Grant's Review Corner: Volume 11

From the same guy who brought you Dinner With Moriarty, the murder mystery where the murderer kills himself approximately 17.7% of the time, we get this computer game from 2011. Is the author of this game any better at writing stories since 1997? Juubi and I will find out together!

The incredible thing is that this guy's company Everett Kaser Software sells a CD with 32 games on it! At least he has the sense to sell it for a mere $99.95, as opposed to Action 52's price tag of $199. If the other 30 games are the same quality as these two games, then. . . well, you can immediately surmise whether to buy it or not.

ERRATUM: Dansk is actually Danish, not Dutch. I got the first letter right, at least.

Grant's Review Corner: Volume 10

For the tenth edition of Grant's Review Corner, this one's a video instead of a bunch of text! This review tackles a game that's haunted me since the early 2000's; I've felt it necessary to finally get my opinions on this game out of the way for all to see.

Perhaps I'll review more of this company's games in the future, but for now, I think my opinion on this one summarizes my opinion on virtually all of the games.

Grant's Review Corner: Volume 9

First, an update on the previous edition of Grant's Review Corner: the puzzles I was paid to write for Kakuro Conquest have not appeared yet in almost two years. However, I have signs of life from the other end, and have decided not to post the puzzles here, and instead to wait for them to appear on Kakuro Conquest for my readers to enjoy there. (Maybe I'll post them on here if said readers want to print them out.)

My mother, a breast cancer survivor, has experienced a phenomenon called "chemo brain" where one suddenly loses a great portion of one's mental faculties after chemotherapy. While she has been intending to get her brain active again using books like this one, it seems that her hectic schedule makes this impossible without my active involvement in encouraging her and finding puzzles she can actually do. I can't really gripe about finding this excuse to spend quality time with her; I enjoy watching light bulbs go off in people's heads from time to time, and some of the simpler puzzle types in this book have provided such experiences. Maybe I'll get a finger on how to write puzzles that she can enjoy and other people can enjoy, too (which will become easier if somehow I can train her to solve harder puzzles, such as easy Sudoku puzzles). However, my mother recently got herself a different book which, after working one puzzle together, I've felt the need to vent about. Hey, blog content!

 

This is the cover of the book Mom got. On the positive side, the "for Dummies" series was responsible for helping me learn about WordPerfect and Windows growing up; I actually read those books for fun. (Ahh, WordPerfect. We thought you were the best, and then we learned that we could do word processing without even paying money with OpenOffice, my preferred tool for the job nowadays.) On the downside, we have Timothy Parker, who is famous for doing work for the lackluster game show Merv Griffin's Crosswords and, as a crossword editor, allowed puzzles with two-letter words, unchecked letters, and divided grids, which are a big no-no in crosswords (unless you have a good reason, such as a puzzle that revels in rule-breaking as its theme). I don't always agree with Eric Berlin's philosophy, but this post by him summarizes why the name Timothy Parker might make some puzzle experts cringe here. A puzzle community contact has said of him, "Timothy is to crossword editing as I would be to Hollywood-style stunt driving, if I was determined to do it my way and not listen to anyone else." I consider this about as scathing of a comment as the time I said I'd rather play Minesweeper with real-life mines while dodging durians, so despite what I'm sure are good faith efforts on Parker's part to be a good contributor to the realm of puzzles, perhaps he's not cut out for the job. (Of course, people who are bad at their job often improve, and I hope someone can point to evidence that Parker has improved significantly so I don't feel as bad sullying his name.)

Notice the lovely Target Sudoku on the cover. The goal of Target Sudoku is to place numbers 1-8 in the grid so every ring of the grid and every pair of adjacent slices contains the numbers 1-8. It doesn't take long to realize this is equivalent to solving two independent 4x4 Latin squares (not Sudoku, because there's no box constraint), which is only made challenging (at least, for the beginning solver) by the awkward presentation. There's an entire book of Target Sudoku for Dummies, which reeks to me of "we wanted to cash in on Sudoku without quality". Yawn. Also, what the hell is a 9 doing there? We also see a pedestrian word search grid and completed crossword grid (which thankfully doesn't correspond to a puzzle in the book, or else it would defeat the point of the answer key being inside the book).

After a million pages (or a dozen) about the importance of exercising the brain and some URL's to visit for the purpose, we get into actual puzzles. We start with four pedestrian "logic puzzles" of this variety:

The intended answer to this chestnut is that Alexander juggles the gold, which doesn't quite mesh with actual science. I think the better answer is for Alexander to pull out his magic map to get to the other side, as in King's Quest. All magicians have magic maps, right? (Also, if you're an idiot like me and wondering why magicians are expected to juggle, read this.) There's also that classic puzzle about two people being born on the same date not being twins because they're part of a set of triplets, which is like saying a figure isn't a quadrilateral because it's a square.

Then we get four riddles; I'm not a riddle fan, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Either I find them too easy or too hard, and without the luxury of chipping away at a solution gradually, it doesn't feel like progress comes quickly. I won't count this against the book, since it's personal taste more than being flawed.

