Friday Puzzles #185

Round 10 of the WPC was anthology, but I'm going to use this as an excuse to make a Corral puzzle.  Should I persist with these, dearest reader, bearing in mind Corral is apparently a nikoli puzzle, albeit one with no set of rules I can poach from here?

For now, I'll do what I've done before, and slavishly copy from the WPC instructions.  Enjoy!

Rules: (as taken from the WPC instructions)
Draw a single closed loop, going along the gridlines.  The loop cannot touch or cross itself.  The area enclosed by the loop represents a cave.  All numbers inside the grid must be inside the cave.  A number in a grid cell indicates how many cells (including the cell with that number) can be seen from that cell to the nearest wall in four directions, horizontally and vertically.

N.B. For anyone who hasn't solved these before, don't treat this as your average loop puzzle.  Shading in squares which are either inside or outside (but not both!) is how you will solve these puzzles.  In this respect I'd argue corral has more in common with nurikabe and heyawake than, say, slitherlink or masyu.

    #221 Cave a.k.a. Corral – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Friday Puzzles #184

I think I make this round 9 of the WPC.  I think this means that I skipped round 8 as being personally uninspirational, and of course remembering that round 6 was a manipulative optimising team round.  So you won't be getting a puzzle for that round either.

Round 9 was a round of skyscrapers variants, a genre that can be brutally horrible when done wrong, but very pleasing when done right.  With any luck this is a puzzle which isn't totally trivial but still manages to solve nicely enough.  Don't ask me why Toronto comes into the title of this puzzle!  I'm going to push my luck and rate this as medium.  Enjoy!

Rules: (as taken from the WPC instructions)
Place numbers (representing skyscrapers) 1-5 in the grid so that no number is repeated in any row or column.  Each number represents the height of a skyscraper and the higher ones hide the smaller ones behind them.  Numbers outside the grid represent how many skyscrapers are visible from the corresponding direction.  Exactly one cell has to remain empty in each row and column.

    #220 Toronto Skyscrapers – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Friday Puzzles #183

My WPC mini-project rumbles on - and I thought it was about time to feature I puzzle that I might normally publish otherwise.  Perhaps it's a sign that I'll eventually finish my WPC report - which incidentally is running in at a cumulative 10,000 words, not out, thus far.  Perhaps it's just a sign that I don't want to go and fish out the WPC script to copy out some rules again.

Anyhow, it's always good fun to poke my head over the uniqueness parapet and serve up a Numberlink.  A puzzle this size can never be described as hard, and maybe not even medium either, but even so I think this one has its moments.  Enjoy!

    #219 Arukone a.k.a. Numberlink – rated easy

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Friday Puzzles #182

Once again dearest reader, I find myself in something of a rush.  This week's puzzle is going to be really quite easy (alas for uniqueness issues - again!!) if you know the tricks, or else quite a bit harder if you don't.  I'm not sure how well known these tricks are beyond the hardened puzzling community, so I'm going to hedge my bets and call this a medium.  Enjoy!

Rules: (as taken from the WPC instructions)
Fill each empty cell with either a black circle or a white circle.  All white circles should form an interconnected area and similarly all black circles should form an interconnected area.  There cannot exist any 2x2 cell region consisting of same colour circles anywhere in the grid.  There is the same number of black and white circles in the grid.

    #218 Yin Yang – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Friday Puzzles #181

...will be delayed until Sunday or maybe even Monday.  Sorry!

EDIT:  This one is for Fred and Prasanna.  Much love.

    #216 Kropki – rated Monstrous

2nd EDIT:  So I'm continuing with my WPC series, and we've made it up to round 4.  The first couple of Easy As ABC Crossword puzzles that I solved were part of the reason I didn't pay much attention to the Half Dominoes explanation during the Q&A session, and it's fair to say that I got the bug for these pretty quickly.  The puzzle I've put together below probably has a couple of surplus clues, but is nevertheless hopefully quite fun to solve.  Enjoy!

Rules: (as taken from the WPC instructions)
Write letters A, B and C in some of the cells in the grid so that each sequence of three or more horizontally or vertically connected cells contains each of the letters exactly once.  Letters above and to the left of some sequences indicate the first letter seen from the corresponding direction.

    #217 Easy As ABC Crossword – rated easy

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Friday Puzzles #180

So next up in the WPC series.  Colliding battleships is a type from the twisted puzzle rounds, which I enjoyed the most not because I actually solved it in time, but indeed because I didn't and instead drew a giant shark's fin in the grid for the last 30 seconds of the round.  The twist on this puzzle is kind of interesting because it removes a lot of constraints you use whilst solving.  Unfortunately it makes it very hard to set a uniquely solving puzzle.  Sadly for you, dearest reader, it means that I've lost patience trying to put together something of more substance this evening and so this is really only instructional fare.  I am especially appreciative of the skill displayed in constructing the more meaty WPC puzzle!

Rules: (as taken from the WPC instructions)
Locate the position of the fleet shown next to the grid.  The ships cannot touch each other, not even diagonally.  Numbers outside the grid indicate how many cells contain parts of ships in the corresponding row/column.
Note: Only two ships of different size are touching each other!

Enjoy!

    #215 Colliding Battleships – rated easy

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.

Friday Puzzles #179

So I've not really been able to pick a stand-out puzzle from the WPC like I could from the WSC.  I think what I'm going to do is release my favourite puzzle from various rounds and then maybe do a vote or something for your favourite in a few weeks time.  What I can tell you now is that I'm not going to do a dominoes puzzle, and unfortunately the puzzle I have in mind from round 2 has uniqueness issues, so you might have to wait until tomorrow until this gets published.  Hey - at least I got this disclaimer out on Friday.  Ugh.  Sorry!

UPDATE: I suppose I should add fair warning.  I tested this puzzle after 5 pints of Guinness last night, and I was very pleased with the logic that I thought made this solve uniquely.  I'm not so confident that this has a unique solution now, but I have no time to re solve it at this moment in time as apparently I'm wanted on television.  Given the issues I had with uniqueness making the bloody thing I'll not be surprised if someone finds a second solution here...

Rules: (as taken from the WPC instructions)
Place some tiles (of size 1x2 squares) in the grid, with numbers 1 and 2 each.  Tiles can be rotated but they cannot touch each other, not even diagonally.  Numbers outside the grid indicate the sum of all the numbers in the corresponding row/column.

Enjoy!

    #214 2-1 Tiles – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.