Archive for the ‘Sudoku’ Category:

Secret Santa 2022 Part 1

This year, I’m participating in two Secret Santa exchanges in puzzle communities. The first one is from the Cracking the Cryptic YouTube channel’s Discord community, and here’s what Santa gave me:

Left: A mashup of my haunted mirror maze format with a Latin square. Place at most one of each digit 1-6 in each row and column, excluding mirror squares. Each digit is also a type of creature (vampire, ghost, or zombie) and there are two digits for each creature. In lieu of traditional haunted mirror maze clues, the clues provided show the sum of the digits seen from the location where they’re placed. Penpa+ version.

Right: A sudoku using digits 0-8 with a cave/slitherlink hybrid intertwined in it. Each unshaded circle is a cave clue inside of the cave loop which notes the number of interior cells seen in the four orthogonal directions before hitting a wall, plus itself. Shaded cells are wall/exterior slitherlink clues which must note the number of lines around the clue cell and must remain outside the loop. Penpa+ version.

Thanks again, Santa!

Archive for the ‘Sudoku’ Category:

Secret Santa 2022 Part 1

Here’s a new Sudoku for the year 2020.  Instead of filling in cells with the numbers 1 through 9, we use the characters in “HAPPY2020”.  This means we have repeated P’s, 2’s and 0’s.  Inside each cage, arrows point from larger numbers to smaller ones and from letters later in the alphabet to earlier ones.  Arrows are placed whenever possible, so lack of an arrow between cells in the same cage also reveals important information.  For a demonstration on a single cage we have the following.

 

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Archive for the ‘Sudoku’ Category:

Secret Santa 2022 Part 1

Lots of Sudoku variants include some sort of extra clues based on the sizes of adjacent numbers.  In this puzzle arrows point from larger to smaller numbers in each three-by-three cage, but only when the larger number is exactly 1, 2, or 3 more than the smaller number.  Since arrows only appear when numbers are close, we can call this a Near Sizedoku.  Remember that arrows appear whenever possible, so lack of an arrow between adjacent cells in a cage also reveals some information.  For an example, this is one possibility for this three-by-three cage:

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Archive for the ‘Sudoku’ Category:

Secret Santa 2022 Part 1

Interested in the camaraderie of solving the daily crossword puzzle in the newspaper, but hate words and love numbers? There’s a Facebook group for you.

Every day, The League of Extraordinary Ladies and Gentlemen features a sudoku variant from one of a wide variety of talented sudoku authors around the world. Variants include simple changes to shapes and groups, non-standard clue types, and the occasional mathematics concept thrown into the mix.

Unable to leave well enough alone, my last puzzle for the group included a wide variety of clue types. Shaded cells are even digits, plain cells are odd digits. Circle cells are the sum of the digits along their arrows. Numbers outside the grid are skyscraper clues.

IMG_1838.PNG

Word has it you can solve it without the skyscraper clues, but they certainly make it easier.

Archive for the ‘Sudoku’ Category:

Secret Santa 2022 Part 1

Balance Quest (BQ) puzzles are like jigsaw puzzles, but using numbers instead of pieces.  I’ve designed them for players who enjoy recreational math and logic puzzles like Sudoku.

bqjpgpuzzle                       bqjpgsol

Original Printable Puzzles                                                                                                          Solution

 

bq16_2d                      bq32_2d

Lucky Charm Puzzles for Kids                                                                                            Flower Petal Puzzles

bq16                                bq64

Simple, yet challenging Puzzles                                                                                         Gargantuan Puzzles

 

 

Pyramid                        Scaffold

                                Pyramid Puzzles                                                                                        Scaffold Puzzles

 

Below are my two newest BQ puzzle types as of 10/15/14:

s_checkerboard                        l_checkerboard

Checkerboards

 

Pinwheel image

Pinwheel Checkerboards

 

Puzzle Rules:

  • Using simple addition, fill in each blank cell, based on the sum of the half-sized cells next to it.
  • The darker cells on the edges must contain every number from -16 to 16 (or for smaller puzzles -8 to 8), except zero, with each number appearing only once.
  • Leave no duplicate numbers in the light-colored cells or in the darker cells.

