Thursday 2 September 2021

Puzzle 359: Heyawake

It's been a long time since I did Heyawake.  As with the recent Masyu, it's not entirely Nikoli smooth, and there are bits I'd even go so far as describing as fiddly, but hopefully it makes for a decent challenge at least.

As a bit of an aside, I came across semiexp.net recently, and lots of it basically seems like magic to me.  For example:
There's also something called pzprRT, which seems like an extraordinary setting tool.  Basically, for a small number of types, including 4 of my favourites: Yajilin, Masyu, Slitherlink and indeed Heyawake, you are able to mark up your puzzle using the pzprjs project (i.e. as featured on puzz.link) and then you can press a button and it will give you the live deductions corresponding to the clues you've put in.

I am still generally avoiding marking up my puzzles using puzz.link, as the interaction between the puzzle player and the hidden database (which stores the metadata of logged in solvers) is still not entirely clear to me.  I think I saw that this metadata is indexed by hashed versions of the puzzle URLs rather than the URLs themselves - this would kind of be fine by me I think as it means the database would be genuinely only metadata, rather than actual puzzle data making up some kind of secret dystopian mega master puzzle database.  But in any case pzprRT generated me a puzz.link, so I think it means this puzzle is now on the database, hashed or otherwise, and now what’s done is done.

I suppose what it does mean for you, dearest reader, is that you can also play along online!  I may even start making a habit of it.  Enjoy!
    #359 Heyawake – rated 8/10 [Very Hard]
All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-21.

7 comments:

  1. On the database - the database project is separate from the player, and the link won't be stored in the database unless it is published in one of the places that the database crawls looking for puzz.link links. Those places are Twitter, and a small number of blogs that have been manually added to the crawler, of which yours is not one. So I think that, for the time being, this puzzle remains outside of the database.

    But now I suppose I had better solve it!

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  2. Sam - that's certainly true for the public part of the database that appears on the website, but my understanding is that there is a hidden part of the database which kicks into operation whenever a correct solution is submitted to ANY puzz.link puzzle by anyone, as long as they are logged in. My understanding is that this is supposed to be metadata (solve times etc), but obviously that needs to be indexed somehow. This part of the database I think is used to calculate difficulty ratings for puzzles.

    There is sadly very little published about how the database is working, and until this is all made more transparent then I'll continue to make at least some kind of principled stand. (I'll add I'm more than happy to solve other people's puzzles though!)

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    Replies
    1. Ah, yes, this is true. I've seen instances where I've solved a puzzle before it was inserted into the DB, and when it is later added to the DB it was already marked as solved. So you're right on that front.

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  3. That was a fun and relaxing puzzle, and nothing that I'd describe as overly fiddly :)

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    Replies
    1. Glad you enjoyed it Sam - there’s always a balance between a really smooth solve but then also trying to add a degree of challenge. Apparently it’s 2013 since a heyawake was previously posted on the blog so I’m feeling a bit rusty let’s say!

      Delete
  4. Agreed with Sam. Fun puzzle, pretty smooth solve for me.

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  5. Really fantastic Heyawake, Tom. Took me ages to see the forced placement with the two 5 regions on the left!

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