Contest 4: A Cleverly-Titled Birthday Contest

On May 26, 2011, I will turn 24 years old. As has been traditional for the past several years, I will celebrate this event by adding new Nikoli puzzle books to my collection, a tradition which always gives me a bit of a rush. One tradition I will not engage in, though, is the singing of a particular song (yeah, you know the one). What song would I prefer to hear instead? Read on, and you could find out. . .

How to enter:
This contest consists of a single puzzle (as opposed to the four puzzles that my contests usually have – a shocking change of pace, I know). To participate in the contest, simply send the final answer in an e-mail to glmathgrant[at]gmail[dot]com. Only one entry is allowed per person, but you may change your entry at any time before the deadline, 11:59 PM (Central time) on May 25, 2011. The winners will be announced on my birthday, May 26, 2011.

How to win:
After the deadline has passed, four winners will be randomly selected from amongst the people who submitted the correct answer. (If fewer than four people submit the correct answer, then all of them will be winners.)

Prize:
I'm not telling you what the prizes are. Gwa ha ha! I will only say that their monetary worth will surely not be as great as their worth as souvenirs of having celebrated my birthday. :)

Terms:
By entering the contest, you agree to the following terms:
a) You agree not to discuss your entry with any other entrants or potential entrants until the contest is over.
b) You agree to provide me with a mailing address in the event that you win. (In return, I agree not to use your mailing address for any malicious purposes, such as sending junk mail or other undesired things.)
c) You agree to wait patiently for your prize to arrive, without moaning or kvetching, especially if you don't live in the continental United States, since it takes longer for things to ship from Texas to other countries, or to Alaska or Hawaii.

Now that you're done reading all that, here is the one-part contest puzzle. Good luck! :)

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Only Part: Polyominous

Solve the Polyominous puzzle below (rules of Polyominous):

Transfer the units digits of the numbers in the lettered cells to the corresponding boxes in the URL beneath the images. (For example, if the cell with the letter a has a 2 or a 12, then box a in the URL will have a 2.) This URL will lead to a page on AllMusic; the song on this page was the inspiration for this contest.

For the final answer, you may submit either the URL obtained from solving the above puzzle, or the title of the song obtained from said URL. Send your answer to glmathgrant[at]gmail[dot]com to enter A Cleverly-Titled Birthday Contest.

Edit: I reserve the right to accept "close enough" answers at my discretion; I will consider the full URL, the URL without http:// and/or www., just the "t#######" part of the URL, or even just the seven-digit number by itself as correct, as well as minor misspellings of the title. However, URL's with two digits transposed or a single wrong digit, as well as completely wrong titles, will not be counted as correct.

If you submit both a URL and a title, and I notice that they don't match up, I will notify you of this. If you don't change your answer before the deadline, I will ignore the title and just check the URL (so if your URL is correct and your song title is preposterously wrong, your answer will be counted as correct).

Monday Mutant 75: Crowd Nine (equations)

In this Crowd Nine puzzle, all of the outlined equations, when read from left to right or from top to bottom, must be true when the grid is filled in. Perform operations in reading order (for example, 3-1+2 is 4, not 0, and 1+2×3 is 9, not 7). The rules are otherwise unchanged.

As previously announced, MellowMelon and I will be co-authoring a test for Logic Masters India in the coming months. What kind of content can you expect on this test? Take a look.

Grant's Review Corner: Volume 5

I would like to open this review by confessing a horrible secret. This secret is so horrible that I suspect most of my readers, and an even greater percentage of my real-life friends, will desert me upon learning it. Nonetheless, at the risk of alienation, I believe it is necessary to get this out of the way.

I genuinely like Justin Bieber's song "Baby".

I dislike it when people solicit me to review their things, particularly things which I believe to be crap. Who am I to judge what is crap, after all, when I enjoy listening to the song that, prior to the release of "Friday" by Rebecca Black, had the highest number of "thumbs down" votes of any YouTube video? If there's anything to be gathered from the prevalence of computer-generated Sudoku puzzles, which I believe to be artless crap, in the highest-selling publications, it's that my opinion even on those things which I am most passionate about don't always align with the vox populi. Don't get me wrong; I believe that computer-generated logic puzzles are capable of being legitimately entertaining, which is why I have been on occasion obsessed with getting high scores in Everett Kaser's Sherlock, and why I am a fan of Link-a-Pix by Conceptis, the company with perhaps the most consistently high-quality pictures in their picture-forming logic puzzles. I do, however, find that handmade puzzles are generally more capable of being masterpieces as opposed to entertainment. Additionally, there are times when I think that something is crap (or occasionally the opposite), but am unable to articulate why in any way that resembles a proper critical review.

