However I hope that everyone has enjoyed my offerings this year, be it my rather manic 7 puzzles in 7 days which heralded me branching out to writing a few new puzzle types; or perhaps my long Championship write-ups from Philadelphia in April and London in September; or the start of my “career” as a competition writer with both the (moderately disastrous) LMI Nikoli Selection and the UKPA Sudoku Championship (well done again Warren!); or perhaps one of the numerous twisted symmetry Masyu I always seem to resort to when I’ve forgotten to write a puzzle for a particular week.
Anyhow, I hope everyone has had a good 2010, and here’s to the promise of 2011 – not least the puzzle that’ll be edited in here later!
EDIT: Here as promised is the puzzle. I will probably be revising Heyawake fairly soon, in response to an email I had from Otto Janko before Christmas – but for now, here is a nice small puzzle which should prove a bit of a tough nut to crack. Enjoy!
#111 Heyawake – rated hardAll puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-11
Great innovation with the adjacent 3s. The spiral shape and the starting point in the center makes me wonder if you had in mind some silver bullet deduction that allows you to get those rooms immediately. I had to take lots of baby steps to make it there.
ReplyDeleteGreat little jewel of a puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThanks for a year of gems.
TheSubro
MellowMelon,
ReplyDeleteInitially I drew up the grid with a full border of 2×4 blocks of 3. Unfortunately it’s then illegal to fill up the middle cells with rooms without going a bit heyawacky! My intention always was to have a bit of fun rooting round the outside for titbits of information, until you get to the inside, and then you can start shading squares. I take my hat off to anyone who manages to bypass that!