bakpao's puzzles

Here are two puzzles that I don't really like for the other outlets where I post most of my puzzles nowadays ( WCPN  and LMI Expo ). Good way to get some activity on this blog, I guess! Difficulty: 3/5  (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Connect some pairs of orthogonally adjacent dots to form a single non-intersecting loop. Clues represent the number of edges drawn surrounding the clue (up to four). Solve on puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?slither/11/11/hada77666267666cadar338833draca77886287886caca

Last week WSPC 2023 took place in Toronto, Canada! I took part in both events, on the A team for the Netherlands - my second time participating after my debut last year. I finished in 34th official / 38th unofficial in WSC (2nd NL and up from 56th unofficial last year) and 38th official / 47th unofficial in WPC (3rd NL and down from 42nd unofficial last year). Overall I'm happy to have improved my sudoku ranking and am content to hover around the top 40 mark in puzzles, but I do feel there's still a lot of potential for me to do better. Hopefully I can keep improving at future events. A short breakdown follows of my performance per round for each event, along with what I liked and/or didn't like about the events as a whole and a recap of other fun stuff that happened. If you're just here for the practice puzzles, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. ----- WSC - Day 1 Round 1 - Opening Ceremony: 400/450 points (tied for 18th unofficial) A great start for me, muc...

Here are two simple loops! These are heavily inspired by scor 's excellent Daily Sloop Returns series, a puzzle series currently ongoing in the CTC Community discord where a new simple loop puzzle is posted every day for a month showcasing novel and fascinating logical ideas. Definitely check the series out if you get the chance! Off-topic: Last post I wrote about posting a giant mash-up puzzle soon to celebrate having authored 1.000 puzzles. I have since reached that milestone! Unfortunately, I haven't found the time/energy yet to set something big, but I will (hopefully) get to it sooner rather than later. Difficulty: 2.5/5 for both (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of all empty cells. Solve on puzz.link (#1 - 11x11): https://puzz.link/p?simpleloop/11/11/40000201igc00344p04000040 Solve on puzz.link (#2 - 14x14):  https://puzz.link/p?simpleloop/14/14/0f0g000088ohpg03g800k00e51000i004001440g

A classic pipelink, my first (serious) attempt at writing one. Aesthetically it could have been a bit better, though I mostly focused on trying to force the logic I wanted and not having it be an autopilot solve. Off topic, I'm very close to reaching 1000 puzzles authored (following my completely arbitrary counting system)! I'll be setting a giant mash-up some time soon and posting it here, so keep an eye out on my blog for that :) Difficulty: 2.5/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Draw a loop through the centers of all cells. Two perpendicular line segments may intersect each other, but not turn at their intersection or otherwise overlap. A clue shows how the loop crosses through the cell it’s in. Solve on puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?pipelink/10/10/sbiehbjbreiblghfjdidjehflciercjdheics

A little heyawake with a 01234 theme I doodled in pzprrt earlier today. I'm aware pzprrt can be synonymous with 'no logic exists' but this one has a fun and fair path through. Mostly posting this here though because a few posts back I wrote that I'd be posting my new puzzles on this blog now that puzz.link doesn't scrape twitter anymore, but since then LMI has launched its new Puzzle Expo  platform. I've been posting my puzzles there since, so if you want to keep up with my recent work and you haven't looked around Expo yet, definitely do so!  Difficulty: 2/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Numbered regions must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells. A line of consecutive unshaded cells may not cross more than one bold border. Play on puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?heyawake/10/10/akl9ail5aakl9ail5a00006c00vv006c000041...

I was invited to write some puzzles for the 2023 UK Puzzle Championship! I always greatly enjoy this contest so I was happy to contribute some puzzles for it. I wrote 6 of 30 puzzles, 3 of which fairly common genres, the other 3 fairly new/obscure genres.   The contest booklets are available publicly and can be accessed via  https://ukpuzzles.org/contests.php?contestid=67  (round 1) and  https://ukpuzzles.org/contests.php?contestid=68  (round 2). The puzzles by the other authors are all great and I definitely recommend checking them out as well. Rules are included in the penpa links for all puzzles. Round 1: Cross the Streams - 22/540 points https://tinyurl.com/25dtcuxh A low pointer written at the end of the writing phase to balance out the contest a bit more, as we had quite a few puzzles leaning towards the harder end. I considered writing it around 2 and 3 clues but I had already seen quite a few puzzles of this genre using similar theming this year so ...

