Monday Mutant 93: Battleships (water groups)
Ten ships (as indicated below the grid: one four-cell ship, two three-cell ships, three two-cell ships, and four one-cell ships) are hidden in the grid. The ships may be rotated from the orientations shown, but may not overlap or occupy cells which share a corner or an edge. A number to the right of a row or below a column indicates the length of the longest group of consecutive water cells in that row or column. Additionally, some segments of the ships are shown within the grid, and cells with wavy lines are "water" cells which cannot contain ships. Find the ships.
Monday Mutant 92: Pearls of Wisdom (total / Hanjie)
In this Pearls of Wisdom puzzle, there are no clues inside the grid. Instead, you are to both draw a loop and place black pearls and white pearls in every cell that could legally contain one. Numbers to the left of a row or above a column represent the groups of consecutive cells containing pearls which are in that row or column. For example, a clue of "3" means the row or column has three consecutive pearls, and a clue of "3 1" means that the row or column has a group of three consecutive pearls followed by a single pearl, separated by at least one cell without a pearl. A question mark (?) represents a group of consecutive pearls whose size is unknown; an asterisk (*) represents any number of unknown groups of pearls, including none at all.
I have thus far received 13 votes in Logicsmith Exhibition 5. Keep those votes coming!
I have also submitted my no-longer-prototypical abstract strategy game Battle of LITS to a contest being held by Spain-based game publisher nestorgames on BoardGameGeek. If you have a BoardGameGeek account and would like to see my two-player adaptation of a Japanese logic puzzle published with quality components, please consider thumbing my post to make this prospect possible! :)
I have also submitted my no-longer-prototypical abstract strategy game Battle of LITS to a contest being held by Spain-based game publisher nestorgames on BoardGameGeek. If you have a BoardGameGeek account and would like to see my two-player adaptation of a Japanese logic puzzle published with quality components, please consider thumbing my post to make this prospect possible! :)
Monday Mutant 91: Streaming Content (torus)
In this Streaming Content puzzle, the grid is a torus; the left and right edges "wrap around" as shown, as do the top and bottom edges. The rules are otherwise unchanged.
Remember to cast your votes in Logicsmith Exhibition 5!
Also, board game fans and logic puzzle fans alike may be interested in checking out my prototypical abstract strategy game Battle of LITS! The game is in need of playtesting, so if you could play it and tell me what you think, you'd be doing me an excellent service. :)
Also, board game fans and logic puzzle fans alike may be interested in checking out my prototypical abstract strategy game Battle of LITS! The game is in need of playtesting, so if you could play it and tell me what you think, you'd be doing me an excellent service. :)
Monday Mutant 90: Spirits of Serpentine (torus)
In this Spirits of Serpentine puzzle, the grid is a torus; the left and right edges "wrap around" as shown, as do the top and bottom edges. The rules are otherwise unchanged.
Oops. . . I forgot to schedule this post for Monday, so you get it early! :)
Be sure to vote!
Be sure to vote!
Logicsmith Exhibition 5: Polyominous (VOTING TIME!)
Four weeks ago, I challenged my readers to construct a 10x10 Polyominous puzzle under very specific restrictions, offering a prize to the constructor whose puzzle is voted the best by my readers afterwards. A whopping 19 other readers managed to do so, giving you 20 candidates to choose from!
Warning: there are 20 images contained in this blog post!
Warning: there are 20 images contained in this blog post!
Monday Mutant 89: Pearls of Wisdom (torus)
In this Pearls of Wisdom puzzle, the grid is a torus; the left and right edges "wrap around" as shown, as do the top and bottom edges. The rules are otherwise unchanged.
Puzzle Communication Nikoli 133 has four pages of toroidal puzzles, including a toroidal Kakuro, a toroidal Slitherlink, a toroidal Yajilin, and two toroidal Akari. I thought it was pretty impressive how they were able to present the grid in such a way that the gimmick was apparent even to me who can't read Japanese; the presentation of this puzzle is inspired by theirs.