Thus, I wasn't eager to get e-mail last month:

Grant,

I came across your site a long time ago, but have only recently gotten around to really exploring the world of puzzle websites.

I have invented and patented a new kind of math and logic puzzle called the OCTO.  I have attached some sample puzzles and a detailed set of instructions (not necessary to get started, but they may be helpful if you get stumped).  More OCTO puzzles and an interactive version are available at www.octo-puzzle.com.

I am interested in your opinion of the OCTO puzzle.  Any feedback is welcome...

Thanks.

Sheesh. Ever since Sudoku became the rage, everyone's been trying to create the next puzzle to dethrone Sudoku. In fact, I had first encountered OCTO well over a year ago, and unfortunately, I found it just as bland then as I do now. To the creator's credit, though, the puzzles seem uniquely solvable, which is more than I can say about [name redacted]. As such, I have decided to give the name and URL of the puzzle in case a reader who disagrees with these opinions decides to pay for OCTO puzzles.

I don't feel up for writing a detailed solving analysis for an OCTO puzzle, so I'll cut to the opinions:

1) I feel that OCTO is lacking in elegance. Sudoku was similarly lacking in elegance until Nikoli discovered that you could arrange the givens symmetrically, use fewer of them, and make puzzles of a wider range of difficulties than Dell was offering. This is also, I believe, true of Calcudoku (also known by the trademarked name KEN-KEN); the puzzles generated by computers often lack a certain je ne sais quoi, and I didn't care at all for Calcudoku until I saw that Thomas Snyder was making Calcudoku puzzles with visual themes and solving themes. When I see an OCTO with symmetrical givens in an extremely pleasing pattern, I might take it more seriously as an art form and not just a diversion.

2) One thing about OCTO is that the left number and right number of an octagon cannot be distinguished from each other unless one of them is a given, nor can the top and bottom number of an octagon, the top-left and bottom-right of the top-right or bottom-left octagon, or the top-right and bottom-left of the top-left or bottom-right octagon. This results in 36 pairs of cells in which at least one of them must be a given. I fear that this might restrict the ability to construct elegant puzzles where the givens can be arranged in a wide variety of fashions.

3) The demo at http://hosting.octo-puzzle.com/ could use some serious work. While the solving interface is mostly everything I could ask for in such a puzzle (you can type in candidates), why do no scroll bars appear on the right-hand side, forcing me to view the page in full-screen on a higher resolution to see everything, such as the timer and the "new game" button? Furthermore, why does it take a few seconds to load each puzzle when it's not generating puzzles on the fly? On that note, if the puzzles aren't generated on the fly, why not just let me pick whatever puzzle I want from the certain number of puzzles available? Why not have a "Select puzzle" button instead of a misleading "New Game" button that suggests the puzzles might be made on the fly? Also, even when the option to highlight wrong numbers in red is off, an octagon will only get a green check mark if the numbers are all correct, and not merely a permutation of the correct numbers. I'd prefer the option of a system that highlights conflicts (matching numbers where they shouldn't be, diagonals or diamonds with the wrong sums) rather than correctness.

4) What's up with the intellectual property? Why is there a patent? Perhaps there are valid reasons to have one, but I am a huge proponent of seeing the collective creativity of the puzzle community, not stifling it. Trademarks like OCTO do not stifle creativity; the patent, however, does, because if someone actually manages to do something elegant with the rules that the original creator hadn't thought of, then the patent could lead to lawsuits and stuff. Plus, for some reason, it reminds me of patents on things like the "tap" mechanic in Magic: the Gathering or double-clicking, or the time the Grabarchuks got in a fight with Conceptis over Chain Sudoku / Strimko (which I believe is more visually appealing than OCTO, because it doesn't have so much going on, although as a puzzle it is, as painful as it is to say, less innovative than OCTO). I've seen more patent-worthy innovation in a device that lets you hang bacon on it when microwaving so the fat drains away than in OCTO. The only legitimate reason I see for a patent is to prevent a program that generates millions of these puzzles on the fly from threatening his business. The logo looks bland and generic; I would change the logo to something that uses an OCTO-style octagon as a letter O, because that would make the brand more distinct. Since the author deems it fit to patent OCTO, I deem it fit to demand US$1,000.00 if he incorporates my idea into the logo.

