Perplexible

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!

Posted in Haunted Mirror Mazes, Puzzle, Sudoku by David Millar, 12/24/22 9:25 PM
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Times Zone is one of my newer zany, mish-mash puzzle concepts brought to fruition in a recent posting on The Griddle. As I stated there, it “fuses bits of latin squares, slitherlink-style fences, and Cross the Streams,” the latter of which might not mean much to anyone who doesn’t frequent GM Puzzles.

In an effort to give newer puzzlers a crash course, I’ve decided to break down the sample puzzle from my post and show how to tackle it step-by-step. If you haven’t tried Times Zone before this guide, I hope you will give it a shot after. Let’s get started!

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Posted in Puzzle, Puzzle Solving, Times Zone by David Millar, 04/25/19 9:22 PM
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There’s a tradition in the puzzle community each year around New Year’s Day. Puzzles will be posted with a central theme: the new year. Here’s a brief roundup of the 2019-themed puzzles around the community this year.

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Posted in News, Puzzle by David Millar, 01/1/19 2:27 PM
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I was recently chatting with Dr. David Nacin, a fellow puzzle enthusiast who has taken a keen interest in solving, studying, and sharing my Haunted Mirror Maze puzzles. For the uninitiated, Haunted Mirror Maze puzzles present a top-down view of a hall of mirrors. The mirrors are aligned to a grid, and empty spaces must be filled with some number of vampires, ghosts, and zombies. However, Dr. Nacin relayed a query he received in the course of sharing the puzzles:

An interesting idea. Someone asked if the mirror squares were always given in the monster maze puzzles.

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Posted in Haunted Mirror Mazes, Puzzle by David Millar, 08/9/17 7:41 PM
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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.

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

Posted in Puzzle, Sudoku, Sum Sudoku by David Millar, 10/4/14 9:35 PM
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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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Posted in Puzzle, Slitherlink, Sudoku, Sum Sudoku by David Millar, 01/30/12 10:55 PM
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Welcome to Perplexible! Perplexible is a community puzzle blog designed to let a variety of puzzle authors from around the world share their puzzles. These authors can range from experienced puzzle bloggers extending or moving their user bases here, to new puzzle bloggers starting to post their work for the first time, to the occasional puzzle author that might not have a need for a steady blog but still has puzzles to share.

If you’re interested in contributing on Perplexible, drop the curator a line at dave@perplexible.com.

Posted in News by David Millar, 01/17/12 1:28 AM
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