Thursday, December 30, 2010
Proof of Quilt was invented by the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli (under the name Shakashaka) in 2008.
1. Place black isosceles right triangles in some of the white cells in the grid. Each triangle must occupy exactly half of its cell, but may be in one of four orientations (◢, ◣, ◤, or ◥). A white cell may only contain one triangle.
2. Every contiguous region of white must be shaped like a rectangle (or a square).
3. A number in a black cell represents how many triangles share an edge with that cell.
2. Every contiguous region of white must be shaped like a rectangle (or a square).
3. A number in a black cell represents how many triangles share an edge with that cell.
Monday, December 27, 2010
In the Blackbarrier Jam puzzle on the left and in the Streaming Content puzzle on the right, the given numbers have been replaced by letters; all instances of a particular letter represent the same number, but two different letters must represent different numbers. (This applies whether the letters are in the same grid or not.) The rules are otherwise unchanged.
My most sincere apologies for today's Monday Mutant being late; I was debating whether to put the series on hold for the holidays, but decided against it a few hours ago.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Merry Christmas! (Well, in the Central time zone, at least. Those of you living west of that time zone still think it's Christmas Eve.)
On this holiday, Christians commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, who has been alternately portrayed as a generous feeder of the hungry and as kind of a jerk towards tall people. It is also a day when some Christians complain about how secular the holiday has become with its focus on materialism and Santa Claus rather than on Jesus, and demand that the "Christ" be put back in "Christmas". This large puzzle not only puts the "Christ" in "Christmas", but the "mas" as well, or more technically the "más" (the Spanish word for more). Oh, and for those non-Christians out there who are offended to see crosses in a logic puzzle, think of it this way: Christmas is about the birth of Christ, but crosses represent the death of Christ! As such, I'm really offending Christians just as much, if not more.
That paragraph aside, I hope you enjoy this Christmas present from me to logic puzzle fans everywhere.
On this holiday, Christians commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, who has been alternately portrayed as a generous feeder of the hungry and as kind of a jerk towards tall people. It is also a day when some Christians complain about how secular the holiday has become with its focus on materialism and Santa Claus rather than on Jesus, and demand that the "Christ" be put back in "Christmas". This large puzzle not only puts the "Christ" in "Christmas", but the "mas" as well, or more technically the "más" (the Spanish word for more). Oh, and for those non-Christians out there who are offended to see crosses in a logic puzzle, think of it this way: Christmas is about the birth of Christ, but crosses represent the death of Christ! As such, I'm really offending Christians just as much, if not more.
That paragraph aside, I hope you enjoy this Christmas present from me to logic puzzle fans everywhere.
(click to enlarge)
Fans of Chip's Challenge or of my puzzles will be excited to know that these two things have come together in what is known as Chip's Challenge Level Pack 3! From what I understand, this official sequel to Chip's Challenge Level Pack 2, which is in turn an unofficial sequel to the original 149 levels of Chip's Challenge, contains two levels that I created (levels 43 and 98) and 147 levels that other Chip's Challenge fans made. I am truly glad to have been a part of this.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
I suspect that all of my readers have been waiting with bated breath to see what kind of booby prize I decided to offer in the Four-Puzzle Derby. Having received confirmation of the booby prize's arrival in the appropriate recipient's mailbox, I will now reveal what it was to the whole world!
Warning: the images below were not made by a professional photographer with a decent camera, but by a logic puzzle blogger with an iPhone 4. Professional photographers are advised not to read any further. As usual, the images may be enlarged by clicking on them, but doing so will only further make it clear that a professional photographer wasn't involved.
The booby prize is. . . cards! And a letter explaining them!
And here's the envelope they were shipped in:
Congratulations again to Giovanni Pagano, the winner of this exciting prize!
Warning: the images below were not made by a professional photographer with a decent camera, but by a logic puzzle blogger with an iPhone 4. Professional photographers are advised not to read any further. As usual, the images may be enlarged by clicking on them, but doing so will only further make it clear that a professional photographer wasn't involved.
And here's the envelope they were shipped in:
Monday, December 20, 2010
In this Pearls of Wisdom puzzle, the loop must pass through every cell in the grid. The rules are otherwise unchanged.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Friday, December 17, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The deadline for Four-Puzzle Derby has now passed. Here are the results!
Warning: the following results contain spoilers (obviously)! If you wish to solve the contest puzzles yourself, please do so before reading on!
I received 42 entries, of which 40 contained the correct answer of 5, 1, 1, 3, 8 (see below; click to enlarge). With only two wrong entries, and a record number of correct entries, this was apparently my easiest contest ever. Have you guys caught on to my tricks more, or have I merely run out of tricks? :)
Before I reveal the winner, here are some of my favorite entries:
A penguin, Bobness McFluff, enters from gate 2. The bookies laugh and give him 5113:8 odds.
