Friday, November 30, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
The nestorgames edition of Battle of LITS has raised 8% of the necessary funding to be published! I'm also working on raising money offline; the pledges I've received so far (and plan on collecting within the week) are an additional 9%. Let's hope that the momentum continues. . . . :)
Rules of The Inner Limits 
Sunday, November 25, 2012
In this Polyominous puzzle, the rule that no two polyominoes of the same size may share an edge is specifically waived for tetrominoes, which must follow the rules of Tetra Firma (excluding the rule that every region contains a single tetromino). The number 4 never appears as a given in the grid; instead, the letters L, I, T, and S are given, corresponding to the shape of the tetromino.
I thought I clicked tomorrow's date. . . bah. You get this puzzle early.
In the past, I have plugged my board game Battle of LITS, which uses the LITS rules to create an original two-player game. Battle of LITS is now available on nestorbooster! 500 euros in pre-orders within the next month will allow Battle of LITS to become the next nestorgames publication! Without your pre-orders, though, this dream of mine will not happen. I hope you choose to help me get published with a meager 21 euro investment (which will be refunded if the funding fails). :)
In the past, I have plugged my board game Battle of LITS, which uses the LITS rules to create an original two-player game. Battle of LITS is now available on nestorbooster! 500 euros in pre-orders within the next month will allow Battle of LITS to become the next nestorgames publication! Without your pre-orders, though, this dream of mine will not happen. I hope you choose to help me get published with a meager 21 euro investment (which will be refunded if the funding fails). :)
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
In this Polyominous puzzle, the rule that no two polyominoes of the same size may share an edge is specifically waived for tetrominoes, which must follow the rules of Tetra Firma (excluding the rule that every region contains a single tetromino). The number 4 never appears as a given in the grid; instead, the letters L, I, T, and S are given, corresponding to the shape of the tetromino.
In the past, I have plugged my board game Battle of LITS, which uses the LITS rules to create an original two-player game. Battle of LITS will soon appear on nestorbooster, giving readers the chance to pre-order and fund the creation and sale of a portable version! Stay tuned!
Friday, November 16, 2012
See the title of this post. Also see the original contest.
First, solutions.
Part 1: 14 black triangles are in the marked columns.
Part 2: The marked row is 793824561.
Part 3: The unshaded letters are ACDELN.
Bonus: The unshaded letters are ABCDGHIKNOP.
I used dice rolls on BoardGameGeek to determine the winners; more detailed results on how many entries each person got are available here, but here is a summary of the winners:
Bonus prize (Norinori 1): Joanna Cheng (prize received!)
Puzzle 1 (Shakashaka 1): Kevin Petrychyn*
Puzzle 1 (Daily Puzzle): Joseph DeVincentis* (prize received!)
Puzzle 2 (Fresh Sudoku 2): Joshua Zucker
Puzzle 2 (Daily Puzzle): Edderiofer (prize received!)
Puzzle 3 (LITS 1): Michael Shafer**
Puzzle 3 (Daily Puzzle): Bryce Herdt
Good prize: James McGowan
Grand prize: Michael Shafer
*Bryce Herdt and Matt Lahut were also accidentally awarded prizes in drawings that were set up incorrectly; I will give them these prizes nonetheless, because I already sent them excited notifications of their wins before I realized the error.
**Jeffrey Harris won this prize initially, but chose to give it to another random person because he already owns a copy of LITS 1. I have a substitute prize planned for him. . . .
Final thoughts:
Damn, only $132.98 for Jack Vasel Memorial Fund? That's enough money for me to make puzzle 601 giant, but that's it. I was looking forward to much more momentum than this. (Sanctuary Home for Children received $206, and Child's Play Charity received $237.95.) I refuse to leave things off on such a low note – next year, I'm going to host ChipIn for Children's Charities II, and retain my same $2,500 goals! But what do I need to do to get there?
