Tag Archives: variant

Puzzle 72: Different Magic Summer

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Here’s another WPC practice puzzle, a Magic Summer from the round of puzzles with different areas, just like the recent Different Tapa.

While on the topic of WPC puzzles: There’s a WPC series starting today on croco-puzzle. It’s authored by Silke and me, with a selection of puzzle types from Sofia. These are all “Ü2”, so you can solve them with no Java applet worries.

magic-summer-different

Rules Place digits in some cells, so that each row and column contains exactly digits 1 through 5.

Connected blocks of digits in a row or column form numbers by reading left to right or downwards, respectively. Clues outside the grid are equal to the sum of all such numbers within the corresponding row or column.

In addition, the gray cells must all have different content.

 

Puzzle 71: Color Akari

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Here’s a practice puzzle that I made for the color-themed team round at the WPC. Some of the intended logic may have been lost in getting it correct, but enjoy nonetheless.

color-akari

Rules Place some red, green and blue light bulbs. These shine in vertical and horizontal direction until they hit a black cell. Every white cell must be illuminated, and no two bulbs may illuminate each other. Colored clues indicate the composite color of the bulbs that illuminate it: pure red, green or blue, cyan (green+blue), magenta (red+blue) or yellow (red+green).

Or see the WPC instructions.

Puzzle 70: Different Tapa

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I’m meaning to write up a report on the recently finished 24th WPC. No official results yet, but Ken Endo won the individual competition before Ulrich Voigt and Palmer Mebane, and we (Florian, Philipp, Ulrich and I) took gold with the team in front of Japan, Germany B (inofficial) and USA.

Instead, here’s a puzzle I made in preparation for round 9, which consisted of various puzzles built around the idea of marking several areas that had to be filled differently.

tapa-different

Rules Solve as a standard Tapa. Additionally, each gray 2-by-2 square must be shaded differently. E.g., no two gray squares can have only the top left corner shaded.

There are 15 gray squares, the different shades of gray are only there to make it possible to tell the squares apart.

Edit Here’s an alternate rendering, due to edderiofer.

tapa-different-borders

Puzzle 68: Summawake

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Here’s a practice puzzle I made for the German puzzle championships, which took place end of June. The puzzle is a Summawake, a variant of Heyawake that I haven’t seen before. I believed the competition puzzle (and the type) was due to Florian Kirch. It’s actually due to Ulrich Voigt! The instruction booklet has an example. summawake Rules Shade some cells, such that all unshaded cells are connected by edge, and that no two shaded cells share an edge. A horizontal or vertical stretch of unshaded cells may cross at most one area boundary. In addition, if there are any unshaded clues within an area, the number of shaded cells within that area must be equal to the sum of unshaded clues within that area.

Puzzle 66: Japanese Sums with 0

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Long time no post. I’ve been making puzzles for croco-puzzle recently, the ongoing Best of 24h series, in particular.

But, here’s a practice puzzle for the coming German GP round next weekend. It’s on the hard side — I’d be interested to hear if you find (a way around) the intended break-in.

japsum-0

Rules Shade some cells, and fill the remaining cells with digits from 0 to 6, such that no digit occurs more than once in each row or column. The numbers outside the grid indicate the sums of blocks of connected digits in the correct order. This includes single digits.

Example (digits 0-3)japanischesummennull-example

Puzzle 53: Slitherlink außen-knapp-daneben

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Here’s a practice puzzle for the other non-standard type on the Serbian GP this weekend, “Slitherlink Out-Liars” as they call it. I’m not too sure this one is representative of the type; certainly it feels different than the others I’ve solved.

rundweg-aussen-kdRules Draw a single loop that doesn’t touch or cross itself by connecting dots horizontally and vertically. Clues inside the loop indicate the number of adjacent edges used by the loop. Clues outside the loop indicate the number of adjacent edges used by the loop, plus or minus 1. Or see the instruction booklet.

Some more puzzles: 2010 German qualification. On croco puzzle: 2013-12-21, 2014-02-08, 2014-04-26. There was also one in the 2014 WPC.

Puzzle 52: Shikaku knapp daneben

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One of the non-standard puzzle types in the Serbian Grand Prix round is Shikaku with clues that are off by one (as “Shikaku Liars”). Here’s a practice puzzle.

shikaku-kd

Rules Split the grid into rectangles composed of grid cells, containing one clue each, such that the size of each rectangle is equal to the corresponding clue ±1. Or see the instruction booklet.

There’s another easier puzzle of this type on the Rätselportal: Knapp daneben – Rechtecke. Then, in the knapp daneben instance of the Hausigel Contest Series. The double-clue Shikakus on croco should also be good practice: 2014-03-01, 2014-04-04.