Perplexible

It’s my birthday! Here’s two Sum Skyscrapers: one in European day/month/year format, and the other in American year/month/day format. They’re not wildly different, I just couldn’t decide which one to use.

Rules:

• Standard Skyscrapers rules.
• However, the clues give the sum – not the amount – of visible numbers.

Posted in Puzzle by ArDeeJ, 06/18/14 3:34 AM
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I haven’t seen this variant before, so I took the liberty of naming it. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else had already invented it, though.

Rules:

• Unlike regular Sudoku, numbers do repeat in rows, columns and regions.
• Each row contains exactly one number twice, but the doubled number is different in each row.
• Also, each row is missing exactly one number, but the missing number is different in each row.
• The same applies to columns and regions.

For an easier puzzle, change the 5 in the top row into a 1. It’s not that hard, but getting used to the logic probably makes it harder.

EDIT: Corrected the rules. The old rules weren’t strict enough to guarantee an unique solution.

Posted in Puzzle by ArDeeJ, 06/2/14 11:44 AM
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I figured it’s been long enough since I last posted a puzzle here. I made this one sometime in the autumn, and revised it a few months ago. I quite like it.

The size is an odd 13×14 to accommodate the herringbone pattern running on the diagonal, and I wanted the clue positions in the pattern to be rotationally symmetric.

Rules:

• The clue numbers have been encrypted: same letters stand for the same number, different letters stand for different numbers.
• Decipher the numbers and solve the resulting Regional Yajilin:
  • Draw a loop passing through some of the cells. The loop passes through the centers of cells and turns orthogonally.
  • The clue number of a region tells how many unvisited cells there are in that region. An unclued region may have any number of unvisited cells.
  • Unvisited cells can’t be directly adjacent to each other, but touching by corners is fine.

Some bifurcation is needed.

Posted in Puzzle by ArDeeJ, 05/5/14 8:10 AM
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Posted in Puzzle, Sudoku by Whit McMahan, 10/16/13 7:56 PM
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Welp. I was going to call this one Mystery Tapa but then I saw GMPuzzles’ Sunday Surprise posted yesterday. What a coincidence. I started making this one last Thursday, before knowing anything about any upcoming Sunday Surprises anywhere.

Rules:

• Regular Tapa rules apply.
• Question marks represent nonzero integers.
• Asterisks are wildcards: they represent a nonzero amount of question marks.
• No clue may appear multiple times, hence the name.

Gah, this puzzle took a lot of wrangling to make it work. I gave up on having a symmetric clue pattern.

Posted in Puzzle by ArDeeJ, 09/23/13 4:30 AM
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I think this might be my first entirely vanilla puzzle.  About time I made one instead of all the variants and hybrids.

It’s a Clouds aka Rain Clouds aka Radar puzzle. Oddly enough, I didn’t find any satisfactory sites explaining the rules.

Rules:

• Shade some cells to form rectangular clouds. The clouds don’t touch each other, even by corners.
• The numbers tell the amount of shaded cells in that row/column.
• A cloud must be at least two cells tall and wide: no 1×n or n×1 clouds allowed.

I find Clouds puzzles to be pretty hard, so I’m going to call this one pretty hard. Plus or minus a few arbitrary units of difficulty. *shrugs*

Posted in Puzzle by ArDeeJ, 09/22/13 11:33 AM
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This puzzle is probably on its 20th layout iteration, but I’m finally happy with the it. In the end I used less repeating adjacent clues than I intended, but at least I managed to get symmetrical clue placement.

Rules:

• Each clue is either a Skyscrapers clue, telling the number of skyscrapers it sees
• or an Easy As ABC clue, telling the first number it sees
• but not both.

Posted in Puzzle by ArDeeJ, 09/11/13 8:27 AM
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It’s pretty much what it says in the title. I like this one.

Rules:

• Fill in the numbers 1-5 each row and column such that the inequalities hold.
• Additionally, every row and column has one liar cell. The inequalities involving these cells are false.

Posted in Puzzle by ArDeeJ, 08/18/13 2:10 PM
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This is a puzzle I made about a month ago. It’s one of the few puzzles I feel I actually constructed, as opposed to just browsing the shelves of the Puzzle Library of Babel, trying layouts and seeing what works out.

I set out to make a harder version of Hitori. I’m not quite sure whether the puzzle successful or not, as it isn’t that hard. Adding blank cells as givens might improve the puzzle.

Rules:

• Place mirrors in some of the cells such that no two equal numbers see each other.
• The mirrors are right triangles such that the hypotenuse cuts a cell in half diagonally.
• A mirror in a cell doesn’t obscure the number it’s on: if the hypotenuse can be seen, the number can also be seen.
• As in Hitori, two cells with mirrors can’t be orthogonally adjacent, and the empty cells must form a single polyomino.

I hope I was clear with the rules.

Posted in Puzzle by ArDeeJ, 08/1/13 7:54 AM
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Welp, haven’t made anything in a while. Anyways, I found these while going through my puzzle excels. There were more, but they were broken and I didn’t feel like fixing them.

I like using blank cells as givens with Snail puzzles.

EDIT: Here’s a 4th one. I wanted to make one with only blank givens, but couldn’t make a good enough puzzle yesterday. The tetromino theme is an added plus.

Rules:

• Fill in some numbers such that every number in the range (here 1 to 3) appears once in every row and column.
• Additionally, starting from the tail of the snail (the top-left corner) and following the spiral, the numbers must be in sequence: here 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, …
• Cells with • in them are blank.

The puzzles are in no particular order.

Posted in Puzzle by ArDeeJ, 07/26/13 3:47 PM
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