Scott's Puzzle Page

There is sometimes a puzzle writing contest at the Grey Labyrinth message boards, and one of the challenges was to write a puzzle that was not language dependent, meaning your ability to solve the puzzle was not hampered by not knowing a specific language, or even how to read or write.  Since I'm a logic puzzle person, I thought "Yay! Freebie!"  *All* logic puzzles are language dependent, which is why I'm able to go to, say, a German website and solve a logic puzzle with little difficulty.  If you know the rules of the puzzle, then you're good to go. It's part of the reason why I love math; it's a universal language. 

Of course, I had to be a bit cheeky and include letters in my design as if to say "Yeah, I know we're not allowed to use letters...anything you see must be your mind forming things that aren't there!"  The GL stands for "Grey Labyrinth."

Rules of Masyu (stolen from nikoli.com)
The puzzle itself is on the easy side as Masyu puzzles go.  It's probably more interesting for the letters gimmick than for the logic.

Yeah, I know, I've been posting a lot of these.  But I posted these elsewhere, and someone enjoyed the puzzle enough to actually construct one of his own, which I was honored by. And on top of that, he went and made his rotationally symmetrical too, so I had to go and do the same, because I will *not* be upstaged, darnit! :)

The solution is a bit more symmetrical than I'd like (the goal is for the clues to be symmetrical but different parts of the puzzle should solve differently) and I think that's mostly because the symmetrical cluing in the center painted me into a corner.

(Edited image due to non-uniqueness)



I promise the next puzzle will not be a Slitherlink...or at least not of this variety.

Got bored yesterday, and a good way to kill time is to make a tiny puzzle. It doesn't require as much time as a regular size like a 10x10, but you still get to play with new tricks.  I was hoping I could finagle this one to be vertically symmetrical, and I probably could have if I didn't stick to my guns with the question marks, but I'd rather not have extra information if possible.

This puzzle falls under the cateogory of "puzzles I wrote a while ago."  I think I originally wrote it for a Grey Labyrinth puzzle writing competition maybe a year and a half ago...I'm not quite sure.  My idea was to write a logic puzzle based off of the mysterious numbers from the TV show Lost (4,8,15,16,23,42).  There is also a Hunt-esque thematic final answer to the puzzle if you're into that sort of thing; solve the Nurikabe and then see if you can glean a one-word solution from the word grid below.

The Nurikabe rules are completely standard, and can be found here.





I guess it's worth noting that, unlike similar puzzle bloggers like motris, mathgrant, or mellowmelon, I am probably just as much a word puzzle guy as I am a logic puzzle guy. I mention this so that you don't seem surprised if you see, for example, a crossword suddenly appear on the website.

Also, my name doesn't start with "M" so I guess I have that going for me too.

So I posted my Slitherlink variation elsewhere, and someone said he didn't quite understand the instructions, but told me not to re-explain them lest his brain explode (his words, not mine).  So I said I would compromise and whip up a 5x5 trial version of the puzzle type with a solution.  But damned if I'm not actually pretty stoked about how this teensy version came out.  I was happy with the corner logic in the first one I posted, but I'm even happier with the corner logic here at the very end.  It almost makes up for the two hours I spent on trying to make a symmetric puzzle which resulted in horrible failure.

Anyway, here's the example I whipped up.  It's definitely non-trivial and worth solving, even in its tiny size.

Different Neighbors Slitherlink: All regular Slitherlink rules apply. Additionally, for every given clue (including question marks which can be any number), the surrounding squares must each touch a different number of segments. For example, if a clue borders four squares, then one square must touch 0 segments, one must touch 1, one must touch 2, and one must touch 3.

You got your Nurikabe in my Tapa!
You got your Tapa in my Nurikabe!

Tapakabe:  Fill the grid with connected black squares such that no two by two area is filled with black squares.  Some of the clues function as Nurikabe clues and some function as Tapa clues.  Every isolated island must contain exactly one Nurikabe clue (as Nurikabe rules state) but may contain 0 or more Tapa clues as well.

 

I'm not sure this puzzle succeeds so much as a *puzzle* as it does a prototype for future puzzles.  I think the Tapa logic mostly gets eaten by the Nurikabe logic, since the "every island must have a Nurikabe clue" is so overwhelming.  Also, the fact that I could only place Tapa clues in places with one "group" of black squares was particularly limiting.  I'm thinking Nurisweeper might be a more interesting mashup because it would remove that limit.  Anyway, I hope it's a good way to kill a couple minutes.

Well, if this *is* an original variation, I'm runnin' with it.

Different Neighbors Slitherlink: All regular Slitherlink rules apply. Additionally, for every given clue (including question marks which can be any number), the surrounding squares must each touch a different number of segments. For example, if a clue borders four squares, then one square must touch 0 segments, one must touch 1, one must touch 2, and one must touch 3.

I believe this puzzle is an original variation to this blog; someone please correct me if I am wrong.  It was inspired by a different variation at Para's Puzzle Site called No Touch Slitherlink.  That variation is a very different type of puzzle, obviously, but it got me thinking about what possible constraints you could put on the neighbors of a clue.  While constructing, I realized that the actual number of the clue was usually extra information, which is why I started throwing in question marks.

Different Neighbors Slitherlink: All regular Slitherlink rules apply. Additionally, for every given clue (including question marks which can be any number), the surrounding squares must each touch a different number of segments. For example, if a clue borders four squares, then one square must touch 0 segments, one must touch 1, one must touch 2, and one must touch 3.

Next, I wanted to see if I could try my hand at a puzzle type I had never done before.  Tapa would be making its Mystery Hunt debut (as would, I believe, Pentomino Minesweeper and Thermometers on Alan's side of things), which excited me.  I think Tapa lends itself very well to rule variations.  I'm pretty pleased with how this puzzle came out. Of the three "exploratory" puzzles I created, it's probably the most fun to solve and uses the Braille constraint in the most interesting way (though I probably overuse a rule near the beginning of the solve).

Braille Tapa:  Regular Tapa rules apply. Additionally, all 3x2 rectangles must be a valid Braille letter.

With my first puzzle, I had proven to myself that Braille Logic was possible. With my second, I wanted to prove that I could make the Braille Logic important, challenging, and accommodating for a secret message if need be (when you've solved, read the middle row. I picked that word because it happened to be the answer to a different Mystery Hunt puzzle at the time).

Braille Nurikabe:  All standard Nurikabe rules apply. Additionally, all 3x2 rectangles should contain a valid Braille letter.