Monday Mutant 88: Quad-Wrangle / Battleships
Ten ships (as indicated below the grid: one four-cell ship, two three-cell ships, three two-cell ships, and four one-cell ships) are hidden in the grid. The ships may be rotated from the orientations shown, but may not overlap or occupy cells which share a corner or an edge. The cells which do not contain ships must be divided into rectangles according to the rules of Quad-Wrangle.
Monday Mutant 87: Polyominous / Quad-Wrangle
In this Polyominous puzzle, every region must be shaped like a rectangle. (Thus, the puzzle is similar to a Quad-Wrangle puzzle, but without the restriction that every region must contain exactly one number, and with the restriction that regions with the same area may not share an edge.) The rules are otherwise unchanged.
Better late than never.
Monday Mutant 86: Straight and Arrow (incorrect)
In this Straight and Arrow puzzle, none of the clues are correct. The rules are otherwise unchanged.
Heard of Indirect Yajilin? This is Incorrect Yajilin. Har har.
Logicsmith Exhibition 5: Polyominous
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 10x10 Polyominous puzzle. Your puzzle must have precisely 36 givens, arranged in a pattern with 180-degree rotational symmetry, and every integer from 1 through 9 must appear as a given exactly four times. You are only allowed to submit one puzzle, but you may change it at any time before the deadline. Send your puzzle to glmathgrant[at]gmail[dot]com.
This time around, Logicsmith Exhibition is also a contest! Once the deadline has passed, I will publish all of the puzzles I received without revealing the authors, and ask everyone reading this blog to cast their votes for their favorite puzzles (again via email). If your puzzle is the readers' favorite, you could win a prize!
By entering the contest, you agree to the following terms:
a) You agree not to discuss your entry with any other entrants or any voters until the contest is over.
b) You agree not to cheat the voting system.
c) You agree to provide me with a mailing address in the event that you win and wish to receive a prize, and to await said prize patiently, particularly if you live outside the continental United States. (In return, I agree not to use your mailing address for any malicious purposes, such as sending junk mail or other undesired things.) If you don't want to give out your mailing address, I reserve the right to happily give the prize to someone else who will.
After four weeks (meaning the deadline is August 3), I will post the puzzles that my readers and I have constructed, and give the readers another four weeks to cast their votes for the best puzzles. Good luck, and have fun!
Your challenge is to compose a uniquely solvable 10x10 Polyominous puzzle. Your puzzle must have precisely 36 givens, arranged in a pattern with 180-degree rotational symmetry, and every integer from 1 through 9 must appear as a given exactly four times. You are only allowed to submit one puzzle, but you may change it at any time before the deadline. Send your puzzle to glmathgrant[at]gmail[dot]com.
This time around, Logicsmith Exhibition is also a contest! Once the deadline has passed, I will publish all of the puzzles I received without revealing the authors, and ask everyone reading this blog to cast their votes for their favorite puzzles (again via email). If your puzzle is the readers' favorite, you could win a prize!
By entering the contest, you agree to the following terms:
a) You agree not to discuss your entry with any other entrants or any voters until the contest is over.
b) You agree not to cheat the voting system.
c) You agree to provide me with a mailing address in the event that you win and wish to receive a prize, and to await said prize patiently, particularly if you live outside the continental United States. (In return, I agree not to use your mailing address for any malicious purposes, such as sending junk mail or other undesired things.) If you don't want to give out your mailing address, I reserve the right to happily give the prize to someone else who will.
After four weeks (meaning the deadline is August 3), I will post the puzzles that my readers and I have constructed, and give the readers another four weeks to cast their votes for the best puzzles. Good luck, and have fun!
Monday Mutant 85: Straight and Arrow (domino)
In this Straight and Arrow puzzle, instead of no two black cells being allowed to share an edge, every black cell must share an edge with EXACTLY ONE other black cell. The rules are otherwise unchanged.