Next are eight cryptograms. In case you forgot, here are the rules.

Two of them in particular strike me as terribly edited, having accidentally spied the solutions (thanks for not having a buffer between the last puzzle and the answers, guys!).

I think it should be a sin to publish cryptograms without ample space between lines to write one's answer. Plus, the hyphen in IGLJAQMXT doesn't belong there (if you solve the cryptogram, you'll know why), and puzzle 14 forgot the rule that a letter can't represent itself, which is glaringly obvious because my first instinct was that the single-letter word A must really be I. (A actually stands for itself.) The presence of cryptograms isn't entirely unwelcome, but the presentation is lacking.

Next are some word scrambles, and here's the one that reeks of bad editing:

First of all, this anagram goes in the wrong direction; one should start with an anagram (like CASH LOST IN 'EM) and end with a familiar phrase (SLOT MACHINES), not the other way around. That's just how they work the best. Also, note how the line breaks foul up everything and make it CASH LO STIN'EM. I didn't know STIN'EM was a word.

Next are four pedestrian word searches, about which I'll only say this: pick a font and stick to it!

And finally, here's the one puzzle my mother and I actually solved together: a crossword. I'll attempt a Rex Parker impersonation here to present my opinion.
Constructor: I assume Timothy Parker himself?

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Female parents  — many different names for a female parent (MOTHER, MAMA, MAMMY, MOMMA, MOMMY, MAMMA, MOM).

Theme answers:

• 20A: Nobel Peace Prize winner of 1979 (MOTHER TERESA)
• 29A: Really big singer? (MAMA CASS)
• 38A: Al Capp's Pansy Yokum (MAMMY)
• 43A: House owner in a Martin Lawrence comedy (BIG MOMMA)
• 51A: Term of endearment (MOMMY DEAREST)
• 29D: "____ mia!" (MAMMA)
• 38D: Maternal palindrome (MOM)

 Word of the Day: MOUE (53D: Pouty look) —

Definition of MOUE :  a little grimace :  pout / Origin of MOUE French, from Middle French — more at mow / First Known Use: 1850 (m-w)

I'm middling on these theme, since a lot of the affectionate nicknames for a mother are so similar, making MOTHER feel like an oddball in this context. Also, the theme entry MOM isn't symmetrically opposite another one, almost as though it wasn't intended as a theme entry. The grid is solid for an ordinary crossword, but this is supposed to be an "easy" crossword in a "for Dummies" book. I have no idea how much has to do with my mother having chemo brain, seeing as it took her 6 minutes to recall that the religion that Muslims follow is ISLAM (49D: Sunni religion), and she even suggested the facepalm-worthy BUDDHA. This is definitely harder than the crossword we did in Brain Games, where I probably did 8% of the grid filling-in and not 30% of it. I'm no dummy, but I had to look up MOUE to make sure it was a word. Also, do LOAMS and OMPHALOS really belong in a crossword aimed at dummies? My mother hasn't even heard of IAMBS before, and I assumed those were common knowledge. I lack the TEMERITY to task my mother with the "Tough" crossword if this is "Easy".

The cluing reeked something awful in a couple of spots; Term of endearment for MOMMY DEAREST irked me because of the obvious etymological cousinhood via the word DEAR, and I'm not fond of answers appearing in other clues, such as ONCE in 45D: "Once upon a midnight ____. . .". Please tell me I'm just a terrible judge of crosswords, and these clues are all right.

In closing, we get two Sudoku puzzles, a Tricky and a Tough (why put these in a "for Dummies" book when you don't have room for a bunch of easy puzzles for warming up, or solving techniques to aid the new solver?), and three pointless Target Sudoku.

Can you see why I'd confiscate this book to review it after solving that crossword? I think such a small book needs fewer pages of fluff ("this is why you should use your brain") and more puzzles, perhaps of a particular focus instead of paltry amounts of various types. Also, the book should probably be bigger.

In closing, please follow me on Twitter so you can retweet amazing tweets like this one.

Grant's Review Corner: Volume 8

First, an update on the previous edition of Grant's Review Corner: the puzzles I was paid to write for Kakuro Conquest have not appeared yet in almost two years. If I don't get any signs of life from the site's operators soon, expect these puzzles to be released slowly on this blog. Some of these puzzles I've written are, in my not-so-humble opinion, very good illustrations of what an artisan can do with handmade Kakuro puzzles, and absolutely need to be seen.

As longtime fans already know, updates on this blog have been more sparse due to the fact that I'd rather focus my efforts on writing puzzles for Grandmaster Puzzles and getting paid for it. However, I got an e-mail recently from someone who wants me to review their upcoming smartphone app in exchange for promoting my blog. I have to admit that this is sorely tempting, given that not only have I broadened the focus of this blog's posts to allow for said blog not to be completely dead, but if I rearrange the sidebar, I could promote Grandmaster Puzzles very heavily and direct incoming traffic there (or better yet, make arrangements with the app's publisher to promote Grandmaster Puzzles directly). Ultimately, I feel that I must entertain these kinds of offers very sparingly, as I do not want to become a forum for people to bribe me into publicizing them (they can do that on JayIsGames or something), but somehow, I don't feel like I can dismiss this one right off the bat.

