Another loop type in the unequal lengths variation:
Rules Solve as a regular Country Road. Additionally, any two straight segments that meet at a point must have different lengths.
Puzzle 176: Country Road [unequal lengths]
Leave a reply
Puzzle 175: Masyu [unequal lengths]
Continuing with the variant rule from the recent GP, here’s a Masyu [unequal lengths].
Rules Solve as a regular Masyu puzzle. In addition, any two straight line segments that meet at a corner must have different lengths.
Puzzle 174: Slitherlink (Unequal Lengths), and Russian GP recap
This past weekend, the WPF hosted round 4 of the 2019 Puzzle Grand Prix, with puzzles by Russian authors. Puzzles/solutions/results are currently available under the previous link but should show up in the archive eventually. I’ll go over how it went for me below. One very interesting new variant on the test was “unequal lengths slitherlink”; here’s one:
Unequal-lengths slitherlink
Rules Solve as a regular slitherlink. In addition, any two connected straight line segments must have different lengths.
Puzzle 173: Scrin (and release pzprjs v0.11.0)
I’ve wrapped up my recent changes to pzprjs in a new release, full changelog below. It’s live now on puzz.link. Please let me know if you find any bugs, or would like to contribute some missing translations.
The latest addition is the Nikoli puzzle type Scrin (スクリン); here’s a small sample puzzle:
https://puzz.link/p?scrin/6/6/g2h.zl.h4g
Rules Draw some rectangles, such that every clue is inside a rectangle (of the given size if specified). Different rectangles can only touch by corners, and all rectangles must form a single non-branching loop via these corner-connections. Rectangles without clues are possible. Continue reading
Puzzle 172: Ring-ring
Here’s a little Ring-ring puzzle I made when testing that a bug in pzprjs was really fixed. [puzz.link] [pzv.jp].
Rules Fill the empty cells of the grid by drawing rectangles that consist of horizontal and vertical lines between cell centers. The sides of different rectangles may intersect but not overlap. Rectangles can’t touch otherwise; in particular, they can’t touch by a corner.
Puzzle 171: Heyawacky
Here’s a wacky Heyawake. [puzz.link] See e.g. mellowmelon for the rules.
Puzzle 170: Star Battle
Announcing puzz.link, a.k.a. Puzzle 169: Angle Loop
Here’s another Angle Loop, and you can solve it on the new puzz.link:
(You might want to try the example first: https://puzz.link/p?angleloop/5/5/1a1ab6b0c1c0a4c3a1a)
puzz.link
puzz.link is a clone/fork of the excellent pzv.jp, a puzzle solving site and applet built by Daisuke Kobayashi. It seems the author has moved on, so when I wanted pzv support for some angle loops of mine, I decided to go ahead and fork the project. I’m hoping pzv.jp will be updated again and would be happy for my changes to make it upstream! I’ll be putting effort into separating the changes useful for upstream from site-specific changes.
For most puzzle types you can move them from one site to the other by switching between https://puzz.link/p? and http://pzv.jp/p.html? in the URLs.
Changes
There are three new puzzle types: Besides Angle Loop, there is Heyawacky which slightly generalizes Heyawake by allowing non-rectangular rules. And Nurimisaki is a type that was quite popular on the Japanese puzzle twitter this year, where it was shared using the Kurotto applet. I hope to post some example puzzles for the other types soon. The additions compared to pzv.jp are shown in the “Added puzzles” tab in the type list.
The second major change is that puzz.link… links? come with “rich link preview”, or whatever you want to call it.
Contributing
I intend to keep updating this with new puzzle types and fixes as I need them, but I’m also happy to accept contributions. I would be particularly grateful for help in keeping the project Japanese: Some of the changes I’ve made so far are lacking Japanese translations, so please let me know if you can help with that.
If you have a bug report or want to submit some changes, head on over to github: robx/pzpr-puzzlink for the site, or more likely robx/pzprjs for the puzzle applet itself.
Puzzle 168: Angle loop
Puzzle 167: Dual loop
Here’s a new loop type. You can solve and check your answer over here. (Let me know if that works for you and is useful, very much work in progress.)
In other things:
- I’ve worked on puzzle-draw a bit; there’s now an incomplete and experimental more generic input format, which should eventually allow you to draw graphics for non-hardcoded puzzle types. Including doing things like using other symbols instead of numbers where number clues are currently expected.
- Be sure to take part in the Puzzle Grand Prix next weekend, authored by Jonas Gleim and me. There should be some nice puzzles in there. Check out the instruction booklet.
- We’ve published a puzzle book via the German Logic Masters, with a chapter of Minesweeper puzzles by myself. There’s a number of prominent constructors involved! (It’s not really being marketed to expert puzzlers, which I suppose explains that the publisher doesn’t even bother to note the involvement of serial world champion Ulrich Voigt.) It’s claimed to be available already, though there’s some information it won’t ship before March. Have a look inside at topp-kreative.de or check it out at amazon.de or amazon.com.
Finally here’s the puzzle:
Rules Draw two loops that consist of horizontal and vertical segments. One loop goes along the grid lines, while the other loop goes from cell center to cell center. Clues indicate how many of the (up to) four adjacent edges have an intersection of both loops.
Example
Maybe Puzzles 