There is one unique solution.

(Up to four difficulty levels are available)

Puzzle related links:

Play the Puzzle Live on Puzzle Baron

Windows 8.1 Puzzle App

BLOGSPOT and Book Orders

Instructions Video

BQ on Facebook

Update as of 12/5/14:

Thanks to Auspac Media for introducing the Interactive Checkerboard puzzles in Australia.

 

Update as of 11/29/14:

Thanks, Kim, for your posts of the Checkerboard puzzles on “Puzzle to Print”.

Update as of 11/24/14:

Thanks, Doug, for posting the Checkerboard Puzzles on “Printable Puzzles” site.

 

Update as of 10/2/14:

The Windows 8.1 app is now available in the Windows store.  Thanks to Cameron Stair for helping to make this project possible.

 

Update as of 8/4/14:

Jim

Update as of 7/8/14:

“Great puzzles, we like them very much”.

Margret at Auspac Media, Australia

     Thanks for featuring them and hope Aussies enjoy playing Balance Quest also…

 

 Update as of 1/10/14:

Stephen, thanks for your very positive comment.  I have quoted you below:

“Balance Quest has a fairly prominent position on our “Puzzles” page on that site, a larger number of LP users are clicking over to try BQ.  (LP.org is now our biggest traffic source for BQ.)”

By the way, your redesigned site, logic-puzzles.org is beautiful and now has a wide selection of logic puzzles for those interested in playing.

 

Update as of 11/29/13:

Mr. P. , you have a great math and puzzle site.  I hope your guests will enjoy playing a few BQ puzzles. Thanks for linking and posting a few sample puzzles:

 

Update as of 11/22/13:

Doug, your site, “Memory-improvement-tips.com” is the best.  Thanks for the nice
write-up and for including BQ on both of your BLOGS:

Update as of 11/21/13:
Best wishes to Kim at “Puzzles-to-print.com” for posting her BQ page.

 

Update as of 11/20/13

Thanks, Dave Fisher at “puzzles.about.com” for this sweet review of BQ:

 

Thanks Erik @ “Math in English” for your nice write up.

Thanks for linking from from “The Math Form” @ Drexel University

 

 

Detailed Instructions and Sample Puzzles:

bq-large-puzzle-instructions0001bq-large-puzzle-instructions0002bq-small-puzzle-instructions0001bq-small-puzzle-instructions0002large0001large-sol0001small0001small-sol0001



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Archive for the ‘Sudoku’ Category:

Secret Santa 2022 Part 1

This is my first upload here. To begin with its a medium level Diagonal Sudoku. Hopefully soon we might see some different and interesting variants too.

Archive for the ‘Sudoku’ Category:

Secret Santa 2022 Part 1

Jim of KrazyDad.com fame suggested I kick off this blog with an inaugural post to set some sort of direction for it. What I envisioned is being able to provide a venue for established puzzle authors and occasional authors or newcomers to mix it up and just have a place to post puzzles and share them with an audience. That’s what I wanted when I started The Griddle 6 years ago, when a friend helped me get hosting and start fleshing out the site with content and code so that I could share the puzzles I’d made for friends, classmates, and teachers with a whole new audience.

So I guess that’s where I’m coming from as far as the spirit of the blog. As far as actual content and style, I envisioned something more like what Thomas Snyder, Palmer Mebane, and Grant Fikes do, with straight up puzzles, and maybe a bit of editorial commentary here and there. In fact, this puzzle is inspired by puzzle variations seen in motris’s blog, as well as a hybrid type I’ve posted on The Griddle and in Sudoku Xtra in the past. It’s a 6/9 Flip Slithery Sum Sudoku, which is a mouthful.

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