I honestly wasn't sure what to do with this one at first. While it was clear that 5113:8 was a reference to the correct answer, I was at first concerned that interpreting it as the entrant's answer when not labeled explicitly as such would be some kind of unfair advantage; I eventually decided that it could also be interpreted as me just being a butt and interpreting random digits as an answer, and if so, the entrant could always change the answer. Also, I figured that I'd do the same thing if the digits were obviously a close, but wrong, answer.
One entrant said:
It would help if I had the foggiest idea how many people read your blog. Instead, this contest was my first introduction to your puzzles. I followed a link from mellowmelon.
While I suppose this entrant can't be blamed for being new to my blog, all it would have taken is a simple click on the "contests" tag to see the results of the previous two contests (Attack of the Four Puzzles! had 23 correct answers out of 31 entries, and Attack of the Four Puzzles II! had 24 correct answers out of 27 entries). One could then attempt to extrapolate an estimate from there, although I suppose there's no guarantee that my blog hasn't suddenly spiked in popularity since the last contest, and this contest would have had a thousand entrants. (My decision to have 50 gates was based on such an extrapolation.)
My favorite entry, though, was from Zotmeister, who e-mailed not only to inform me that he'd soon be updating his blog (he has posted two puzzles since his entry was sent), but to say the following:
You may be interested to know that I did indeed try to circumvent the puzzle relay as much as possible, even using such tidbits as "B + W = 10, B < 6", but I still failed - I had to solve all four puzzles to get unique answers, so well done on construction.
I was very happy that Zotmeister had appreciated this. As in the previous two contests, I purposefully aimed to construct the puzzles such that all four needed to be solved, and a wrong answer in one puzzle can lead to the next puzzle still having a unique, but wrong, solution. For instance, if (I, O) is set to (4, 4), then Part iii's solution will yield a value of 4 for i, and Part iv's solution will yield a value of 1 for a; one person made this mistake. If (B, W) is set to (2, 8), (4, 6), or (5, 5), then Part iii's solution gives ii a value of 4; this has a much more drastic effect on the final solution to Part iv, causing b to be 5 and e to be 1. I was disappointed that nobody made this mistake. However, one entrant made an apparent transcription error, sending in a solution of 5, 1, 3, 3, 8. Since the value of c wasn't supposed to be affected by errors in the previous puzzles, this entrant wins the Most Inaccurate Answer award. (There is no prize for this.)
And now the results!
Of the 40 qualifying horses, 9 finished the race. Gate 4 was the most popular, while nobody chose gate 7. If anybody had, the outcome of this race would have been slightly different!
First prize, consisting of Nikoli puzzle books imported from Japan, goes to Termital, the rider of der Kluge Hans!
The booby prize goes to Giovanni Pagano, the rider of Days in the Fire!
The winners have been e-mailed notifying them of their respective victorious accomplishments. Thanks for entering, everyone!
Warning: the following results contain spoilers (obviously)! If you wish to solve the contest puzzles yourself, please do so before reading on!
I received 42 entries, of which 40 contained the correct answer of 5, 1, 1, 3, 8 (see below; click to enlarge). With only two wrong entries, and a record number of correct entries, this was apparently my easiest contest ever. Have you guys caught on to my tricks more, or have I merely run out of tricks? :)
Before I reveal the winner, here are some of my favorite entries:
A penguin, Bobness McFluff, enters from gate 2. The bookies laugh and give him 5113:8 odds.
I honestly wasn't sure what to do with this one at first. While it was clear that 5113:8 was a reference to the correct answer, I was at first concerned that interpreting it as the entrant's answer when not labeled explicitly as such would be some kind of unfair advantage; I eventually decided that it could also be interpreted as me just being a butt and interpreting random digits as an answer, and if so, the entrant could always change the answer. Also, I figured that I'd do the same thing if the digits were obviously a close, but wrong, answer.
One entrant said:
It would help if I had the foggiest idea how many people read your blog. Instead, this contest was my first introduction to your puzzles. I followed a link from mellowmelon.
While I suppose this entrant can't be blamed for being new to my blog, all it would have taken is a simple click on the "contests" tag to see the results of the previous two contests (Attack of the Four Puzzles! had 23 correct answers out of 31 entries, and Attack of the Four Puzzles II! had 24 correct answers out of 27 entries). One could then attempt to extrapolate an estimate from there, although I suppose there's no guarantee that my blog hasn't suddenly spiked in popularity since the last contest, and this contest would have had a thousand entrants. (My decision to have 50 gates was based on such an extrapolation.)
My favorite entry, though, was from Zotmeister, who e-mailed not only to inform me that he'd soon be updating his blog (he has posted two puzzles since his entry was sent), but to say the following:
You may be interested to know that I did indeed try to circumvent the puzzle relay as much as possible, even using such tidbits as "B + W = 10, B < 6", but I still failed - I had to solve all four puzzles to get unique answers, so well done on construction.
