Friday, 31 August 2012

Friday Puzzles #172

Rather excitingly, I passed 10,000 page visits on the blogger platform this week.  I seem to be getting slightly less traffic here compared to Warwick blogs, and markedly less traffic from the UK, which probably makes sense considering all the internal traffic I used to get there.  Still, it'd be nice to see the UK numbers go up, especially with the Times "Su Doku" Championship coming up in September.

For now, I'm going to stick with what I am best at.  Or at least can pull out of the bag with the most ease.  I bet you might even secretly enjoy them, dearest reader, even if you know that if you say so will only provoke me to make more.  Haha... although I'm not sure that'd be possible.  Maybe as an extra challenge, you can work out which clue (I think there is only one) which is superfluous.  Enjoy!
    #207 Masyu – rated medium
All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.
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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous1 September 2012 at 09:04

    Nice one, but more than easy and less than medium.

    Thanks,
    Ravi

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tom Collyer1 September 2012 at 12:41

    I'm assuming you didn't use any uniqueness strategies Ravi - but I can't see how you finish the puzzle without using a couple of what I'd call medium level steps!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous1 September 2012 at 14:36

      I resolved it to check. I did not use uniqueness strategies, 80% of the puzzle is direct, after that R8C9 circle followed by R6C7 cell needs to be think after that rest is direct.

      Regards,
      Ravi

      Delete
    2. Tom Collyer3 September 2012 at 18:05

      I'd argue ~80% of the large nikoli "extra" masyu I've solved are also direct - perhaps this is an example of the size of the puzzle having a direct impact on the difficulty of the puzzle. The steps you identify there are exactly what I had in mind, but I'm not sure I'd be happy to throw those moves at a beginner (or at least not without a couple of warm-up puzzles first), so I didn't want to throw the "easy" label at it!

      Delete
  3. JBross2 September 2012 at 16:24

    I think maybe r3c4 and r2c6 are both actually superfluous, though you can't get rid of both of them at the same time.
    At any rate, a nice little puzzle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tom Collyer3 September 2012 at 18:00

      So I hadn't noticed I could reply to individual comments. And I didn't notice R3C4 either... those four in the top left were the first clues to go down on my notepad!

      Delete

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