Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Puzzle 63 ("Four Boxes", Yajilin)

A few months back, I posted about my intentions to make Yajilin puzzles that were purposely easy.  I originally thought the second puzzle of the two given constructions was fit for the desired challenge level, but it turns out I overshot the difficulty, as expected.  (My third such "easy" Yajilin, which I sent to GMPuzzles, was also a bit harder than I wanted, though it was well within range of normal Tuesday difficulty.)

Part of the reason I overestimated the difficulty of those puzzles was because I resorted to deductions that were easy to spot, which is quite a bit different from deductions that are actually easy.  (For example, a pair of 2 clues looking down a 2x6 rectangle may be easy to spot, but it is, itself, not a beginner's deduction.)  Hopefully, the puzzle below gets closer to achieving the intended goal.  Though, given my last few attempts, it's hard to say :)

Online interface 

Monday, July 26, 2021

Puzzle 62 ("Borderless Stripes", Slitherlink)

Another Slitherlink puzzle!  I think I'm getting better at constructing these, but I still have a ways to go.

In particular, my style for writing puzzles often boils down to "fill in individual clues to produce interactions you think would be interesting".  This works for genres like Yajilin, but constructing good Slitherlink puzzles seems to require thinking about the loop structurally, which I am not particularly great at yet.

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Saturday, July 24, 2021

Puzzle 61 ("Clover", Slitherlink)

First Slitherlink puzzle on this blog!  I need to write one for GMP within the next week, so I decided to try my hand at one here.

I originally decided to try to write a puzzle with cool logic, but at some point during the construction process I just let myself go and plopped clues down as I felt like it (trying to emulate a certain style of solve I see frequently in GMP and bachelor seal puzzles).  I'm very happy with how this turned out.

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Sunday, July 18, 2021

Puzzle 59 ("Minimalist", Yajilin)

Originally submitted to GMPuzzles, but was rejected since I've already got a few strictly better Yaji in the pipeline 🙂.  That being said, I am quite happy I managed to find this construction at all.

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