Two small puzzles with some bite to them I wrote before bed last night. This is my first Hebi! Difficulty: 3/5 for both Compass (rules from Puzzle Rules ) Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells, each containing exactly one compass. A number in a compass indicates how many cells belong to its region that are further in the indicated direction than the compass itself. Play on puzzlink https://puzz.link/p?compass/8/8/i.1.2j1..3h4...h....g2...k.3..x....k1...g...1h3...h.2..j2...i

It's been well over a year since Kurotto Kingdom took place. S ome of the puzzles in that contest are some of my proudest work, but I've also been suffering from writer's block when it comes to the genre  ever since . I've managed to write maybe 3 or 4 kurotto puzzles since the contest, but have at least twice as many failed attempts.  This puzzle is the result of trying to turn a deduction that recently came to mind into a working puzzle. It still took 3 days and 5 iterations to get from starting idea to a finished puzzle that I was happy with. Hopefully the effort I put into it shows! Difficulty: 3/5 (rules from Puzzle Rules ) 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. Play on puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?kurotto/11/11/h7k7s4j9j9i3i5j7h2g7h3s2h5g2h2j3i4i3j1j8s6kbh

For the third year in a row I contributed some puzzles to the Indian Puzzle Championship. The author pool was fairly large this time and I had some other deadlines, so I only contributed 3 puzzles this time. These, along with a leftover, can be found in this post. 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 4 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 - Skyscrapers - Round 1 - 35/450 points - Play on  Penpa My first skyscrapers! I tried keeping this one relatively ...

I felt randomly inspired to write a Tapa / LITS puzzle, one of my favorite hybrid combinations. Difficulty: 3/5 (Base rules from  Puzzle Rules ) Normal Tapa and LITS rules apply. Clues cannot be shaded.  No 2x2 region may be entirely 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.  LITS: Shade one tetromino of cells in each region so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Two tetrominoes of the same shape may not share a bold border, counting rotations and reflections as the same. No 2x2 region may be entirely shaded. Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/2g3w87lr

Over in the CTC discord server  we run a daily pencil puzzle project called Genuinely Approachable Pencil Puzzles. We started this project in 2021 as a follow-up to the extremely popular Genuinely Approachable Sudoku project and haven't missed a day since. It features a daily puzzle that is almost always on the easy side, to introduce novice solvers to all kinds different genres and variants. The puzzles always come with a small example (included here) and time benchmarks to target for (not included here). For the first few years, I was not part of the core author team, but rather covered for main authors when they are absent for any period of time, whether a day, a few months or anything in between. I have been on the main author team since April 2024. This post showcases, from newest to oldest, the puzzles I've written for GAPP. Difficulty for GAPP puzzles is all between 1/5 - 2/5. Below the GAPP entries are my contributions to  Mind The GAPP. This is a compilation PDF we re...

 Now that Twitter links are no longer being picked up by the puzz.link scraper, I suppose I'll be posting all my puzzles here for the time being. If anything, it's a good excuse to bring some more life to this blog. Classic Chained Block - nothing too tricky but hopefully fun. 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 puzz.link https://puzz.link/p?chainedb/11/11/2t8j4i6j5i2j3zg4zg7j2i5j3i4j2t4

Last weekend the 20th edition of the 24 hour puzzle championship in Budapest took place!  I participated for the first time and had an absolute blast. I went in fully expecting to fall asleep halfway through as I can rarely stay awake for 24 hours on end, let alone while solving puzzles. Surprisingly, staying awake wasn't the hard part - there were some rounds in the middle of the night where I would occasionally doze off for a few seconds while stuck in a puzzle, but actively solving puzzles actually was a great distraction to keep my mind off the fact I wasn't sleeping. And while fatigue is definitely a factor, there also comes a point where you just get over it, and the last few rounds were actually some of my best.  Much more troublesome was the physical pain endured from sitting at a desk and holding a pencil all that time - at some point everything just starts hurting. In the end though, I managed to stay awake (and active) the whole time, and ended up in 18th place...

Unequal Lengths is a pretty common variant for loop genres, but I don't think I've ever seen or solved a Tapa-Like Loop with it. This is a first exploration - the combination has some limitations but overall seems to have quite a bit of potential and can result in interesting puzzles. Difficulty: 3/5 (base rules from Puzzle Rules ) 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.  Variant: Consecutive segments along the loop cannot have the same length.  Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/2p2as3uw

A puzzle in a genre that has recently been getting some attention. It's my first time writing one, and while I'm happy with how it came out, it is a somewhat atypical solve - a result of getting carried away with the theme a bit.  Difficulty: 2.5/5 (rules from GM Puzzles ) Draw a single, non-intersecting loop that passes through the center of all cells, including clue cells; the loop may either go straight through or turn at each clue. Each clue cell is divided into four sections; if a number is present in a section and the loop travels in that direction, then the number represents the length of the straight loop segment in that direction, measured from the clue cell to the cell where the loop turns. If the loop does not travel in that direction, then the number means nothing. Play on penpa https://tinyurl.com/2n3uy2ut