Would you like to try your hand at logicsmithing, and possibly be featured on my blog? Read on!
Your challenge is to compose a uniquely solvable Circumnavi-Gates puzzle (link to rules, Circumnavi-Gates puzzles from my blog). Your puzzle must either be 10x10 with the black cells arranged according to 180-degree rotational symmetry, or 14x24 with no symmetry restrictions. You must also conform to these rules:
* You must have at least 6 gates, and at least 1 numbered gate.
* The white cells must all be one connected region.
* At least one cell from each row and column must be used in the solution path. (Your puzzle must still be uniquely solvable without this restriction.)
You may send more than one puzzle, so if you want to make a 10x10 puzzle and a 14x24 puzzle, go for it! :)
Send your puzzle(s) to glmathgrant[at]gmail[dot]com. For my convenience, if you have OpenOffice.org installed, please send your puzzle(s) by editing this Circumnavi-Gates template. To use it, change the background of the black cells to black, and use three other background colors to correspond to horizontal gates, vertical gates, and the starting/ending cell. (Use any three different non-black colors you like; none of those colors will appear in the final image, anyway.) Then just type in the numbers. Change the font of the starting/ending number to bold Arial Narrow; otherwise, do not change the fonts or other formatting.
Alternatively, here are a blank 10x10 grid and a blank 14x24 grid; you may edit them in any image-editing program and send your puzzle(s) to me as a BMP, a JPG, or a PNG.
Also, if you would prefer to send it as plain text, I recommend using a period for white cells, X for black cells, O for the starting-ending cell, - for horizontal gates, | for vertical gates, and numbers for numbered black cells. Why would you need so many options for sending me a puzzle? I dunno. But I'm offering them. :)
After three weeks (meaning the deadline is January 21), I will post the puzzles that my readers and I have constructed. Good luck, and have fun!
Puzzle 351: Circumnavi-Gates 6
I've had to do some fiddling with the phrasing of the rules of this puzzle; more details can be found in a comment I've made on this post. 
Puzzle 350: Streaming Content 27
Christmas day -- an appropriate day to post puzzle 350, don't you think? I think it makes a very good Christmas present. I don't get any presents myself today -- inclement weather is preventing the rest of my family from coming to Dallas to see my mother and me here. As a result, I won't be able to open any presents until tomorrow. I feel slightly depressed. Opening a package of Nikoli puzzle books is what Christmas is all about! :( Hopefully, though, any fellow Christmas celebrants reading this blog will have gotten some very good presents. And tomorrow, I will hopefully be very, very, very excited. :)
Puzzle 349: Fencing Match 36
Merry Christmas Adam, everyone! And to those of you who don't celebrate Christmas. . . happy Wednesday!
Puzzle 348: Circumnavi-Gates 5
I have a most exciting announcement to make. Ahem.
This blog now has a custom favicon!!!
That had absolutely nothing to do with this puzzle, but I felt that it was imperative to announce it nonetheless.
This blog now has a custom favicon!!!
That had absolutely nothing to do with this puzzle, but I felt that it was imperative to announce it nonetheless.
Puzzle 347: Streaming Content 26
Raymond Pettit recently informed me that he used some of my Streaming Content puzzles in his class. All of my puzzles on this blog are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License, so feel free to use my puzzles for such purposes (and if you do, I'd like to hear it!).
Rules -- Circumnavi-Gates
Circumnavi-Gates was invented by the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli (under the name Suraromu).
1. Draw a single loop, starting and ending at the numbered circle. The loop may only travel horizontally or vertically, and never diagonally (so all turns are of 90 degrees). The loop may only turn at the centers of the grid cells. The loop may not cross itself or branch off. In other words, the interior of the loop will be a single polygon.
2. The dotted lines are called gates. The loop must pass straight through every gate exactly once, by traversing exactly one cell in each gate. (The number in the circle represents the total number of gates, and is included as a convenience.)
3. A numbered black cell represents the order in which the loop passes through the gate which touches that black cell. (If a numbered black cell is next to more than one gate, then the number refers only to the gate which has that same number on both ends.) A gate numbered 1 must be the first gate visited in the loop, starting from the circle and going in one of the two possible directions, a gate numbered 2 must be the second gate visited, and so forth. The other gates may be passed through in any order.
1. Draw a single loop, starting and ending at the numbered circle. The loop may only travel horizontally or vertically, and never diagonally (so all turns are of 90 degrees). The loop may only turn at the centers of the grid cells. The loop may not cross itself or branch off. In other words, the interior of the loop will be a single polygon.
2. The dotted lines are called gates. The loop must pass straight through every gate exactly once, by traversing exactly one cell in each gate. (The number in the circle represents the total number of gates, and is included as a convenience.)
3. A numbered black cell represents the order in which the loop passes through the gate which touches that black cell. (If a numbered black cell is next to more than one gate, then the number refers only to the gate which has that same number on both ends.) A gate numbered 1 must be the first gate visited in the loop, starting from the circle and going in one of the two possible directions, a gate numbered 2 must be the second gate visited, and so forth. The other gates may be passed through in any order.
