of fun too. I didn't originally intend to go all the way with the 1234 theme, but after placing the first clues (can you guess which group was first?)  and exploring a bit further, I found they were quite balanced and worked well, so I went with it.   Difficulty: 3/5  (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Connect some pairs of orthogonally adjacent dots to form a single non-intersecting loop. A clue represents the length of the first straight line segment seen in the indicated direction. Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/2gvobc3t

La Paz is a fun genre recently invented by shye . This is the second one I've set. Fair warning - the puzzle is quite hard. The first version of this puzzle was non-unique, I unfortunately made a bad deduction while setting it. Luckily I managed to rewrite it keeping most of the intended logic intact. It's visually a bit less clean than the previous version, but overall I'm very happy with the logic I managed to write into this one.  A massive thanks to Freddie for testing both versions and catching the unwanted solutions in the first version. Difficulty: 5/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and divide the remaining unshaded cells into two-cell regions. A clue indicates the number of shaded cells which lie entirely within the same row or column as the region containing the clue. Play on pzprxs https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?lapaz/11/11/k4l5h1j5m2m2m3zq3m5m5m3j2h3l3k

   A little statue park I wrote earlier that I think has a pretty cool solve path.  Difficulty: 3/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Place each shape from the bank given outside the grid into the grid so that no two shapes share an edge and all unused cells form one orthogonally connected area. Rotating and reflecting shapes is allowed. Cells with black circles must be used by a shape, and cells with white circles must not be used by a shape. Play on pzprxs https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?statuepark/10/10/019i22020621ia034106io31060630if00//d

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

    Rail Pool is a loop genre recently invented by Menderbug. It took a while for me to get into and really wrap my head around the ruleset, but once it clicked it almost immediately grew on me - it's very fun to solve and construct. This is my first one. Thanks to Menderbug for testing the puzzle! Difficulty: 3/5 Rules  Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of all cells. Numbers within a region indicate the different lengths of the line segments that enter or are completely contained within the region. (For segments contained partially in the region, the number still refers to the total length of the segment.) All numbers within a region must be represented at least once by a segment overlapping the region. Regions without clues have no information given.  A ? clue can replace any number, as long as no number is repeated in that region. Play on pzprxs https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?railpool/10/10/k23p14zzk13n2n34zr13n12zrkb55ag05aak01akkq528826cpj00pj6c8228

Kurotto Kingdom  has come to an end!  A huge thank you to everyone who participated in the contest! Whether you solved just a few of the puzzles, fought your way through all of them or woke up in the middle of the night to rack up those earlybird points, I appreciate everyone that found time in their daily schedules to solve my puzzles.  I hope you all enjoyed the puzzles and learned a bit (or a lot) about Kurotto in the process. My congratulations to IHNN / Jeffrey Bardon for winning the event, PuzzleMaestro / Freddie Hand for getting second place and EKBM / Ken Endo for taking home third place. Absolutely stellar performances. The past 3 weeks for me were filled with replay upon replay upon replay. Watching you all solve the puzzles I wrote and reading your feedback has been an incredibly exciting experience, as well as one which taught me a lot. Seeing solvers find my exact intended path through puzzles was an absolute joy, but it certainly was just as, if not more int...