Friday Puzzles #78

Yes I post this entirely shamelessly, offering the fine excuse that yesterday I was rather busy having lunch and dinner in Oxford. There was a maths conference there too at some point, I think.

Anyhow, please believe me when I say that I really can’t keep this up forever. After this week I’ll give Masyu a break for a while. I can’t really compete with the Juno standard anyway. But this isn’t bad :)

    #101 Masyu – rated medium

I’m also going to repost the pick of the puzzles from the recent UKPA Sudoku Championship. Many congratulations must go to our first champion Warren Harvey, a long-time reader of this blog. He topped the British contingent with a winning score of 100 points.

There was an incredible international participation too, the size of which took us aback. The top three of the table in a field of genuine world beaters were in third place Hideaki Jo of Japan, who completed the set and scored 240 points. Just a minute quicker to solve all of the puzzles was Yuhei Kusui, also of Japan with 242 points. However the clear winner was Florian Kirch of Germany, top of the pops with 256 points, completing the puzzle set with a most impressive 8 minutes to spare. Many congratulations Florian, if you’re reading, and good luck to all my other German readers who used this as a warm up to the forthcoming German championships.

As to the reasoning behind these pick of the puzzles; it’s simple. The puzzles I made I wanted to be unique amongst the background of their sub-family of Sudoku variants. With these, I succeeded and then some. I haven’t seen any puzzles anything like either of these two. Enjoy!

    #102 Killer Sudoku – rated hard

    #103 Arrow Sudoku – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

Friday Puzzles #38

A belated entry this week, as I have been travelling somewhat. There’s more travelling to look forward to at the end of the month too, with the world sudoku championships in Phiadelphia. As such, this week’s puzzle is a sudoku variant known as Arrow Sudoku. Standard sudoku rules apply, and additionally, the number that goes into a grey circle is precisely the sum of the numbers to be found on the corresponding arrow.

Do note that numbers can repeat on the arrows, and enjoy!

    #046 Arrow Sudoku – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10