Puzzles 158 - 161 (Letter Themed Grids)

Last year, I had the idea to construct a puzzle contest where there would be 26 puzzles, one themed around each letter of the alphabet.  A few friends (WA1729, dohz, Jamie Hargrove, Feadoor) and I got as far as constructing drafts of all 26 puzzles.  However, by the time we did, interest in the project had waned down.  There were a few reasons for this: the idea wasn't as novel as I thought it was at first, 26 puzzles is a lot for one round, creating the IB and PB was way more work than I realized.  (However, it took a very long time and some prodding from dohz to come to this conclusion, because I was too afraid to let the project die.  Sorry about that.)

Here are the four puzzles I constructed for this project.  Rules for each type can be found under "Help --> Rules" in each of the puzz.link pages.

Puzzle 157 (Numberlink)

Here's another Numberlink puzzle, my first 14×24.  This theme is a bit similar to some of Casty's numberlinks in Pencil Puzzle Library Numberlink 1, which has some great puzzles in it.  

Once again, thanks to pzprrt for checking uniqueness.  It does take much longer on 14×24 puzzles than 15×15 ones, so maybe it won't be super useful for 20×36 or 25×25 grids, but it has taken a lot of the grunt work out of constructing these.  Still feels like cheating, though.

Online interface

Puzzle 156 (Numberlink)

It's been a few months since we last had one of these on the blog.  Here's another one.

This puzzle took a few hours to make, but only because I was being stubborn with the theme.  Once I let go of that theme, the puzzle was much easier to make.  Thanks to pzprrt for checking uniqueness; it's so fast that it kind of feels like cheating, to be honest.

Online interface

Puzzle 155 ("Completely Symmetric", Guide Arrow)

And another one.  It's only been a week or so since this genre was introduced to puzz.link - has this theme gotten old yet? 😅

Online interface

Puzzles 153 and 154 (Guide Arrow)

Guide Arrow is such an interesting genre!  The combination of dynasty rules in Heyawake with a "no cycle" condition drives a lot of the solve in ways that are quite remarkable.  Resolving open spaces is actually not too bad with these rules!  It's also fun just to doodle around and see what happens.

Here are two puzzles I've written within the past few days.  The first one is fairly simple, while the second one explores some slightly more interesting things with the genre.  These aren't all of the Guide Arrow puzzles I've written, but I made a mistake in one of them and I don't want to share some of the others right now.  So here you go.

Online interface (Puzzle 153) 

 

Online interface (Puzzle 154)