The idea is simple – make a 10×10 fillomino, with certain symmetric constraints. This is my first effort, which presumably is null and void for the purposes of the contest, but will hopefully act as inspiration for anyone else who might want to have a go. Upon re-solving this, it’s slightly less easy than I thought it was, which makes me think it’s a bit of shame I can’t enter this, but then I suppose I shall have to come up with something better than this. Anyhow, bearing in mind I haven’t made many fillomino (4? 5?), I’m going to be a bit cagey and call this a medium. Enjoy!
EDIT: What I initially had in mind was probably medium, but as Jack points out below what I initially had in mind had two solutions. Anyhow, this unique version gets cranked up to hard!
#140 Fillomino – rated mediumAll puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-11
P.S. I hear there’s a great puzzle contest happening at LMI this weekend :)
Ah you’re right. That 2 was initially supposed to be a 5, but then it turned out I was forced to use up too many 5’s as givens. I think I can fix this one to get it solving uniquely by swapping the position of one of those 2’s and 6’s bottom right, but it kinda makes the solve harder and more fiddly…let me double check…
ReplyDeleteI think this version is also only medium. The new possibility the 2-6 swap allows that has to be eliminated by fiddling can be removed also by counting.
ReplyDeleteAs y said, counting makes this doable at the bottom right. I was really surprised to manage it, given this is the first fillomino I’ve done! Incidentally, I think your link to Nikoli is broken for this puzzle: I get a 404, but this page does work.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I enjoyed this: I was really surprised by how the shapes turned out, which is always nice!
Not bad for what seems to be your first attempt at a Fillomino (excluding the previous version, which I missed, but gather had multiple solutions), especially given the restraint you wrangled with! As you expected, I don’t think I’d be able to accept this as a contest entry, since I’d prefer to have the readers judge the puzzles without being explicitly told who authored what, and publishing the puzzle on your blog defeats that purpose, obviously. laughs But that doesn’t disqualify you from crafting another puzzle in the meanwhile and sending that one in! :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I agree that counting makes the ending manageable.