The sad reality is that I'm too small for the bigger charities to spend time promoting; Tom Vasel is a busy man, and Child's Play Charity has video game marathons that raise money far in excess of my meager goal. As for Sanctuary Home, I'm not really sure.
I think one thing I should do next year is mooch of Mario Marathon. They have a system where you can set up a donation widget on your site, and it tracks which donations came via your site. If I take advantage of this system, people can donate to Child's Play via the marathon using my link, and I'll have a record of their donation to determine how many prize entries they get. (As a bonus, they can win Mario Marathon prizes, too!) This money won't be added to the ChipIn widget, but I can compute the sum of two amounts manually for the purposes of donation incentives such as the giant puzzles.
I also need to do more to facilitate offline donations; PayPal seems, to my vast surprise, not to be as ubiquitous among my offline friends as it is online (where it's just a fact of life and how every furry artist and every puzzle community person and every board game person accepts payments, pretty much). I received $25 worth of donations from offline donors, which I put towards JVMF, the charity which needed it the most. Aside from that, I only recognize one ChipIn donor as an offline friend, despite my efforts to promote the event via the bonus puzzle flier; nobody that I know offline tweeted about it or solved the puzzles, either. Abilene is the worst city for getting people involved in my online stuff; I'm going to need to get more invested in collecting offline donations and either donating them via the ChipIn or (to avoid tax complications and to allow for checks) sending these donations off directly and adding their amounts manually to the ChipIn totals to determine what giant puzzles to make.
Come on, puzzle community! You're my target audience! What do I need to do next year to reach the $2500 totals and make ChipIn for Children's Charities the most amazing thing the puzzle community has done in the history of history? (Or is that even possible? The puzzle community is kinda sorta a niche, and not a rich one, judging from what I've heard about puzzle competition prizes. . .)
First, solutions.
I used dice rolls on BoardGameGeek to determine the winners; more detailed results on how many entries each person got are available here, but here is a summary of the winners:
Bonus prize (Norinori 1): Joanna Cheng (prize received!)
Puzzle 1 (Shakashaka 1): Kevin Petrychyn*
Puzzle 1 (Daily Puzzle): Joseph DeVincentis* (prize received!)
Puzzle 2 (Fresh Sudoku 2): Joshua Zucker
Puzzle 2 (Daily Puzzle): Edderiofer (prize received!)
Puzzle 3 (LITS 1): Michael Shafer**
Puzzle 3 (Daily Puzzle): Bryce Herdt
Good prize: James McGowan
Grand prize: Michael Shafer
*Bryce Herdt and Matt Lahut were also accidentally awarded prizes in drawings that were set up incorrectly; I will give them these prizes nonetheless, because I already sent them excited notifications of their wins before I realized the error.
**Jeffrey Harris won this prize initially, but chose to give it to another random person because he already owns a copy of LITS 1. I have a substitute prize planned for him. . . .
Final thoughts:
Damn, only $132.98 for Jack Vasel Memorial Fund? That's enough money for me to make puzzle 601 giant, but that's it. I was looking forward to much more momentum than this. (Sanctuary Home for Children received $206, and Child's Play Charity received $237.95.) I refuse to leave things off on such a low note – next year, I'm going to host ChipIn for Children's Charities II, and retain my same $2,500 goals! But what do I need to do to get there?
The sad reality is that I'm too small for the bigger charities to spend time promoting; Tom Vasel is a busy man, and Child's Play Charity has video game marathons that raise money far in excess of my meager goal. As for Sanctuary Home, I'm not really sure.
I think one thing I should do next year is mooch of Mario Marathon. They have a system where you can set up a donation widget on your site, and it tracks which donations came via your site. If I take advantage of this system, people can donate to Child's Play via the marathon using my link, and I'll have a record of their donation to determine how many prize entries they get. (As a bonus, they can win Mario Marathon prizes, too!) This money won't be added to the ChipIn widget, but I can compute the sum of two amounts manually for the purposes of donation incentives such as the giant puzzles.
