Tag Archives: puzzle

Puzzle 154: The Largest Number

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Posting from the evening after the 2018 German Logic Masters. It went decently well for me, with a third place after the main rounds which means I’m on the A-team again. My results on the two Rätselportal-rounds were bad as expected. On the other hand, finishing that fences sprint round first with quite a margin after 3:15 of 20:00 minutes was great. An unfortunate marking mistake in the final playoffs saw me lose a couple of minutes of time double-checking my correct solution. With no good way to fix this, I ended up fourth with the knowledge that first place was possible.

I made a couple of puzzles to prepare, two of which I’ve published on the Rätselportal already: A Japanese Sums/Masyu hybrid and a hand-constructed (with the help of a friend, thank you!) unclued 5×5 skyscraper blocks that I’m very happy with!

Some more I’ll post here. To start, here’s a The Largest Number. The type was introduced at the 2017 WPC in India. I don’t think I’ve seen one without given numbers before.

Rules Fill the grid with numbers such that each room contains the numbers from 1 to the size of the room. Equal numbers can not be next to each other horizontally or vertically. Circle the largest number in each room. Then also circled numbers can not be next to each other horizontally or vertically.

Puzzle 126: Yin-Yang Fences

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And quickly another post to hide that terrible Domino Construction. In contrast, this one has a nice solving path, but will you find it?

yinyang-fences-2

Rules Solve as a standard Slither Link. In addition, all cells outside the loop must be connected, and there must be no 2×2-square of cells that is entirely inside or outside the loop.

Or see the instruction booklet.

Puzzle 122: Paint By Threes

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Continuing with the GP practice puzzles, here’s a Paint By Threes. I believe I’ve seen these more than once at the 24 hours, see Puzzle 121 for a link to the 2016 puzzles. There were a few on croco, too: Dreier-Nonogramm 1, Dreier-Nonogramm 2, Dreier-Nonogramm 3. I tried to make this one a bit harder.

paintbythrees

Rules Replace each circle with a non-zero number, divisible by three if and only if the circle is black. Then solve as a standard nonogram. I.e., shade some cells, such that the clues give the sizes of all blocks of shaded cells within that row or column, in the correct order.

Or see the instruction booklet. (In the competition presentation, white/black circles are replaced by white/gray squares.)

Puzzle 121: Yin-Yang Fences

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The next GP round is coming up, with the Russian GP authored by Andrey Bogdanov. One of the types is Yin-Yang Fences, which I first saw on Andrey and Vladimir’s round for the Budapest 24 hours this year. You should be able to find these here. Berni made another for our croco 24h review series.

You can leave out one of the 2s on the outside if you want more of a challenge.

yinyang-fences-1

Rules Solve as a standard Slither Link. In addition, all cells outside the loop must be connected, and there must be no 2×2-square of cells that is entirely inside or outside the loop.

Or see the instruction booklet.