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.
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.
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? 😅
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.
The next puzzle in this series is a Kakuro, possibly one of the most controversial genres in the list. Kakuro is already a polarizing genre -- extending its size to 15x15 makes it even more so.
The Nikoli style of Kakuro is very different from the style of Kakuro often seen on puzzle contests. These puzzles focus more on Kakuro as a crossword genre rather than a mathematical genre. More emphasis is placed on common number patterns and crossword logic; arithmetic is often kept to a minimum. I tried my best to replicate this style in this puzzle, and I think I succeeded for the most part.
I personally believe that these puzzles are easiest to solve on paper; having eyes on the entire board at once (and, in particular, having smaller cells overall) feels better to me. Thus, I've attached a PDF version of the puzzle closer to Nikoli's style. I recommend printing this out to solve, but Penpa and puzz.link options are also here as usual. The numbers were a pain in the butt to format; I'm probably not doing this again. Nikoli, please don't sue me for forgery. 😛
(A picture of the puzzle is hidden from the main feed for file size considerations.)
It's my birthday today! Can you guess how old I am now?
This puzzle was annoying to construct, surprisingly. I ended up using noq a lot for testing, since many of my grids would only touch three of the four quadrants. (The center clues are quite powerful.) Once I came up with something that had a unique solution, though, I realized I completely changed the dynamic of the puzzle. Is it better? No clue.
I found an interesting deduction in Tapa-Like Loop when constructing this. I'm not sure if this puzzle requires it, but it certainly makes your life much easier if you find it.
It's been a while since we've had this theme. 😉
This genre recently appeared in Puzzle Communication Nikoli Issue 181. I like it! It feels like a fusion of LITS, Yajilin, and (to a lesser extent) Chained Block. Diagonal adjacency genres are pretty cool (and, funnily enough, Nikoli calls this type of ruleset a fad!). Be warned, though, this is not the most gentle introduction to the type.
(Also: Nikoli calls this Tetra Chain Y, because another puzzle in that issue has the same tetromino adjacency rules. I don't like the Y there, so I removed it. This name is tentative, though.)
Rules: Shade some cells in the grid to form tetrominos which do not share an edge. Clue cells cannot be shaded and indicate the number of shaded cells in the direction of the arrow up to the border of the grid. Identical tetrominos cannot touch at a corner, and all tetrominos must be connected diagonally (i.e. by corners).
Hi! Have another Akari puzzle; it's been a while since I last posted one here. Not much else to say about it.