I was very happy that Zotmeister had appreciated this. As in the previous two contests, I purposefully aimed to construct the puzzles such that all four needed to be solved, and a wrong answer in one puzzle can lead to the next puzzle still having a unique, but wrong, solution. For instance, if (I, O) is set to (4, 4), then Part iii's solution will yield a value of 4 for i, and Part iv's solution will yield a value of 1 for a; one person made this mistake. If (B, W) is set to (2, 8), (4, 6), or (5, 5), then Part iii's solution gives ii a value of 4; this has a much more drastic effect on the final solution to Part iv, causing b to be 5 and e to be 1. I was disappointed that nobody made this mistake. However, one entrant made an apparent transcription error, sending in a solution of 5, 1, 3, 3, 8. Since the value of c wasn't supposed to be affected by errors in the previous puzzles, this entrant wins the Most Inaccurate Answer award. (There is no prize for this.)
And now the results!
Gate 1: Captain Obvious, /dev/horse, Glue Stick, Up the Daddy
Gate 2: Bobness McFluff, Made of Win, Retuned Daddio, What
Gate 3: Aristides, Dye Sun’s Fear, FF Selector, Orange Lightning
Gate 4: Attack of the One Horse, Ferday Ferday Ferday, Hoof Hearted, Name That Eyebrow [DQ: 1, 1, 1, 3, 8], Sir Staightaway, Vicious Beauty
Gate 5: Das Ist Nümberwang!, muhorka
Gate 6: Horse, Knightmare, Paul Revere, Shunba, Tricera Narwhal
Gate 8: der Kluge Hans
Gate 9: Blitzen's Dirty Secret, Eman Esroh, Lady Ladybug [DQ: 5, 1, 3, 3, 8]
Gate 10: Omaha
Gate 12: Stumbler
Gate 13: Yellow Flash
Gate 14: Double Lucky, Ocean Cookie, Pegasus
Gate 17: Gary Oak
Gate 18: Pascagoula Puzzler, Sleipnir
Gate 21: Andor
Gate 27: Shantron
Gate 29: Days in the Fire
Gate 33: Dark Moon
Of the 40 qualifying horses, 9 finished the race. Gate 4 was the most popular, while nobody chose gate 7. If anybody had, the outcome of this race would have been slightly different!
First prize, consisting of Nikoli puzzle books imported from Japan, goes to Termital, the rider of der Kluge Hans!
The booby prize goes to Giovanni Pagano, the rider of Days in the Fire!
The winners have been e-mailed notifying them of their respective victorious accomplishments. Thanks for entering, everyone!
If you're seeing this puzzle, that means the deadline for the Four-Puzzle Derby has passed, and no more entries will be accepted. A write-up of the results is forthcoming!
Monday, December 13, 2010
In this Polyominous puzzle, a number to the left or right of a row or above or below a column represents how many numbers in that row or column can be seen from that direction. A number is visible if and only if it is strictly greater than any other numbers in the row or column between that number and the edge (and is blocked from being seen if a number greater than or equal to it is in the way). The rules are otherwise unchanged.
This puzzle borrows some elements from Skyscrapers, probably one of the more well-known logic puzzle genres to have no real links to Japan. Normally, Skyscrapers doesn't involve polyominoes, but does involve a Latin square.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
I would like to promote three things whose only commonality is my involvement in each.
1. Four Puzzle Derby! It's a contest where you can win puzzle books imported from Japan! The deadline is less than a week away, so hurry up and enter.
2. Mega Micromusic! This awesome release by Dual Mode Records contains 8 songs created using the Record MakerMatic in WarioWare DIY, which can be basically described as a new generation of Mario Paint with much more interactivity. Track 3, the surreally titled "2120 Census", was composed by me.
3. 30s30d: A Month's Worth of Composing! While I didn't advertise it on my blog (until now), I spent the entire month of November writing one new song every day. Song 14, "Link and the King Get Logical", uses sound effects from the logic puzzle games by Everett Kaser, which some readers of this blog might recognize. There are also 10 WarioWare DIY tunes and 19 NES chiptunes.
Now that I've promoted those three things, solve this not-very-difficult puzzle.
1. Four Puzzle Derby! It's a contest where you can win puzzle books imported from Japan! The deadline is less than a week away, so hurry up and enter.
2. Mega Micromusic! This awesome release by Dual Mode Records contains 8 songs created using the Record MakerMatic in WarioWare DIY, which can be basically described as a new generation of Mario Paint with much more interactivity. Track 3, the surreally titled "2120 Census", was composed by me.
3. 30s30d: A Month's Worth of Composing! While I didn't advertise it on my blog (until now), I spent the entire month of November writing one new song every day. Song 14, "Link and the King Get Logical", uses sound effects from the logic puzzle games by Everett Kaser, which some readers of this blog might recognize. There are also 10 WarioWare DIY tunes and 19 NES chiptunes.
Now that I've promoted those three things, solve this not-very-difficult puzzle.
Monday, December 6, 2010
In this Polyominous puzzle, the given numbers have been replaced by letters; all instances of a particular letter represent the same number, but two different letters must represent different numbers. The rules are otherwise unchanged.
This puzzle is a tribute to one of my favorite Christmas movies (er, THE WINTER SOLSTICE movies) of recent time.
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