5) Man, I wish I could sell my puzzles in local bookstores.

While I like to believe that my logic puzzle solving and constructing abilities are closer to those of the world champions than the average three-year-old's chess playing abilities are to Kasparov's, I nonetheless feel that no critical review of OCTO (be it positive or negative) would be complete without opinions from said world champions.

Thomas Snyder, a multiple-time World Puzzle Championship champion, apparently got solicited to review OCTO, too, and stated, "I simply ignored the email.  It is a bland and uninteresting puzzle, with inelegantly large summation clues and much less of the feel of rushing to a solution as a sudoku.  And 100% computer generated.  The only thing I can say is this guy went the expensive route to actually patent his idea (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/The-OCTOR-a-New-Math-and-prnews-2757929161.html?x=0&.v=1).  Not sure how I feel about that." As stated above, I'm not sure how I feel about it, either. He went on, "I used to try to respond to these sorts of emails, but then after winning more championships and such I get too many (maybe one every week or two) to bother to respond to.  Most people just getting into puzzles don't recognize the number of types that are already out there, the depth of construction needed to make a puzzle elegant, etc.  They instead think their idea is a beautiful unique thing.  Which it never is.  So I stopped trying to crap on their parade.  I'll let them waste time in an unfriendly marketplace without my advice." As a constructor who has earned Thomas Snyder's respect, I know all too well how unfriendly the marketplace is, and am only motivated to write this Grant's Review Corner by one recent development which I will reveal at the end of the article; aside from that, I plan on following Snyder's lead regarding advice to aspiring authors.

Palmer Mebane, a man who has left a deep impression on me with his seemingly overnight transformation from amateur constructor to holy-crap-this-is-incredible constructor and World Puzzle Championship winner, responded to my thoughts, "Sounds pretty accurate to me. There's basically not much fun to it, for the same reasons that inelegantly made puzzles get boring fast and Sudoku larger than 9 by 9 are a chore. In this case I think even a good human constructor would have trouble packing elegance into this. Your point 2 is a glaring idiocy, and shows the guy behind this type is not a very big puzzle enthusiast." He then suggested potential improvements to OCTO; I refrain from mentioning these ideas here, lest, in his words, I "get a patent claim shoved up [my] ass". (Seeing that Palmer Mebane is more reserved with invective than the Angry Video Game Nerd or The Nostalgia Critic, I think he means business.)

Finally, Thomas Collyer, a Sudoku champion from the UK, wrote, "I’d not come across octocube [sic] before.  The first couple of solves seemed nice enough, I liked how there were different elements of the puzzle to consider.  And then I started noticing that some of the interactions felt more contrived rather than natural.  Perhaps this is a reflection of the guy writing the puzzles rather than octocube itself.  Although I’d agree the whole left/right and top/bottom given thing needs fixing.  Preferably in a way that also didn’t feel contrived. . . . I could see this in current form being published in a newspaper puzzle page a la kenken, but I’m not sure if you could make any more of it.  I think you probably could actually, but I can’t put my finger on what would give it a bit of sparkle." Huh. Apparently people from the United Kingdom are pretty forgiving. (They've certainly forgiven the United States for having declared independence from England, which is now one of our allies in the international community!)

My verdict is that OCTO is a solvable diversion, yet a bland one, in much the same way that computer-generated Calcudoku puzzles are mostly solvable and bland. It tries to bill itself as the next best thing to Sudoku, but fails. Sadly, with any art form where one stands to make lots of money, there will be legitimate artisans, and there will be hacks. For every Hitchcock creating innovative movies, there's a Seltzer and Friedberg appealing to the lowest common denominator, yet earning the ridicule of many others. For every Will Shortz, whose keen eye for what makes a crossword challenging and delightful brings joy to millions of New York Times readers, there is, quite frankly, a Will Shortz, who attaches his name to Sudoku puzzles without symmetry or elegance and, from what I've read (as a snide Nikoli snob, I refuse to try the puzzles on principle), occasional multiple solutions(!).