Here is the text of the e-mail I got:

Grant,

We would like to feature your blog in our upcoming iPhone app, Word Morph, a turn-based social word puzzle game.

Two of our office's most recent apps gained hundreds of thousands of users within the first few days (each), and millions within weeks. We're now up to about 5 million users. We are highly motivated to duplicate this same success with Word Morph.
You will, of course, benefit most from cross-promotion after we have a substantial user base. And in return, we would appreciate a review of our app. On our side, we would benefit most from promotion upon launch, so here is what we are proposing:
Featured Blog

• The blogger chooses a day (up to 6 months from initial launch) to be featured in our Morph of the Day.
• The blogger may, depending on availability, change the day that you choose to be featured (e.g. you might have a new post that you'd like to get an extra boost of traffic to, etc.).
• The blogger may review (and even contribute to) the Morph of the Day description and picture, and verify the link's destination. 

App Mentions/Reviews
We're pretty open to ideas of how bloggers do stuff to plug Word Morph at launch. So far, we've come up with a couple ways:

• The blogger can share about us on social media.
• The blogger can do a review/shout out in a blog post (around launch).

So we aren't asking a lot, and depending on how the game takes off, the return could be big. We really hope to work with you and mutually benefit from doing so.
Please let me know if you're interested.
Thanks.

First, as a disclaimer, I must admit that experience has taught me that it's very hard for me to be enamored by the "asynchronous casual turn-based game" genre. This is just my personality; to me, it feels like far less of a grind to play a game in a single session than asynchronously over multiple ones. When I join an asynchronous game, I am committing myself to incorporating that game into my daily routine rather than just paying attention to it during a single session and then I'm no longer under any obligation to said game. Nonetheless, I will try to judge these various asynchronous casual games on whether I think they succeed at what they set out to do, and not on my own personal bias against the genre.

As an iPhone and iPad owner, it is difficult to avoid asynchronous casual games. In fact, a long time ago, I was considering writing a review of the then-new game Letterpress, which ultimately disappointed me greatly when I realized that playing with good strategy turns a game with interesting ideas into a tedious chore where my opponent Jeffrey Harris resigned rather than allow the game to continue. As we discovered on our second play, the last move advantage is so huge that in the endgame, a player who can't find a word using all of the unused letters will prefer to use none of them than to use one of them and let the opponent use up the rest and end the game. Thus, the game never felt like it was heading towards any conclusion; we just had to keep taking turns finding words among the letters we'd already used until a player's response is so weak that the opponent can afford to use one of the unused letters and still be too far ahead for the other player to catch up. Tennis is only interesting to watch because it is fast-paced; if it were slowed down to where a rally takes a few days to complete, it would be a boring grind to watch and to play. Such a game needs to be played in real time, with a 30-second time limit per word, rather than asynchronously, and ultimately, I can't help but root against the game's success.

Letterpress is far from the only asynchronous casual app I've played; I also have experience with the ubiquitous Words With Friends and its younger brother Scramble With Friends. The former is based on Scrabble, a game with deeper strategy than casual players seem to have any notion of. (As proof of this, consider how players reacted when WWF added a "cheat" you can pay for where you can be told the distribution of the unplayed letters; tournament Scrabble players keep track of this during the game on sheets of paper because it's essential to certain strategies, but casual players are more upset that their opponents can pay for this information than that Zynga's charging for information that anybody knowing the letter distribution can work out for oneself for free!) The latter is based around Boggle, with some novel enhancements such as a scoring system with some premium letters which increase the values of words using them, and an algorithm which seems to increase the number of long words in the 4x4 grid versus standard Boggle. Ultimately, I didn't like WWF or SWF enough to justify keeping them on my phone or paying for them, but they execute what they aim for well, and I feel much more inclined to recommend these games to serious gamers than to recommend Letterpress to them. I also played Dice With Buddies, which is essentially asynchronous Yahtzee; for some reason, the freemium element of buying extra die rolls didn't sit well with me, and ultimately I don't find Yahtzee as engaging as Can't Stop or To Court the King (especially when I'm severely behind), so this one was also deleted, and I don't recommend it.

