Friday Puzzles #264

A medium level puzzle, but only just bearing in mind I've never posted a Quadro Sudoku here before.  It's a slightly subtle odd/even style variant, where the solving flow is very much either on or off, so perhaps your enjoyment mileage may vary.  If you struggle, let me reassure you by saying these can get a lot harder!

Rules: No 2x2 block of cells may contain exclusively odd or exclusively even numbers.

Enjoy!

    #303 Quadro Sudoku – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-15.

The Art of Puzzles: Masyu

Here's a Masyu that appeared over at GM puzzles.  Enjoy!

Friday Puzzles #263

Fairly recently I had the honour of being asked to be one of Roland Voigt's weekly "experts " for his daily skyscraper puzzle project.  I am always in awe of anyone who tries to maintain any sort of daily puzzle project for any period of time, and this one is of particular note because in my opinion Roland is by far and away the world's leading authority on both solving and creating Skyscrapers puzzles.

Please take a look here:

http://www.hochhausigel.de/e-index.html

I think eventually some commentary on my times will appear on Roland's blog - as someone who often struggles with a weekly schedule I am more than happy to be patient on this count!

Anyhow, skyscrapers this week.  Not too hard, not too easy.  Enjoy!

    #302 Skyscrapers – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-15.

Friday Puzzles #262

So Consecutive Sudoku really annoys me because it always ends up solving as non-consecutive Sudoku - and any really cool combinatorial tricks end up being drowned out by the non-consecutive logic.

I believe it was Bastien who first introduced the idea of a Consecutive pair to the Daily League, and it's a really good idea.  I was quite tempted to stick with the ubiquitous bar notation for this puzzle in an attempt to reclaim it, but I will stick with what Bastien used for now.  Marked pairs of adjacent cells must contain consecutive numbers; there is no restriction on adjacent cells with no marking.  Enjoy!

    #301 Consecutive Pair Sudoku – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-15.