Tag Archives: variant

Puzzle 33: Sackbahnhöfe

Saturday was the German Logic Masters in Stuttgart. I’m mostly happy with how it went, placing fifth after last year’s seventh in what was probably a stronger field. Though missing place four and thus the A-team for London by a single point is a bit hard.

The puzzles were great, I particularly enjoyed the “special” rounds, such as the Doppelter Rundweg or the final Vier Jahreszeiten. They’re available now as online contests.

I had a bit of time this year and made some puzzles in preparation that I’m going to post over the next couple of days. The first is a Sackbahnhöfe.

Rules (from the booklet) Draw a loop with some branches into the grid, which visits every field of the grid. The loop crosses itself only at the marked crossings. Fields with numbers are railway stations. The loop branches in the field before the railway station. There may be only one branch in a field. The branch then moves straight through the railway station, and ends in the field after it. The branches with the stations have to be in increasing order along the loop.

See the contest page for instructions that include an example.

Puzzle 31: Pyramid, knapp daneben

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Here’s a “knapp daneben” pyramid puzzle, i.e., all clues are off by one. Please excuse the slight asymmetry, it’s because the bottom clues including gaps were meant to be transferred from other puzzles. It’s fall-out of a puzzle contest I’ve helped write, together with the Berlin Stammtisch, which will be held on the weekend of June 28. See the instruction booklet.

Rules Place a number from 1 to 9 in each cell, such that for any two horizontal neighbours, the number between and above the two is their sum or their difference. In gray rows, all numbers must be distinct, while in white rows, there must be at least one pair of duplicate numbers. All given numbers are off by one.

Puzzle 27: Coded Coral

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Feels like anything can happen with coded puzzles… Here’s one that’s probably of medium difficulty as far as coded corals go, though the puzzle type seems to be inherently difficult.

Rules Map the letters to distinct positive numbers, and solve the resulting Coral puzzle: Shade some cells, such that all shaded cells are connected by edge, such that no 2-by-2-square is fully shaded, and such that all unshaded cells are connected to the puzzle border by edge. For clued rows and columns, the clues give the lengths of all connected blocks of shaded cells, in any order.

Or see the instruction booklet.

Puzzle 25: Slitherlink (Liar Diagonal)

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Here’s a slightly different take on the Liar Diagonal Slitherlink.

Rules Draw a loop that travels horizontally, vertically or diagonally from point to point. Clue numbers that are not crossed by diagonals are equal to the number of adjacent horizontal and vertical segments used by the loop. Those that are crossed by diagonals are different from that number. Furthermore, in every row and column, there is exactly one diagonal segment, and that diagonal crosses a clue.

Puzzle 22: Japanese Sums and Loop

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The Czech round of the puzzle GP will take place next week, the instruction booklet has been posted. Here’s a practice puzzle for one of the types.

Rules Place numbers from 1 to 6 in some cells so that no number repeats within a row or column. For rows and columns that have clues given on the outside, these numbers correspond to all sums of blocks of adjacent digits within that line, in the correct order. Furthermore, draw a loop that visits all cells without a number, passing horizontally and vertically from cell centre to cell centre.

Puzzle 18: Afternoon Skyscrapers

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Another practice puzzle for the GP.

Rules Fill the grid with numbers from 1 to 6 such that every row and column contains all numbers. The numbers represent skyscrapers of the given height. There is a gray shadow at the south edge of a cell if some skyscraper further south in that column would throw a shadow onto the roof of the skyscraper in that cell, with the sun shining at a 45º angle. Similarly, a shadow on the west edge corresponds to sunshine from the west.

Or see the instruction booklet.