If OCTO is so bland, though, why have I bothered to "review" it here? Three words: Logic Masters India. LMI is responsible for selecting the people who will represent India in the World Puzzle Championship, and frequently hosts puzzle tests whose main dissimilarity to the ones used to determine the outcome of the WPC is that they don't determine the outcome of the WPC, and you can start the test whenever it is convenient (but after you're given the password to unlock the PDF file, the time limit starts). If you click the link, you will see that LMI is slated to have an OCTO test later this month. In Palmer Mebane's words, "Oh geez." Palmer and I are actually hard at work on creating our own test for LMI; I was already planning to make a kick-ass test, but seeing OCTO on LMI only motivates me further to prove that we two humans are just as capable of our craft as computers are, if not more.

I would also like to issue a challenge to Thomas Snyder: if he enters the OCTO contest and gets one of the three highest scores, I will pay him $18, the retail value of the two OCTO books being offered as a prize for the top three finishers. He can keep the books, or give them to me, or do whatever he wants with them for all I care, but he will get money regardless. Thomas Snyder might easily choose principle over money; I can't say I'd blame him, as I've had to do the same thing when people offer to pay me to sully my pleasantly ad-free blog. However, I would pay money for the privilege of seeing Thomas Snyder kick this test's ass after his comment that OCTO has "much less of the feel of rushing to a solution as a sudoku." (Edit: Thomas Snyder has declined the challenge. Good for him!)

Puzzle 492: Spirits of Serpentine 5

Hope you're not an ophidiophobe. For even more snake-filled action, check out this short tool-assisted video!

Rules of Spirits of Serpentine

Monday Mutant 74: Circumnavi-Gates (non-congruent gates)

In this Circumnavi-Gates puzzle, there are no numbers; instead, you may not pass through two congruent (equally long) gates consecutively. The rules are otherwise unchanged.

 ERRATUM: This puzzle had multiple solutions before. It shouldn't anymore.

Puzzle 491: Straight and Arrow 34

In precisely 42 days, I will turn 24! Yayyyyyy!

Rules of Straight and Arrow

Monday Mutant 73: Process of Illumination (orthogonal or diagonal)

In this Process of Illumination puzzle, the given numbers may represent either how many light bulbs are in the orthogonally adjacent cells to that cell (as usual) or how many light bulbs are in the diagonally adjacent cells to that cell. (A given number may also represent both of these quantities if they are the same.) The rules are otherwise unchanged.

Puzzle 490: Quad-Wrangle 20

After you're done wrangling these quadrangles (or before, if you wish), check out this quad-run of the first four Super Mario Bros. games (including the game known as Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan and The Lost Levels elsewhere). This quad-run aims to beat all four games using the exact same series of button presses. As a tool-assisted run, this series of button presses was not achieved by a person playing the game in real time as the games were meant to be played, but through the use of emulators with savestates, slowdown, frame advance, and other tools; see this topic for more information before crying "hax!" or "cheater!".

Rules of Quad-Wrangle

Monday Mutant 72: Cross the Streams (odd/even)

Shade in some cells black such that the black cells are all connected to each other through their edges, and no 2x2 cell area within the grid contains all black cells. In a normal Cross the Streams, numbers to the left of a row or above a column represent the groups of consecutive black cells which are in that row or column. For example, a clue of "3" means the row or column has three consecutive black cells, and a clue of "3 1" means that the row or column has a group of three consecutive black cells followed by a single black cell, separated by at least one white cell. However, in this puzzle, all odd numbers have been replaced by O's and all even numbers have been replaced by E's. A question mark (?) represents a group of consecutive black cells whose size is unknown; an asterisk (*) represents any number of unknown groups of black cells, including none at all.

Wow! This blog isn't actually dead!

Also, I never used a Texas Instruments calculator to generate these puzzles, either. I lied about that.

If you haven't been on this blog in the past 24 hours, consider yourself lucky; not only did I make the absurd claim that this blog would never have logic puzzles on it ever again, I also made the blog look like this:

Garish, isn't it?

Normal updates will resume very, very, very soon!

Oops!