But what about the game Word Morph, which I was asked to review? I found a video in the Google+ profile of the person who e-mailed me:



So, let me get this straight: this game is asynchronous in the same sense as Scramble With Friends, in that you and your opponent play the same game at separate times, but the game itself is in real time (change one word to another as quickly as possible). Already, this has more potential than Letterpress, because the game will end after 6 rounds, instead of being interminable the moment players discover actual good strategy. Believe it or not, I love it when games terminate in a reasonable amount of time, so despite not seeing the app yet, which is unreleased, I must give kudos to the designers for taking this route! And the drag-and-drop interface sounds great in theory, although I must question the Y and the Z sharing a key (do you want to change FED to FEY or FEZ?). So I guess I'd need to play the app to see whether the interface works in practice (which is superlatively important in a game of speed). The game of word ladders has proven to have staying power among casuals, though, so while I'm not sure what someone whose memorized the entire graph of connected 3-, 4-, and 5-letter words would think of this game's staying power, it's probably not an entirely crappy idea.

I might edit this post later today when I have more time to write, but yeah, casual games exist.

Grant's Review Corner: Volume 7

Today's volume of Grant's Review Corner is brought to you by Kakuro Conquest.

Wait a minute. . . "brought to you by"? What kind of BS is this? In past editions of Grant's Review Corner, the author (who would be me) has made a big stink about refusing to sell advertising space on his blog (which would be this one), and now all of a sudden we're in for some kind of advertorial? Well. . . yes and no. Let me explain what is happening here.

Last month, I was the recipient of this e-mail:

Hi Grant,

I've been following along on your puzzle blog and was wondering if you have ever considered writing about Kakuro and/or if I can be of any help to you.

My client is a website called: http://kakuroconquest.com and I am helping them do some linking.

Now I know it says that I shouldn't ask you for a link, and I promise that I am not dumb or illiterate. I am just wishing and hoping that maybe you'll change your mind.

If this didn't work, I am sorry for being a dick and wasting your time. If it did, thank you a ton.

I responded with my usual spiel:

I have gotten so many e-mails from marketing people who think they can get a free link to their stuff that it's refreshing to get an email from someone who realizes that my blog says I don't do that. Clearly you have read more of my blog than previous people who have sent similar queries, and as a reader, you have my utmost respect. I hope that my blog's content will continue provide you with brain-bending entertainment and never create any hard unpleasant feelings. :)

That being said, unless your client is willing to commission puzzles from me so I can self-promote ("Look at me, everybody, these guys paid me money to make puzzles! Go check out the puzzles I made for them, because you won't see them anywhere else!"), I'm afraid there's not much I can do to aid their quest for more hits. :)

A month later, much to my surprise, I've been paid US$126 in exchange for writing ten Kakuro puzzles for this client. Naturally, like anybody with a modicum of professionalism, I have made constructing these puzzles which I'm being paid to write a higher priority than frivolities such as constructing Monday Mutants. However, because a modicum of professionalism is all that I possess, I shall now proceed to express my feelings regarding this commission with the word "squee". Ahem.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

I would be nothing without a dose of shameless self-promotion, so part of the purpose of this edition of Grant's Review Corner is to shamelessly inform my readers that they will soon be able to find my puzzles in a place besides Sudoku Xtra and Akil Oyunlari. However, this post is just as much about Kakuro Conquest as it is about me, and as such, I will compare Kakuro Conquest's online interface with the online interfaces of two other well-known sites which offer interactive Kakuro puzzles, in an attempt to dissect what elements of the interface work and why, and whether I believe any changes are in order.

Let's start with Kakuro Conquest:

Yes, I had to look up the definition of "professionalism" in a dictionary. Don't judge me.

Props to the site's programmer for using JavaScript only and not Flash; I'm sure that readers who are allergic to Flash (maybe they're on an iPhone?) will greatly appreciate this. In fact, most of the functionality, such as being able to type numbers into the cells or check your solution, doesn't even require JavaScript; the three main uses of JavaScript are to automatically shrink the text in a cell when you enter more than one digit (see below), to show you all of the ways of reaching a particular sum when you click on it, and to let you move between the grid cells with the arrow keys in addition to with the Tab key. Thus, the site is accessible to a wide audience. Furthermore, the site sports a clean, non-distracting look. This may sound like such a small thing to praise, but I guarantee you that if the visuals were too distracting, I would demand that the client change that for the sake of everybody. Nobody is going to want to play my puzzles, or any puzzles, on an ugly website.

The ability to enter more than one candidate in a single cell is a trait which all three sites I am reviewing have in common, and it is sufficiently essential for hardcore Kakuro solvers that its presence, while a small detail, is still one I feel I must point out. On Kakuro Conquest, you simply type several numbers (like "12") into a single cell to do so. Easy! This is probably the best possible way to implement this feature in JavaScript.

Probably the only con I can think of is that there is no way to play puzzles on Kakuro Conquest without using the keyboard. This is a very minor issue, because the keyboard is usually faster anyway, and I can't think of a way to "fix" this issue without mucking up the elegance of the site using nothing more than JavaScript, but there might be situations when a solver would like to have the option of not using the keyboard, and the other two sites I'm reviewing offer a mouse-only interface in addition to keyboard functionality. *shrugs* Readers, what say you? Is this really an issue?

