Friday 24 February 2012

Friday Puzzles #145

So in a moment of apparent madness this week, I have decided to forego the pleasures of solving puzzles for the Lent period. I'm a kind of sucker for these sorts of seemingly inexplicable feats of willpower stubbornness, just to see what I'm apparently capable of. In previous years I've done still crazier things, like giving up hot beverages or worse still, shaving but I suspect come 40 days and 40 nights this one will be right up there too.

Anyhow, enough of my more neurotic ramblings.  The upshot of it all is no nikoli.com, no croco, no crosswords, and the horribly scrambled Rubik's cube on my shelf will have to sit there taunting me with its lack of order.  As far as the blog is concerned, whilst writing a puzzle isn't quite the same as solving one, there is obviously a significant overlap, and besides, you'd hope I'd at least be testing the puzzles I put out, right?

Still, I'm never one to pass up the chance to make metaphorical pancakes - or indeed to pass on a vague theme - so earlier this week I hastily put together six puzzles.  The theme will hopefully become apparent.

This week, yajilin, a theming favourite of mine.  I can't remember exactly how hard this is now, but I suspect somewhere between easy and medium.  Enjoy!

EDIT: There was originally a missing clue, which apparently took solutions down from one to none.  This intrigues me!
    #176 Yajilin – rated easy
All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

9 comments:

  1. Out of respect, this is not directed to Tom, as he isn't solving puzzles and can't check. Am I the only one who can't seem to find a valid solution to this puzzle? I could just keep making the same logic flaw, but I can't seem to find it.

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  2. I am also turning up zero solutions.

    Also, giving up puzzles? Damn. I admire you.

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  3. Yea even I left it for the same reason. I just couldn't make it work.

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  4. Interesting - the non-puzzle solving skill of consulting my book shows me that each clue there is valid, although there is exactly one missing clue at R6C3. That should be a 1 down.

    I can see that omitting it might increase the number of solutions - but decrease it!?? I'll get back to you eventually on that one? ;-)

    I'll edit the file a little later...

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  5. Isn't it obvious? If that clue weren't there, it would imply that the loop would have to pass through that cell, which is impossible. If it were a different game, say Masyu, or Sudoku, where there aren't any constraints on blank squares regardless of their surroundings, then this wouldn't happen.

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  6. This goes to prove the benefit od giving up puzzles. You don't need to bang your head against a wall over and over when you cannot find a solution because the puzzle was presented wrongly, and then head over to the puzzlers website with solid evidence of the error just to find that 5 others had already noted the issue and the designer had updated the puzzle. Lent has its benefits.

    TheSubro

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  7. Imagine a 4x4 puzzle with 0-up clues at R3C3 and R3C4. Now add such a clue to R4C4. See why the extra clue increases the number of solutions?

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  8. Usolvable puzzles are usually a result of printing errors.Surprisingly,i cannot see a "i forgot to draw that clue in at RmCn" message here.

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  9. I have no idea how you are choosing to interpret the red clue then...

    ReplyDelete

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