Puzzle 339: Twincognito 17
I've gone from not posting for a week to throwing together six puzzles in one day! Insane.
Rules -- Prev-Arrow-Cation
Prev-Arrow-Cation was invented by the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli (under the name Yajisan-Kazusan).
1. Determine whether each cell is white or black according to the following rules.
2. A white cell containing a number and an arrow represents how many black cells are in the row or column pointed at by the arrow.
3. A cell containing a number and an arrow may be shaded in; if so, the clue in it becomes meaningless, and may or may not be true.
4. No two black cells may share an edge. All of the white cells must be connected to each other through their edges.
1. Determine whether each cell is white or black according to the following rules.
2. A white cell containing a number and an arrow represents how many black cells are in the row or column pointed at by the arrow.
3. A cell containing a number and an arrow may be shaded in; if so, the clue in it becomes meaningless, and may or may not be true.
4. No two black cells may share an edge. All of the white cells must be connected to each other through their edges.
Puzzle 325: Process of Illumination 24
325 is my area code in Abilene, and as such, it is a very special number to me. Doesn't puzzle 325 deserve to be special, too? Of course not -- area codes are the most boring things ever. But I made puzzle 325 special anyway. (They say Rome wasn't built in a day. . . but this puzzle was. I'm exhausted from it!)
This is -- surprise surprise! -- a 31x45 giant puzzle. Be forewarned that you will most likely find this puzzle to be harder than my previous 31x45 Process of Illumination. However, those with the patience and the wit to complete it will undoubtedly feel rewarded. Good luck! :)
This is -- surprise surprise! -- a 31x45 giant puzzle. Be forewarned that you will most likely find this puzzle to be harder than my previous 31x45 Process of Illumination. However, those with the patience and the wit to complete it will undoubtedly feel rewarded. Good luck! :)
Puzzle 320: Ripple Play 4
This wound up being a little bit on the hard side. (I think this is a good thing.)
Puzzle 315: Polyominous 34
Housepets! is a webcomic about housepets (natch). The website's favicon is depicted in this puzzle..
Puzzle 314: Crowd Nine 6
I crafted this puzzle a month ago. Why did I wait until puzzle 314 to post it? I really had no rational reason to.
Contest 1 Results: Attack of the Four Puzzles!
The deadline for Attack of the Four Puzzles! has now passed. I received 31 entries -- apparently, it's significantly easier for my readers to solve puzzles than to make them. 23 entries contained the correct answer, which can be seen here. (To avoid depriving readers of the chance to solve the puzzles themselves -- even though the contest is over -- I have chosen to link to the image rather than embed it.)
I have numbered the correct entries from 1 through 23, and used random.org to select the winner. The winner is. . . James Marshall! An email has been sent to James Marshall to inform him of this. Congratulations, and stuff! Many thanks to all who entered!
More detailed results (which include spoilers) can be found in a comment I've made on this post.
I have numbered the correct entries from 1 through 23, and used random.org to select the winner. The winner is. . . James Marshall! An email has been sent to James Marshall to inform him of this. Congratulations, and stuff! Many thanks to all who entered!
More detailed results (which include spoilers) can be found in a comment I've made on this post.
Puzzle 312: Seek and Spell 7
This Seek and Spell puzzle contains 15 geographical locations that start with A, including Alberta, a province in Canada (where people stereotypically end every sentence with "eh?"), Abilene (the Texas city in which I was born), and Atlanta (home of the CNN headquarters, which I actually visited once when I was younger -- I got to see a real live green screen that weathermen stand in front of!). This puzzle's freaking A, man!
Puzzle 309: Ripple Play 3
One week remains before the deadline of my Attack of the Four Puzzles! contest. If you like solving puzzles, and haven't entered the contest already, I suggest you do. You'll have LOTS of puzzles to solve if you are fortunate enough to win. :)
Puzzle 307: Ripple Play 1
For a puzzle that revolves around numbers, you'd think there'd be some, I dunno, actual numbers in this one. (It's actually not terribly uncommon for this kind of puzzle to contain no givens, although to me, it seemed at least 60 times trickier to compose than to actually solve. Maybe I'm just a newbie. :) )
Rules -- Ripple Play
Also known as Ripple Effect or Hakyuu Kouka.
1. Place a single positive integer in every empty cell.
2. Every region of the grid must contain consecutive numbers starting at 1, up through the number of cells in that region. (For instance, a 4-cell region must contain the numbers 1 through 4.)
3. Any two occurrences of the same number in one row or column must have at least that number of other cells between them. (For instance, two 2's in the same row or column must have at least two other cells between them.)
2. Every region of the grid must contain consecutive numbers starting at 1, up through the number of cells in that region. (For instance, a 4-cell region must contain the numbers 1 through 4.)
3. Any two occurrences of the same number in one row or column must have at least that number of other cells between them. (For instance, two 2's in the same row or column must have at least two other cells between them.)
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