As as few of my readers have noticed, I've finally gotten around to adding sharing buttons to this blog, including Google's new +1 button. They are located very unobtrusively just below the title of each post, in the "Posted on July 4, 2011" line. If you're a long-time reader and there are older puzzles you found particularly memorable, feel free to search the archives for them and +1 them!
Puzzle 500: Polyominous 48
In lieu of a Monday Mutant, I present to you. . . puzzle 500! You thought Fillomino-Fillia was my magnum opus? Think again! At 64x50, this is my largest puzzle to date! Needless to say, it took an incredible amount of time to construct this beauty. (Speaking of time, Back to the Future is an awesome trilogy, as I have discovered in recent weeks.) I have truly come a long way since puzzle 1.
Now, wait a minute. Some of you may be wondering why I never posted a 31x45 Polyominous as one of my previous giants. Well, the answer is simple: in Nikoli's publications, a Polyominous the Giant is 23x37, and my arbitrary adherence to Nikoli's standards for puzzles in the numbered "puzzles" series (as opposed to Monday Mutants et al.) means I only post puzzle genres Nikoli's made, in sizes Nikoli's made. 23x37 is hardly an adequate size for a celebration on this blog, don't you think? However, Nikoli has published 64x50 Fillomino puzzles on at least three occasions, including in volumes 123 and 134 of Puzzle Communication Nikoli, and in a now out-of-print Puzzle the Giants volume, making that size completely fair game.
Special thanks to Thomas Snyder, who set aside 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 45 seconds of his time to make sure this puzzle had a unique solution before it was posted here. I am incredibly honored to have the respect of such an amazing constructor and solver. Not everyone has the privilege of being able to send Thomas Snyder a puzzle and getting the time of day from him, much less his opinion on it. (In fact, I believe some of the people who ended up being ripped to shreds on Grant's Review Corner contacted him first. . .)
Edit: Okay, apparently, Blogger and Picasa handle images taller or wider than 1600 pixels in ways I don't like for the purposes of this post. I was able to find a way to link to the full 1797x1405 version of the picture, but you might be asked to download it instead of being able to view it in your browser. A small sacrifice, but it works.
Now, wait a minute. Some of you may be wondering why I never posted a 31x45 Polyominous as one of my previous giants. Well, the answer is simple: in Nikoli's publications, a Polyominous the Giant is 23x37, and my arbitrary adherence to Nikoli's standards for puzzles in the numbered "puzzles" series (as opposed to Monday Mutants et al.) means I only post puzzle genres Nikoli's made, in sizes Nikoli's made. 23x37 is hardly an adequate size for a celebration on this blog, don't you think? However, Nikoli has published 64x50 Fillomino puzzles on at least three occasions, including in volumes 123 and 134 of Puzzle Communication Nikoli, and in a now out-of-print Puzzle the Giants volume, making that size completely fair game.
Special thanks to Thomas Snyder, who set aside 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 45 seconds of his time to make sure this puzzle had a unique solution before it was posted here. I am incredibly honored to have the respect of such an amazing constructor and solver. Not everyone has the privilege of being able to send Thomas Snyder a puzzle and getting the time of day from him, much less his opinion on it. (In fact, I believe some of the people who ended up being ripped to shreds on Grant's Review Corner contacted him first. . .)
Edit: Okay, apparently, Blogger and Picasa handle images taller or wider than 1600 pixels in ways I don't like for the purposes of this post. I was able to find a way to link to the full 1797x1405 version of the picture, but you might be asked to download it instead of being able to view it in your browser. A small sacrifice, but it works.
(click to enlarge)
Puzzle 499: Tetra Firma 31
This is puzzle 499, which can only mean one thing: the next puzzle is going to be 500! What could I possibly have in store for this milestone? Only MellowMelon and motris know, and I highly doubt that they're going to spoil the surprise for you! You'll just have to wait.
A Cleverly-Titled Birthday Contest: long overdue minor update!
So what exactly did the winners of A Cleverly-Titled Birthday Contest win?
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