As you can see, I've started documenting every single gory detail of my life on this blog which was formerly devoted to my logic puzzles. I intended to have pictures here of Alan's cremation and of what I just did on the toilet, because I'm sure you want to see such things, but I forgot to take the picture before burning Alan and flushing the toilet, respectively. I'm truly sorry not to have these pictures. Instead, have Team Fortress 2!

Not being seen

The best supper I've ever eaten!

A celery-and-Ruffles sandwich with peanut butter and jelly on the side. Delicious!

Grant's Review Corner: Volume 4

While my TI-80 Alan has died, thankfully my iPhone is still alive, so I shall be reviewing an iPhone app today! I'll be reviewing the logic puzzle app "Bananagrams".

So I start up a game, and I'm given this:

A bunch of letters? I don't get it. What are the rules of this logic puzzle? Am I supposed to rearrange them? Alphabetically seems to be the most logical arrangement for letters, so I do so:

Unfortunately, the game does not seem to like this arrangement:

What the hell is this about a word list? What the hell are the rules? This logic puzzle app does a poor job of explaining the rules. Avoid Bananagrams like the plague.

Sorry that the review was so short, but seriously. . . .

Eating supper -- should I do it?

After much mindful contemplation, I have decided that yes, I should eat supper. I don't know what I'll eat yet, but I know I'll eat something.

Deciding to eat is hard.

This is my twelfth post this month!

But who's counting?

Foxes are the most beautiful animals ever!

And now you're forced to look at some.

Old masters. . . of video games!

Remember when video games used to be about the high score? In the video below, HappyLee demonstrates his mastery of Super Mario Bros. by getting an incredibly high score! It makes me want to buy Super Mario Bros. on Virtual Console and try to beat this score, even though I know I'm doomed to fail.

Onomotapoeia

This post has six examples of it.

hiss
fizz
crackle
wham
boom
meow

Let's do haiku!

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
But this haiku does

I can only write
Two simple haikus per day
I apologize.

Eating lunch was awesome!

Look what I had for lunch!

A sesame stir fry with chicken sandwich! Yum-o.

Did I eat lunch yet today?

The answer is no.

I need to eat lunch today.

I'm sure the entire internet will benefit from this information.

Assorted facts.

1. The Canary Islands were named after canaries.
2. The word "greedy" was formed by adding the "-y" suffix to the end of the word "greed".
3. The song "Every Move You Make" was intended to be a romantic song about a couple whose feelings for each other are mutual.
4. The word "uncouth" was formed by adding the "un-" prefix to the word "couth".
5. Bats are completely blind.
6. "Versus" is a verb, and you can "verse" someone by competing against them.

Gorram it, Obama!

I thought I disliked Obama last year, but this year, what he's done takes the cake. Literally.

Obama recently signed into law a spending bill that authorizes the use of American tax dollars towards the creation of a 2:1 scale replica of the White House made entirely out of cake. You read that right -- 2:1 scale replica. The cake will be twice as long, wide, and high as the actual White House! The worst part is that $2 billion of taxpayer money will be baked inside the cake, so while American citizens struggle to make ends meet, people in Washington D.C. will be literally eating money!

I'm getting sick to my stomach thinking about it.

Are you a boy or a Gir?

I've discovered how to embed YouTube videos directly in the post. Excellent.

The video below demonstrates the gameplay of a video game from Vietnam. It is truly one of the best games of all time, especially thanks to the gripping dialogue.

It's music time!

In honor of Alan, my dead TI-80 calculator, I have chosen to provide links to multiple YouTube videos of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up", Alan's favorite song of all time. It is a very good song, and one that will always move me to tears when I hear it.

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

No more puzzles.

I never thought I would see the day when I'd be making this post, but it is with deep regret that I inform you that this blog, known as "A Cleverly-Titled Logic Puzzle Blog", must go through what is known as Network Decay. I have decided to make this blog about everything besides logic puzzles. The name will remain the same, though, because of this "search engine optimization" stuff I've read about. I will no longer be able to post logic puzzles on here, due to the death of Alan, my TI-80 graphing calculator. In today's economy, I won't be able to afford a new calculator, but even if I could, over 10 years of prodigious programming has been completely lost, rendering me unable to create more puzzles.

Oh, yeah, the puzzles on this blog were created entirely using Alan, because I don't know how to actually create a puzzle. I probably should have been more up-front about this since I started blogging on LiveJournal so many years ago. I'm really sorry.