Puzzle 79: Discount GMP Week #1.4 (Thermo Sudoku)

Thursday's puzzle is a 3.5 star Thermo Sudoku, which made me pretty nervous.  Although I started puzzle solving with Sudoku puzzles -- and my second puzzle on this blog is a Thermo variant -- I haven't really touched Sudoku construction since then.  Sudoku just isn't really my thing; I prefer puzzles with more "geometry" to them and, in particular, find scanning in Sudoku puzzles to be a bit of a pain.  However, this "geometry" inclination does make Thermo sudoku one of the more interesting variants to me, so at least I got a bit of a break there.  (I would not have been prepared to make a classic!)

This puzzle took a long time to get working -- long thermometers are surprisingly restrictive, and I found my grids to break in completely unexpected ways, which made me sad.  That being said, although I needed a significant amount of help from f-puzzles near the end, I did manage to make the following work.  Apologies for the two-cell thermometers along the sides of the grid; there wasn't much I could do there.

I wasn't aiming to make a 3.5 star puzzle this time, but any comments about difficulty would be appreciated regardless.

Online interface (f-puzzles)

Online interface (Penpa)

 

Puzzle 78: Discount GMP Week #1.3 (Masyu)

Wednesday's puzzle was a 2.5 star Masyu.  I found this one to be quite difficult to solve logically -- I broke it a few times before finding my mistake, and there were quite a few instances of trial and error in the solve.  This means that, as usual, the difficulty may be off on this one (especially considering that loop genres that aren't Yajilin are not really my strength).  However, I really like the theme here, and some of the logic is neat, too.  Enjoy 🙂

Online interface (puzz.link)

 

Puzzle 77: Discount GMP Week #1.2 (Tapa (Islands))

Next up on the docket is a 2-star Tapa (Islands) puzzle.  I was surprised to see a Tapa variant appear so early in the week.  The only Tapa variant I've constructed before is a Tapa (Line), so this was a struggle to get working/unique.  Also, Tapa puzzles are pretty tricky to rate on GMP, since Serkan is a Tapa specialist, so Tapa ratings might be a bit lower than they should be.

The end result is a puzzle that I like, but may be a bit off the mark when it comes to difficulty or quality.  Ah well, such is the risk that comes with trying a challenge like this 🙂.

Rules: Standard Tapa rules. Also, similar to Nurikabe, each Tapa clue cell is part of an island of horizontally and vertically connected white cells and the area of the island must be one of the numbers in the clue (as an example, if a clue is 1 5, then the island containing that clue must be either 1 cell or 5 cells large). Islands are allowed to touch diagonally, and there may be islands without any number clues in the grid.

Online interface (puzz.link) 

Online interface (Penpa) 

Puzzle 76: Discount GMP Week #1.1 (Araf)

This week is a variety week on GMPuzzles, so I decided to see if I could emulate these puzzles on my own blog.  More specifically, my goal is to replicate both the genre and (approximate) difficulty of the puzzles posted each day this week on the blog.  Of course, creating a week of high-quality puzzles is pretty hard, hence the name 🙂  We'll see how this goes; I probably won't be able to match the difficulty or quality of the Saturday puzzle, but I can certainly try.  (In particular, I would appreciate comments on difficulty, since I'm still at the point of construction where estimating difficulty is hard.)

First up, a 1 star Araf puzzle.  Araf is a strange type that I don't have too much experience with; I have the e-book but haven't gotten too far in it, for instance.  Here's my attempt at constructing a puzzle in this genre.

Online interface (puzz.link)

Puzzle 75 ("Spiral", Nurikabe)

Have a Nurikabe puzzle!  First one in a while, and there will probably be at least a few more in the near future.

Online interface (puzz.link) 

 

Puzzle 74 ("The One Theme to Rule them All", Bosnian Road)

Frequent readers of this blog/solvers of my puzzles in general may notice that I tend to use a "squares" theme a lot.  (Just take a look at my favorites list.)  This theme is just so incredibly versatile: squares that are "L-shaped" moves away from each other have strong interactions in a lot of genres.  Of course, this clue layout is a bit restrictive some times, but it's cool enough that I use it as my go-to theme whenever I'm too stressed out to come up with an original theme myself.

On a completely unrelated note, here's a Bosnian Road puzzle.

Shade some cells to form a non-intersecting loop which does not touch itself, not even diagonally. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the number of shaded cells in the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue.

Online interface (Penpa)

Puzzle 73 ("Octagon", Tapa (Line))

Nice to finally create something that wasn't intended to go to GMP :)

Classic Tapa rules apply.  Additionally, no four consecutive cells vertically or horizontally can be shaded.

Online interface (Penpa)

Online interface (puzz.link) 

Puzzle 72 (Checkered Fillomino)

Haven't posted on this blog in a while.  Have a puzzle.

Normal Fillomino rules apply.  Also, it must be possible to shade some polyominoes black so that no bordering polyominoes are the same color (in other words, the grid must allow a two-color shading).

Penpa interface