Now let's look at Conceptis:

The entire Conceptis website uses Flash, so if you're allergic to Flash, you're screwed. The interface is again very clean to look at, though. Conceptis Kakuro cannot be solved entirely through the keyboard; you must move the on-screen cursor with your mouse. However, you can enter numbers either by hovering your mouse over the cell and typing the number or by clicking on the cell and then clicking on the number from the numeric keypad that appears. To enter a candidate value, move your over the upper-left corner of a cell so a small box is highlighted instead of the entire cell, and then type or click as usual. When multiple candidate values are entered into a cell, they are automatically put in numerical order (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9); this might be a convenience or a curse depending on whether the solver is trying to keep track of candidates for individual cells or track possibilities for the whole puzzle.

Another very minor quibble I have is with zooming. All of the puzzles on Conceptis let you zoom in or out to make the grid cells bigger or smaller, which isn't a bad thing in itself, but I don't always like having to zoom out to make the puzzle fit the window instead of only having 90% of it fit the window. This quibble is extremely minor because there are giant Link-a-Pix puzzles which would be unreadable if they started out filling the entire window, and I'd rather zoom out of Kakuro once or twice than into Link-a-Pix many times.

Finally, a look at nikoli.com:

nikoli.com probably has the most versatile interface of these three sites, as you can play entirely with the keyboard or entirely with the mouse. To enter candidates with the keyboard, hold spacebar while typing the number; with the mouse, click one of the four corners of the cell. All puzzles start out filling the window, but you can zoom in if you'd like to make them bigger for whatever reason (maybe playing on a low screen resolution or something). The largest puzzles on nikoli.com are much smaller than the largest puzzles on Conceptis, so they're always readable on the screen; I have no issues at all with nikoli.com's zooming.

I thought I could make this post awesome today, but too many extenuating real-life circumstances have given me an incredible headache to where I can't accomplish anything intellectual such as writing words. I am truly sorry, readers. I promise next week will be better. In the meanwhile, if you have any suggestions for Kakuro Conquest that would make the site better, whether they're based on the things I've said in this post or not, please, please, please post them here. The more constructive feedback their site gets from my readers as a result of having commissioned me to write puzzles, the more likely I am to get hired again. Oh, and they'll have a better website, too. :)

Grant's Review Corner: Volume 6

At approximately 3:00 AM local time on May 2, 2011, I received this e-mail:

Hi,

[Our company] has just launched [another crappy app] - which is an unique Sudoku app for the iPhone. The way it differentiates from all other Sudoku games is the fact that it is three dimensional and brings in an unique combination of fun of spinning dials and sliding pieces with number puzzle.

We noticed that you have been writing about other Sudoku puzzles and thought this app would be of interest to you. We would request you to write a review for this app for your readers. You can download the app for Free at [link to the "Pro" version of the app that costs money, as opposed to the free demo version].

For your convenience we have also attached with this email the official press release and the screen shots of the app along with this email.

In case you need any other information to publish a review for [another crappy app], we will be glad to help you with the same.

I may need to rename "Grant's Review Corner" "Grant's Annoyed Rant Corner".

Research indicates that [another crappy app] is an adaptation of a physical puzzle that markets itself as follows:

[Crappy thing] puzzle starts where a traditional Sudoku puzzle leaves off...

...at the solution.  We took a completed Sudoku solution, and wrapped it around a three-dimensional cylinder.  Then we divided the cylinder into nine independent layers.  The challenge of the puzzle is to take those 9 layers of the cylinder, and orient them correctly, horizontally and vertically, so that you have re-created a Sudoku solution.  That means that each row, column, and block contain each of the numbers 1 through 9, only once.

The logic of the [crappy thing] puzzle is very similar to what you would use to solve a traditional Sudoku. Based on the numbers that you know, what are the remaining possibilities. In our case, however, there are no numbers to fill in, you just have to order the pieces correctly, so that it produces a Sudoku solution.

The puzzle has over 300 possible solutions, the challenge is finding one of them!

Over 300 solutions, huh? Well, on A Cleverly-Titled Logic Puzzle Blog, I only deal with puzzles with exactly one solution, so already I can tell that your app, which is essentially 10,000 different [crappy thing] puzzles for the price of one iPhone app and which advertises "1200 different solutions for each puzzle", is beyond the scope of this blog. But let's give your puzzle a try, shall we? I've been pleasantly surprised before by puzzles that seem like they'll be nothing but tedious trial and error (like IcoSoku, a toy which I got for Christmas from my parents and found easier and more enjoyable to solve than I expected).

The following puzzle is not taken from the game, but was generated using a method which I suspect to be similar to that which generated the 10,000 puzzles in the app:

125798436
129358476
132798645
135962847
139564827
167392548
165397824
173924658
195428367

The most promising strategy I see for tackling this puzzle is to focus on the Latin square aspects of the puzzle first (orienting the rings so each number appears once per row and column), and then focus on the 3x3 boxes. I will consider one ring at a time, looking at every possible orientation of that ring and seeing if any of them can be added to the puzzle thus far.

