Friday Puzzles #189

Right, I'm going to end the year as I started, with slitherlink.  I think the theme has come out quite nicely here (perhaps my dearest American readers will have to bear with me), and there's a little bit of bite towards the end of the puzzle as an extra bonus.

See you in 2013 - enjoy!

    #226 Slitherlink – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Bonus Christmas Puzzle

The multi-talented Tiit Vunk shared a Christmas themed Sudoku puzzle on facebook the other day and it inspired me to try something in a similar vein.  So here goes!

The Christmas tree itself acts like a fortress.  That is, cells that are part of the Christmas tree must contain digits which are strictly large than digits in adjacent cells which are not part of the tree.  There is no restriction for two adjacent cells which are part of the tree.  Where there is potential ambiguity as to whether a cell is part of the tree, I've filled it with a pale yellow glow.

Each piece of tinsel on the tree indicates an ascending sequence of digits in the cells that it covers.  it's up to you to determine in which direction.  Hopefully it's clear where the tinsel is going.  Please note that some pieces of tinsel are going diagonally between cells.

Finally the tree is decorated with some baubles and a star.  These have no significance other than to provide givens for the puzzle.  Upon test solving in paint, I found these decorations to be somewhat distracting.  I should also add that I haven't tried printing this, so hopefully I've chosen a shade of green that doesn't come out too dark.  Then again you'll have to live with this.  It's a Christmas tree, see.

Oh, and this one isn't for the faint hearted in terms of its difficulty.  But not so hard that you'll need to guess.  But hey, you've all got tons of free time on your hands, right?  Merry Christmas, Dearest Reader, and as always, Enjoy!

    #225 Christmas Tree Sudoku – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Friday Puzzles #188

So last Friday I was too busy to worrying about my viva - the oral defence of my Ph.D thesis - to be spluttering out too much blurb.  This Friday I'm happy to report that I passed (with minor corrections), and so consequently I can now describe myself as that Dr. Tom who posts puzzles on a Friday and is quite good at solving sudoku.

Or at least one of them. ;-)

Today's puzzle is probably just about a medium.  It's definitely harder than #3 of the set I recently provided for LMI.  Enjoy!

    #224 Sudoku – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Friday Puzzles #187

Yes, I do have other things on my mind.  No, you don't need to guess.

Wish me luck, Dearest reader; and as always, enjoy!

    #223 Masyu – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Friday Puzzles #186

So the whole WPC series has lost a little momentum, and of the two remaining rounds I was supposed to cover, I was lacking a bit of inspiration.  I've also been writing a ton of sudoku puzzles recently, but you'll soon see some of those over at LMI, and the rest are a much more long term project.

Instead I'm going to provide another Cave puzzle, following the fun I had in putting last week's puzzle together.  And yes, I suppose that is me giving support to "Cave" over "Corral."  I'm not sure I have my head around the difficulty levels of Cave just yet, but I reckon this is probably on the harder side of medium.  I think it's harder than last weeks anyway.  Enjoy!

    #222 Cave – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.