Monday Mutant 93: Battleships (water groups)

Ten ships (as indicated below the grid: one four-cell ship, two three-cell ships, three two-cell ships, and four one-cell ships) are hidden in the grid. The ships may be rotated from the orientations shown, but may not overlap or occupy cells which share a corner or an edge. A number to the right of a row or below a column indicates the length of the longest group of consecutive water cells in that row or column. Additionally, some segments of the ships are shown within the grid, and cells with wavy lines are "water" cells which cannot contain ships. Find the ships.

Monday Mutant 92: Pearls of Wisdom (total / Hanjie)

In this Pearls of Wisdom puzzle, there are no clues inside the grid. Instead, you are to both draw a loop and place black pearls and white pearls in every cell that could legally contain one. Numbers to the left of a row or above a column represent the groups of consecutive cells containing pearls which are in that row or column. For example, a clue of "3" means the row or column has three consecutive pearls, and a clue of "3 1" means that the row or column has a group of three consecutive pearls followed by a single pearl, separated by at least one cell without a pearl. A question mark (?) represents a group of consecutive pearls whose size is unknown; an asterisk (*) represents any number of unknown groups of pearls, including none at all.

I have thus far received 13 votes in Logicsmith Exhibition 5. Keep those votes coming!

I have also submitted my no-longer-prototypical abstract strategy game Battle of LITS to a contest being held by Spain-based game publisher nestorgames on BoardGameGeek. If you have a BoardGameGeek account and would like to see my two-player adaptation of a Japanese logic puzzle published with quality components, please consider thumbing my post to make this prospect possible! :)

Monday Mutant 91: Streaming Content (torus)

In this Streaming Content puzzle, the grid is a torus; the left and right edges "wrap around" as shown, as do the top and bottom edges. The rules are otherwise unchanged.

Remember to cast your votes in Logicsmith Exhibition 5!

Also, board game fans and logic puzzle fans alike may be interested in checking out my prototypical abstract strategy game Battle of LITS! The game is in need of playtesting, so if you could play it and tell me what you think, you'd be doing me an excellent service. :)

Monday Mutant 90: Spirits of Serpentine (torus)

In this Spirits of Serpentine puzzle, the grid is a torus; the left and right edges "wrap around" as shown, as do the top and bottom edges. The rules are otherwise unchanged.

Oops. . . I forgot to schedule this post for Monday, so you get it early! :)

Be sure to vote!

Logicsmith Exhibition 5: Polyominous (VOTING TIME!)

Four weeks ago, I challenged my readers to construct a 10x10 Polyominous puzzle under very specific restrictions, offering a prize to the constructor whose puzzle is voted the best by my readers afterwards. A whopping 19 other readers managed to do so, giving you 20 candidates to choose from!

Warning: there are 20 images contained in this blog post!

The 20 puzzles are presented in random order below. To encourage readers to vote honestly for the puzzles they like the most, and not merely for the author they like the most, I have withheld all of the authors' names. Please take a look at them, solve them, and email me (glmathgrant[at]gmail[dot]com) up to four puzzles for which you'd like to cast your vote. In order to encourage the constructors to participate in the voting, constructors are allowed to cast up to five votes, and may vote for their own puzzle if (and only if) they choose to use all five votes.

Because of this unprecedented level of response, I imagine that it would take a diligent reader much longer to solve and evaluate them all. . . so I have extended the voting period from the planned four weeks to eight weeks! You will have until September 29, 2011 to send in your votes; the day after that, the winner will be announced. If there is a tie, I shall cast the deciding vote. Note that one of the puzzles above is mine; if my puzzle ends up being the most popular, then I will receive a gigantic ego boost, but I am ineligible to win any other prize from this contest.

Puzzle 505: Process of Illumination 36

No comment.

Rules of Process of Illumination

Monday Mutant 89: Pearls of Wisdom (torus)

In this Pearls of Wisdom puzzle, the grid is a torus; the left and right edges "wrap around" as shown, as do the top and bottom edges. The rules are otherwise unchanged.

Puzzle Communication Nikoli 133 has four pages of toroidal puzzles, including a toroidal Kakuro, a toroidal Slitherlink, a toroidal Yajilin, and two toroidal Akari. I thought it was pretty impressive how they were able to present the grid in such a way that the gimmick was apparent even to me who can't read Japanese; the presentation of this puzzle is inspired by theirs.