The first ring is fixed:

125798436

The second ring can be added in four ways:

125798436 125798436 125798436 125798436

612935847 476129358 293584761 358476129

The third ring increases the possibilities to six:

125798436 125798436 125798436 125798436 125798436 125798436

612935847 476129358 293584761 358476129 612935847 476129358

279864513 798645132 986451327 279864513 864513279 864513279

And so on and so on.

125798436 125798436 125798436

358476129 612935847 612935847

279864513 864513279 864513279

847135962 471359628 596284713

125798436

612935847

864513279

471359628

956482713

125798436

612935847

864513279

471359628

956482713

548167392

125798436

612935847

864513279

471359628

956482713

548167392

397824165

125798436

612935847

864513279

471359628

956482713

548167392

397824165

739246581

125798436

612935847

864513279

471359628

956482713

548167392

397824165

739246581

283671954

Okay, I'm honestly a little surprised there. The first couple rings caused the possibilities to branch out, but rings four and five killed possibilities, and from that point on, only one possibility ever existed. It could have been much more tedious.

Next step is to arrange the rings into a Sudoku puzzle where the 3x3 boxes all contain each of the numbers exactly once. Keep in mind that not only can the order of the 9 rings be changed, but the vertical dividers between the 3x3 boxes can be positioned in 3 ways (equivalently, the whole puzzle can be rotated 1/9 of a rotation left or right in respect to the vertical dividers). Assuming the vertical dividers split the first ring 125/798/436, are there two rings that, in combination with this ring, create a valid Sudoku box with the 125? It is simple to check every ring in combination with the first ring to see if the numbers don't duplicate, and if another ring will complete the box. It turns out that 864/513/279 and either 397/824/165 or 739/246/581 will do so; of these, only 739/246/581 completes all three boxes. Similar checking shows that 257/984/361 and 579/843/612 do not yield any possibilities. The remaining 6 rings can then be divided up in one way. Excluding trivial transformations such as changing the order of the three groups of rings, changing the order of rings in a group, or rotating the puzzle by 1/3 of a turn, the only solution is as follows:

125|798|436

739|246|581

864|513|279

---+---+---

283|671|954

471|359|628

956|482|713

---+---+---

397|824|165

548|167|392

612|935|847

Note that if you account for trivial transformations, then every solution has 3!*3!*3!*3!*3=3888 variations. Where did "over 300 possible solutions" and "1200 different solutions for each puzzle" come from? My best guess is that 1200 came from the 1296 solutions a puzzle has if you exclude rotations. But "over 300"? Well, technically, 3888 is over 300, but still.

Now I divulge how I created this puzzle: I took a completed Sudoku solution, wrapped it around a cylinder, and divided it into nine layers. What a surprise.

I quote the above advertising: "The logic of the [crappy thing] puzzle is very similar to what you would use to solve a traditional Sudoku. Based on the numbers that you know, what are the remaining possibilities." The above solving process was nothing like what I'd use to solve a traditional Sudoku, because in a traditional Sudoku, I don't usually need to branch and bound, and can usually fill in numbers because the numbers I already know force something to be true.

Now, to be fair, [another crappy app] does look pretty:

[another crappy app] has a far more polished presentation than [name redacted].

Maybe the puzzle is actually more fun to play by manipulating pieces than by using text like I did above. I know I'd go insane if I tried to find every possible solution to IcoSoku in a text editor, as opposed to just looking for one by playing around with physical pieces. Perhaps I am just using really good tactics, or perhaps there are in fact tons of solutions to one puzzle, making the search for a single one that much easier, but I actually like IcoSoku, somehow. I decided to give [another crappy app] a try; maybe the tactile sensation of using the touch screen would enhance the experience beyond what I experienced above, I thought. Maybe the 10,000 puzzles in the app will enhance the replay value, just as IcoSoku's millions of puzzles and tactile feel enhance its replay value.

Eight puzzles later (it turns out that the free version of the app has all 10,000 puzzles, and only differs from the paid version, from what I can tell, by having advertisements), I came to the conclusion that [another crappy app] is too much like boring rote work and not enough like a puzzle or a game for my pedestrian tastes.
I used the following strategy each and every time:

1) Align all of the 1's in a single column.
2) Without rearranging the rings, iterate the following steps, starting with the second ring:
      a) Rotate the ring one step to the left.
      b) If the 1 on the current ring aligns with the top ring, apply step 2a on the previous ring.
      c) If the current ring conflicts with the above rings, apply step 2a to the current ring.
      d) If the current ring does not conflict with the above rings, apply step 2a to the next ring. If this is the last ring, record the order of the numbers in the column with 1 on top and go to step 3.
3) Without actually rotating any rings or moving the top ring, check if the top ring can make valid Sudoku boxes with two other rings. If so, check if valid Sudoku boxes can be made using the other six rings. If so, you have solved the puzzle. Otherwise, pretend the vertical boundaries are 1/9 of a turn to the left, and reapply the process, rotating the rings if a solution is found. If no solution is found, pretend the vertical boundaries are 1/9 of a turn to the right, and reapply the process, rotating the rings if a solution is found. If no solution exists, rearrange the rings according to the order you recorded in step 2d, reset the bottom ring to align the 1 with the 1 on the top ring, and apply step 2a to the second from the bottom ring.

