I haven't posted here in a few months! During this time I've been mainly focusing on my PhD research and summer teaching jobs. I have posted some puzzles to puzsq, but have otherwise not been active on this front.
Here is a Choco Banana I constructed one night as a late-night doodle. It exemplifies my style pretty well, I think.
I found out today that the Choco Banana I submitted to the WPC got reprinted in the most recent Nikoli issue, which I'm ecstatic about! To celebrate, here's another puzzle. It has a slightly tricky break-in but should be smooth sailing after that.
Whoops, I did it again. This is the final one. I could maybe try to extend it further, but I don't want to for two reasons:
In any case, these experiments are fun. Open middle grids are fun. Maybe a bit too fun.
This is the sequel to Puzzle 188. I think it's possible to go farther, but I'm not sure it's worth it (especially given my implicit requirement of having single-digit clues in these).
Recently, I made a 9×9 Choco Banana puzzle where the middle 7×7 portion of the grid was empty. Last night, I decided to do it again, but upgraded to an 11×11 grid. This is the result.
It's been a while since I last posted here! Just so I have a post in July, here's a Choco Banana I made last night while streaming. It's based off of a tilted square theme, but the usual version of this theme felt too clue-dense so I sanded off some of the squares a bit. Nothing particularly impressive but should be mostly smooth.
One more Choco Banana for good measure! This one is harder than 178; I like how it turned out. Also, all three puzzles have involved empty middle themes -- am I becoming too predictable yet?
Have another Choco Banana. This theme was heavily inspired by one from the most recent Nikoli magazine -- it has a very similar look, but the solve path is quite different. In any case, nothing too hard, but should hopefully be a smooth experience.
Last night I felt a bit lonely, so I decided to rev up my Twitch channel and stream myself to a small audience. I started by solving a few Choco Banana puzzles but ultimately transitioned into constructing one live on stream. This was the result. This took about an hour and a half to construct, though I think it would have gone faster if I weren't live and sharing my thoughts with the stream.
Thanks to ft029, IHNN, Jamie Hargrove, and others who were there for both technical and moral support. It was fun! I might consider doing this more often in the future.
Next in our tour is this Chocolate Banana puzzle. I really like this genre! There are a lot of cool things one can do with Chocolate Banana grids, although sometimes resolving parts of the puzzle can be a pain if you're aiming for a visual theme.
This puzzle was originally going to be the difficulty 1 puzzle, but I decided that I wanted the easiest Chocolate Banana to focus more on pairs of orthogonally adjacent clues.
