Friday Puzzles #176

I'm massively hungover, and I should really be going through the WSC/WPC booklets.  I'm really looking forward to seeing lots of good friends in Croatia next week.  With any luck I'll put together some live blogging whilst I'm there too.  For now, here's a not hugely inspired heyawake puzzle.  Enjoy!

    #211 Heyawake – rated easy

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

ChipIn for Children's Charities

With apologies to Grant for forgetting to publicise this on Friday, better late than never I hope!

Anyhow, I'd like to point all my dearest readers towards one of the oldest and best puzzle blogs, A Cleverly-Titled Logic Puzzle Blog.  Grant is currently running a raffle style contest with some cool prizes, and heavily incentivising you to donate to three charities that are close to his heart whilst you solve.  The more money you donate, the more raffle entries you get!  And as an extra incentive, the more each of the three charities receives, the more giant-sized puzzling fun Grant will supply as he approaches his 600th (!!!) puzzle.  He's currently at #569, see here for more details.

It's all in a good cause, and any contribution will be appreciated even more than you'll appreciate Grant's great puzzles.  Which is quite a lot!

Friday Puzzles #175

Sometimes it's handy having 40+ minutes of a competition round to sit in silence when you want to make a puzzle.  As with the majority of my sudoku, this one is pretty easy despite having no clued 9's.  If you are playing the speed solving game, less than 3 minutes is good, less than 2 minutes is very good and 90 seconds is probably world leading.  Enjoy!

    #210 Sudoku – rated easy

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

2012 Times sudoku championship write-up

Long story short:  a permuted 2 and 8 in R4C1 and R5C1 in puzzle #6 cost me a place in a grand final that, given my subsequent solve on the sidelines in 14 minutes and 25 seconds, I'd have probably won.  Still, I think the long story is worth it, so you'll have to allow me to indulge my writing whims dearest reader, and we'll walk down this cathartic road together.

Friday Puzzles #174

A quirky heyawake puzzle this week, probably just about medium in difficulty level.  I don't have time to say too much more than that; enjoy!

    #209 Heyawake – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Friday Puzzles #173

So the nice thing with slitherlink puzzles is that there always seems to be a way to accommodate new ideas.  The not so nice nice thing is that trying to make a moderately difficult puzzle throws up lots of uniqueness issues.  Getting round those can be a pain in the arse, and this isn't quite as full blooded as I'd intended, but I think this probably just about deserves its label of hard rather than medium... but only if you resist the temptation to guess or (ab)use uniqueness, it's only a small grid.  Enjoy!

    #208 Slitherlink – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.