Friday 18 June 2010

Friday Puzzles #57

Another week, another Masyu puzzle. As promised from last week, this features a novel new trick which you might have missed last week as it wasn’t required in the solve. So whilst I haven’t really had the time to do a juno with it this time round, you will at least have to spot it. Actually I claim it’s a novel new trick, but that’s only to the best of my knowledge.

Additionally this week, I’ve tried to give this total twisted symmetry, but it manages to break down in a couple of places. It turns out that a nikoli.com author by the name of cubic function has simultaneously been incorporating twisted symmetry into his puzzles – including in much larger sizes than mine for a while now too. His designs have perhaps been less striking than mine, and I’ve only picked up on it after solving a second time.
    #067 Masyu – rated hard
All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

Whilst I’m on my soap-box, actually, I read this week that the “world record” for sudoku speed solving has been broken. Now the world record criteria – here denoted as STD-27 – are somewhat arbitrary, presumably to ensure a hard puzzle, but I was the first person to question this, and made a puzzle satisfying world record criteria over a year ago, solvable in the order of 2 minutes. I believe a certain Mr Snyder held that unofficial record. Anyhow, the Czechs have made an even easier puzzle than mine, and the record was broken a total of three times at this event, ultimately by Jakub Ondrousek.

3 comments:

  1. That was a neat trick, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen it before.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think I may have seen that trick before in a German magazine, in a puzzle labelled ‘very hard’ (read: ‘trial and error needed, logical solution non-existant or impossible to find.’) Certainly, this puzzle was a much better creation.

    Also, this puzzle is 67 not 66, but I think we can forgive you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A small hiccough with the old copy and paste fro last weeks puzzle – it was originally labelled as an “easy” puzzle haha! :) I’m glad you both enjoyed this. Masyu is one of my very favourite puzzle types – so simple and intuitive and yet so much room for creativity!

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