Gyah, I feel like I use my brain more when solving Nikoli's easiest Sudoku puzzles than when solving these. If I wanted to do rote work, I'd volunteer as a page at a library and make sure the books are in proper order by their Dewey decimal numbers -- at least I'm helping the community by doing so, not to mention that I find it relaxingly enjoyable for some reason. [another crappy app] does not look to have similar artistic or logical possibilities to Sudoku, and is therefore not something I can recommend highly. It's a one-off puzzle at the most, not something I'd want to do 10,000 times except for the sake of science.

By the way, ever since I posted my two-star review of [another crappy app] on iTunes, 13 five-star and 11 four-star ratings, all accompanied by reviews, have been posted. Looking at the other apps these users have reviewed, I believe them all to be shills. (In particular, virtually all of the five-star reviewers have also reviewed "Pay Anywhere - Accept Credit Cards" and "Phone Swipe - Credit Card Terminal", and other apps that seem to be made by the same people.) Yuck!

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!)

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. . . .

Grant's Review Corner: Volume 3

In this edition of Grant's Review Corner, I have chosen not to review a puzzle in a commercial magazine or a commercial iPhone app, but a puzzle that was sent to me in an electronic mail with the subject line "Nice Blog". Judging by the From: field, the sender is from the United Kingdom, and is either a boy or has the surname Boy (and a forename that doesn't look at all like a forename, and is in fact the name of a village in England). Henceforth, the sender will be known as Mah Boy, because he probably just wonders what Ganon's up to. (The puzzle below is © 2011 "Mah Boy"; this review is fair use.)

Hi

This is a fantastic set of puzzles I will be having a lot of fun solving these, though I would drop you a little email with a copy of a Sudoku puzzle that I drempt up (don't think there is one like this) and see what you think?

The same rules apply as normal sudoko but for this use the sums within this puzzle to help you solve it.

	+		=	4
+						-				-
			+		-		-		=
=				/		+		-		=
	x		-		=
		+		=		=		=		+
	+		-		=
		=						+		-
3	+		+		/		=
								=		=
	+		-		=

I believe that the following review will prove to be of use to all aspiring puzzlesmiths. In other words, it's an absolute must-read.

First things first: I get really tired of seeing people misspell, and hearing people mispronounce, "Sudoku". Look, everyone: it's su, like what a lawyer does, do, like what a lawyer makes, and ku, like. . . um. . . ku. Sudoko, Soduko, Suduku, and any variant other than Sudoku or the dictionary-certified sudoku (lowercase s) will get you Gannon Banned. (Two references to Ganon already? Holy crap.) While we're on the subject of words that people on the internet can't spell, an "atheist" is someone who subscribes to the belief system known as "atheism". "Atheism" is an "-ism", so an "atheist" is an "-ist". An "athiest" is someone who is the most athy. You definitely don't want to call someone athy. And speaking of "definitely". . .

Wait, wasn't there something else I was talking about? Ah, yes, the puzzle. One of the first things this puzzle reminded me of was Arrow Sudoku (1 2 3). Arrow Sudoku has fewer operations than this puzzle (addition, but not subtraction, multiplication and division), and also has fewer run-on sentences and misspellings of "Sudoku" and "dreamt". As such, I can't really assert that this Sudoku variation is terribly original, but at the same time, it's not exactly like something I've seen before, and to be honest, it's not easy coming up with an interesting puzzle with completely original rules.

But here is my first problem with Mah Boy's puzzle: the rules. One thing I've learned from over ten years of experience with the puzzle community is that veterans in said community will pick apart absolutely everything which can be interpreted in more than one possible way. In fact, The Grey Labyrinth even has a game called "Rules Game" where players take turns posting rules that have to follow themselves and all of the previous rules (for example, "All rules must bold every second word."), and a major aspect of the game is debating what precisely a rule means, and whether it's been obeyed or not. (I once tried playing a game of Rules Game with people from outside the GL, and their insistence on going by what a rule was clearly meant to mean and not what it actually means, among other things, ruined the game for me.)

The rules of this puzzle only say to "use the sums within this puzzle to help you solve it." What exactly does that mean? Do the equations have to end up being true? Do they have some other meaning than the obvious, which would allow 3 "plus" 1 to apparently "equal" 2 or 5? Maybe I'm supposed to make them false. Actually, it would have made more sense to use a "does not equal" sign and then force me to make the inequality true, so I'll assume the equations must be true.

Can an equation bend, or be diagonal? Do the equations all read from left to right or top to bottom? I'll assume that they're all straight, and read in normal reading order.

