Contest 4: A Cleverly-Titled Birthday Contest

On May 26, 2011, I will turn 24 years old. As has been traditional for the past several years, I will celebrate this event by adding new Nikoli puzzle books to my collection, a tradition which always gives me a bit of a rush. One tradition I will not engage in, though, is the singing of a particular song (yeah, you know the one). What song would I prefer to hear instead? Read on, and you could find out. . .

How to enter:
This contest consists of a single puzzle (as opposed to the four puzzles that my contests usually have – a shocking change of pace, I know). To participate in the contest, simply send the final answer in an e-mail to glmathgrant[at]gmail[dot]com. Only one entry is allowed per person, but you may change your entry at any time before the deadline, 11:59 PM (Central time) on May 25, 2011. The winners will be announced on my birthday, May 26, 2011.

How to win:
After the deadline has passed, four winners will be randomly selected from amongst the people who submitted the correct answer. (If fewer than four people submit the correct answer, then all of them will be winners.)

Prize:
I'm not telling you what the prizes are. Gwa ha ha! I will only say that their monetary worth will surely not be as great as their worth as souvenirs of having celebrated my birthday. :)

Terms:
By entering the contest, you agree to the following terms:
a) You agree not to discuss your entry with any other entrants or potential entrants until the contest is over.
b) You agree to provide me with a mailing address in the event that you win. (In return, I agree not to use your mailing address for any malicious purposes, such as sending junk mail or other undesired things.)
c) You agree to wait patiently for your prize to arrive, without moaning or kvetching, especially if you don't live in the continental United States, since it takes longer for things to ship from Texas to other countries, or to Alaska or Hawaii.

Now that you're done reading all that, here is the one-part contest puzzle. Good luck! :)

Only Part: Polyominous

Solve the Polyominous puzzle below (rules of Polyominous):
Transfer the units digits of the numbers in the lettered cells to the corresponding boxes in the URL beneath the images. (For example, if the cell with the letter a has a 2 or a 12, then box a in the URL will have a 2.) This URL will lead to a page on AllMusic; the song on this page was the inspiration for this contest.

For the final answer, you may submit either the URL obtained from solving the above puzzle, or the title of the song obtained from said URL. Send your answer to glmathgrant[at]gmail[dot]com to enter A Cleverly-Titled Birthday Contest.

Edit: I reserve the right to accept "close enough" answers at my discretion; I will consider the full URL, the URL without http:// and/or www., just the "t#######" part of the URL, or even just the seven-digit number by itself as correct, as well as minor misspellings of the title. However, URL's with two digits transposed or a single wrong digit, as well as completely wrong titles, will not be counted as correct.

If you submit both a URL and a title, and I notice that they don't match up, I will notify you of this. If you don't change your answer before the deadline, I will ignore the title and just check the URL (so if your URL is correct and your song title is preposterously wrong, your answer will be counted as correct).

Monday Mutant 75: Crowd Nine (equations)

In this Crowd Nine puzzle, all of the outlined equations, when read from left to right or from top to bottom, must be true when the grid is filled in. Perform operations in reading order (for example, 3-1+2 is 4, not 0, and 1+2×3 is 9, not 7). The rules are otherwise unchanged.
As previously announced, MellowMelon and I will be co-authoring a test for Logic Masters India in the coming months. What kind of content can you expect on this test? Take a look.

Grant's Review Corner: Volume 5

I would like to open this review by confessing a horrible secret. This secret is so horrible that I suspect most of my readers, and an even greater percentage of my real-life friends, will desert me upon learning it. Nonetheless, at the risk of alienation, I believe it is necessary to get this out of the way.

I genuinely like Justin Bieber's song "Baby".

I dislike it when people solicit me to review their things, particularly things which I believe to be crap. Who am I to judge what is crap, after all, when I enjoy listening to the song that, prior to the release of "Friday" by Rebecca Black, had the highest number of "thumbs down" votes of any YouTube video? If there's anything to be gathered from the prevalence of computer-generated Sudoku puzzles, which I believe to be artless crap, in the highest-selling publications, it's that my opinion even on those things which I am most passionate about don't always align with the vox populi. Don't get me wrong; I believe that computer-generated logic puzzles are capable of being legitimately entertaining, which is why I have been on occasion obsessed with getting high scores in Everett Kaser's Sherlock, and why I am a fan of Link-a-Pix by Conceptis, the company with perhaps the most consistently high-quality pictures in their picture-forming logic puzzles. I do, however, find that handmade puzzles are generally more capable of being masterpieces as opposed to entertainment. Additionally, there are times when I think that something is crap (or occasionally the opposite), but am unable to articulate why in any way that resembles a proper critical review.

Thus, I wasn't eager to get e-mail last month:

Monday Mutant 74: Circumnavi-Gates (non-congruent gates)

In this Circumnavi-Gates puzzle, there are no numbers; instead, you may not pass through two congruent (equally long) gates consecutively. The rules are otherwise unchanged.
 ERRATUM: This puzzle had multiple solutions before. It shouldn't anymore.

Monday Mutant 73: Process of Illumination (orthogonal or diagonal)

In this Process of Illumination puzzle, the given numbers may represent either how many light bulbs are in the orthogonally adjacent cells to that cell (as usual) or how many light bulbs are in the diagonally adjacent cells to that cell. (A given number may also represent both of these quantities if they are the same.) The rules are otherwise unchanged.

Puzzle 490: Quad-Wrangle 20

After you're done wrangling these quadrangles (or before, if you wish), check out this quad-run of the first four Super Mario Bros. games (including the game known as Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan and The Lost Levels elsewhere). This quad-run aims to beat all four games using the exact same series of button presses. As a tool-assisted run, this series of button presses was not achieved by a person playing the game in real time as the games were meant to be played, but through the use of emulators with savestates, slowdown, frame advance, and other tools; see this topic for more information before crying "hax!" or "cheater!".

Monday Mutant 72: Cross the Streams (odd/even)

Shade in some cells black such that the black cells are all connected to each other through their edges, and no 2x2 cell area within the grid contains all black cells. In a normal Cross the Streams, numbers to the left of a row or above a column represent the groups of consecutive black cells which are in that row or column. For example, a clue of "3" means the row or column has three consecutive black cells, and a clue of "3 1" means that the row or column has a group of three consecutive black cells followed by a single black cell, separated by at least one white cell. However, in this puzzle, all odd numbers have been replaced by O's and all even numbers have been replaced by E's. A question mark (?) represents a group of consecutive black cells whose size is unknown; an asterisk (*) represents any number of unknown groups of black cells, including none at all.

Grant's Review Corner: Volume 4

While my TI-80 Alan has died, thankfully my iPhone is still alive, so I shall be reviewing an iPhone app today! I'll be reviewing the logic puzzle app "Bananagrams".

So I start up a game, and I'm given this:

A bunch of letters? I don't get it. What are the rules of this logic puzzle? Am I supposed to rearrange them? Alphabetically seems to be the most logical arrangement for letters, so I do so:

Unfortunately, the game does not seem to like this arrangement:

What the hell is this about a word list? What the hell are the rules? This logic puzzle app does a poor job of explaining the rules. Avoid Bananagrams like the plague.

Sorry that the review was so short, but seriously. . . .

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