I also need to do more to facilitate offline donations; PayPal seems, to my vast surprise, not to be as ubiquitous among my offline friends as it is online (where it's just a fact of life and how every furry artist and every puzzle community person and every board game person accepts payments, pretty much). I received $25 worth of donations from offline donors, which I put towards JVMF, the charity which needed it the most. Aside from that, I only recognize one ChipIn donor as an offline friend, despite my efforts to promote the event via the bonus puzzle flier; nobody that I know offline tweeted about it or solved the puzzles, either. Abilene is the worst city for getting people involved in my online stuff; I'm going to need to get more invested in collecting offline donations and either donating them via the ChipIn or (to avoid tax complications and to allow for checks) sending these donations off directly and adding their amounts manually to the ChipIn totals to determine what giant puzzles to make.
Come on, puzzle community! You're my target audience! What do I need to do next year to reach the $2500 totals and make ChipIn for Children's Charities the most amazing thing the puzzle community has done in the history of history? (Or is that even possible? The puzzle community is kinda sorta a niche, and not a rich one, judging from what I've heard about puzzle competition prizes. . .)
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
It was an honor working with MellowMelon on this, as it was last year. If you'd like to see the solutions to the puzzles on the test, MellowMelon has released Puzzle Pack Vol. IV on his blog; it contains the 18 test puzzles, the preview puzzles, some reject puzzles, some puzzles we made afterwards for the heck of it, hints, and solutions. Altogether, there are 56 puzzles, of which 30 are mine and 26 are his. I made a lot of 7x7's at MellowMelon's request to give new solvers bite-sized puzzles to chew on, so it's not like my quality outshines his quality. Or does it?
I especially hope my readers enjoy puzzle IV.9 from the pack; while I won't be allowed to post big puzzles on my blog for quite some time, IV.9 is a 20x36 classic puzzle that I believe a sufficiently-skilled solver will find very rewarding.
I especially hope my readers enjoy puzzle IV.9 from the pack; while I won't be allowed to post big puzzles on my blog for quite some time, IV.9 is a 20x36 classic puzzle that I believe a sufficiently-skilled solver will find very rewarding.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
I posted this link on my twitch.tv channel while I was doing my Super Mario World race; now I'm posting it on my blog for everyone else to see!
This PDF file contains information about ChipIn for Children's Charities (information which you might already know), plus a bonus Dominnocuous puzzle for your solving pleasure; solve the Dominnocuous, and you'll be eligible to win a small bonus prize! As the PDF also explains, you can also be entered to win this prize by tweeting about the contest and @mentioning me, or by donating as little as 99 cents! Get to work, readers! :)
This PDF file contains information about ChipIn for Children's Charities (information which you might already know), plus a bonus Dominnocuous puzzle for your solving pleasure; solve the Dominnocuous, and you'll be eligible to win a small bonus prize! As the PDF also explains, you can also be entered to win this prize by tweeting about the contest and @mentioning me, or by donating as little as 99 cents! Get to work, readers! :)
Saturday, November 3, 2012
As mentioned a few weeks ago, dethwing has offered to donate $1 for every minute under 2:30:00 in which I can beat Super Mario World during a 96-exit race which is happening today (up to $30). Since then, another reader has offered to match this donation to each charity, effectively quadrupling dethwing's generosity! That means I have $120 worth of charity donations riding on my ability to control Mario. Of course, it's not too late for someone else to increase the stakes if they would like. . .
As incentive for all of my logic-puzzle-loving readers to watch me play Super Mario World on my twitch.tv channel, during the race, I will give instructions on how you can win a copy of Norinori 1 by Nikoli! Note that the race has been re-scheduled for approximately 8:00 PM Eastern. That's about 6 and a half hours from the time of this post!
As incentive for all of my logic-puzzle-loving readers to watch me play Super Mario World on my twitch.tv channel, during the race, I will give instructions on how you can win a copy of Norinori 1 by Nikoli! Note that the race has been re-scheduled for approximately 8:00 PM Eastern. That's about 6 and a half hours from the time of this post!
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