So the twisted-symmetry from yesterday is nearly there, presented in to what my eye is far more elegant form than the original puzzle. Where it is broken, I hope you’ll forgive me as the consolation is that the end of the solve will stop and make you think a little. Enjoy this bonus puzzle!
#041 Masyu – rated mediumAll puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10
As I mentioned on the earlier thread, this is a beautiful puzzle with the almost perfect “twisted-symmetry” and indeed the last step is novel. I don’t see any other way to reclue that corner to give it perfect symmetry, but I appreciated the last step nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteHaha – as much as I’d like to claim otherwise, I think I’m more of a mediocre masyu author than a sudoku author as I can’t really make the transition in scaling up the puzzles in terms of physical grid size (with sudoku I don’t need to worry about that!). On the other hand, the trick with this puzzle certainly deserves to be reverse engineered and have a “juno” done to it. The repeated 6×6 tiling would certainly have a highly elegant appearance on the larger scale…I’d like to think I’d give the upscale a look in over the next couple of weeks, but it would require a lot of time and effort which I couldn’t necessarily guarantee.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure what to make of the twisted symmetry. I like to include it in my sudoku puzzles as a summing to 10 condition (c.f. my “world record” admissable puzzle) but having the entire grid adhere to this is a bit of a limiting factor and so that symmetry does have to be broken. With masyu it’s more interesting as the conditions with black and white circles have fundamentally different rules – however this example also highlights that it’s almost a restriction too far and that puzzles in general will benefit from a slight bending of said restriction. On the other hand, having some twisted symmetry does provide an extra subtle level of aesthetic niceness to the puzzle that you can appreciate on first viewing without necessarily being able to explain in detail…
Until you mentioned it, I wasn’t looking out for twisted symmetry too much in Masyu. Funny that its now popping up all over the place, like today’s 10×10 from cubic function. Now I’m thinking I should try it out sometime….
ReplyDeleteJust found your blog again. Great ending to this Masyu.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Ken
Glad to be of service :)
ReplyDelete