If two cells don't have an operand or equals sign between them, do they make a multi-digit number? Well, that would make the first row [digit]+[digit]=[four-digit number], which is ludicrous. I'll assume that they indicate what's not an equation, then. So something plus something equals 4. That must be 1 and 3 in some order, and to avoid duplicating 3's in the first column, 1 is on the left. Hey, this is easy!

Am I supposed to follow the order of operations (multiplication and division precede addition and subtraction), or operate from left to right or top to bottom? In row 5, we have 3+_+_/_=_. Do I add the first two numbers to the quotient of the next two, or add the first three numbers and then divide by the fourth? As a mathematician, I'm going to assume the first by default unless you specify otherwise. The quotient must be an integer for the equation to be true, and cannot be 1 (or else we'd have a repeated number in the row), so is at least 2. The second number is at least 1, and the result is at most 6, so we must have 3+1+_/_=6. The two remaining blanks can only be 4 and 2. But by the fifth column, something plus 6 must equal something else. Hmm. Maybe we operate from left to right, then.

Let's skip that equation, actually. R2C1 (the cell in row 2 and column 1) is 2, 5, or 6, and from the equation in C1, the cell below it is the sum of that and 1, so it's 3, 6, or 7. But it's not 3 or 7, so 1+5=6. Then R2C3 is 2 or 6, and is the product of the two cells below it, and is therefore 6, the product of 2 and 3, and R2C2 is 2.

1+3=4 _ _ _
+     -   -
5 2+6-_-_=_
=   / + - =
6x_-_=_ _ _
  + = = = +
_+_-_=_ _ _
  =     + -
3+_+_/_=_ _
        = =
_+_-_=_ _ _

My apologies to Mah Boy for switching from his lovely HTML table to this fixed-width ASCII grid, but it's much, much easier for me to copy, paste, and edit.

From R3, 6x_-_=_. The first blank cannot be 2 or greater, because the other numbers can sum at most to 9, so it's 1. The second blank has been established to be 2 or 3 from the equation in C3, and cannot be 3, or else the R3 equation would have two 3's, and is therefore 2. After trivially completing the two equations, we have only a 4 and a 5 left to place in the R3-4C1-3 box, and since there's a 5 in R1C2, they're trivial to place, as well, and R4C4 are R5C2 are trivially calculated. R6C2 is then obviously 4.

1+3=4 _ _ _
+     -   -
5 2+6-_-_=_
=   / + - =
6x1-2=4 _ _
  + = = = +
4+5-3=6 _ _
  =     + -
3+6+_/_=_ _
        = =
2+4-_=_ _ _

R5C3 is 1 or 5. If it's 5, then the equation becomes 14/_=_, which cannot be satisfied with the integers 1 through 6; therefore, R5C3 is 1, and R5C4 and R5C5 are 2 and 5 in some order, making R5C6 4. R6C4 is 1 via calculation. The 4 in R2 must be in R2C5 because of the 4's in the other columns, the 1 must be in R2C6, and the 3 must be in R2C4. By calculation, R1C4 is 5. To complete C4, R5C4 is 2, and to complete R5, R5C5 is 5.

1+3=4 5 _ _
+     -   -
5 2+6-3-4=1
=   / + - =
6x1-2=4 _ _
  + = = = +
4+5-3=6 _ _
  =     + -
3+6+1/2=5 4
        = =
2+4-5=1 _ _

By column 5, 4-_=_+5. Wait a minute. . . 4 minus a positive integer cannot be equal to a positive integer plus 5. Did I make a mistake somewhere, or did Mah Boy make a mistake? Let's look at his solution.

1	+	3	=	4		5		2		6
+						-				-
5		2	+	6	-	3	-	4	=	1
=				/		+		-		=
6	x	1	-	2	=	4		3		5
		+		=		=		=		+
4	+	5	-	3	=	6		1		2
		=						+		-
3	+	6	+	1	/	2	=	5		4
								=		=
2	+	4	-	5	=	1		6		3

4 minus 3 equals 1 plus 5? That's not true at all. I don't understand how such an obvious mathematical error managed to slip by Mah Boy's bright mind. Oh wait I get it. 4 minus 3 equals 1, and 1 plus 5 equals 6. You need to more clearly define what the equations are, and what the order of operations is, or else people will look at your solution and wonder why 4-3=1+5, or 1+3=4526. I personally would draw a loop around each individual equation, much like Zotmeister did with the rummy melds in his recent Heartbreaker puzzle.

See, Mah Boy, this is what happens when your rules aren't precisely clear – people like me will complete misunderstand them, and then get upset because you weren't precise. If the rules had been more precisely defined, then this would have been an easy, but 100% legitimate, logic puzzle. As it stands, though, you should be very thankful that your reviewer was civil, and didn't just say, "After you've scrubbed all of the floors in Hyrule, then we can talk about mercy!" One thing I've learned from over ten years of experience with the puzzle community is that some people can be quite ruthless when it comes to mockery.