All 12 entries tagged Heyawake

Friday Puzzles #135

Back to old times eh? I apologise firstly for the delay in getting a puzzle out in the first place, and secondly for then putting out something broken.

No such issues with this one. It’s moderately monstrous. I guess what with the small size and everything, some of the intended logic might get lost in small bifurcation chains, but I want you to know, dearest reader, there is definitely an intended solution path and I am really quite pleased with it.

Enjoy, finally!

#166 Heyawake – rated hard

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All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-11

: 16 Dec 2011 18:56 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Heyawake |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #121

Again, I can only apologise for the lateness of this post. Rest assured I’ll be in the country both on Thursday evening, and on Friday, so the next post will be on time.

This Heyawake is the the culmination of a few ideas I incoherently put together at quarter to one this morning. With a larger size, I reckon this could be developed into a more “complete” puzzle, but hopefully there are a couple of interesting quirks with this one. Enjoy!

#151 Heyawake – rated medium

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All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-11

: 14 Sep 2011 11:18 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Heyawake |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #110

So details of my LMI July Puzzle test, another Nikoli slection, will be released imminently.

Also of note to puzzle fans throughout the land is news of the official UK Puzzle Championship, following on from the Sudoku Championship I happened to win the other week. The drill is much the same, you need to be registered at the UKPA forums, and you should probably take a look at firstly the instruction booklet and the discussion thread if you intend on competing. As before you can participate during any 2 and a half hour window over the weekend.

This week’s puzzle is Heyawake. It’s largely easy, but with a couple of twists thrown in for good measure. Enjoy!

#138 Heyawake – rated medium

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All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-11

: 24 Jun 2011 00:41 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Heyawake |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #96

This week’s puzzle will be slightly delayed due to a slight hitch in the uploading process…more soon…

UPDATE:

So back down to earth this week. I didn’t have access to my laptop earlier, but thankfully I was able to quickly cook up an inkscape template and save it directly to the right directory. Marvellous. Anyway, this puzzle isn’t so hard I don’t think, but you’ll want to watch your step. Did I already do a “4” themed Heyawake? If so never mind. Enjoy!

#122 Heyawake – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-11

: 18 Mar 2011 09:32 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Heyawake |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #85

Well, as we bring 2010 to end, dearest reader, I must confess that this post has been written in advance, as I am currently having almost literally a whale of a time in Berlin. I’m afraid that means that there isn’t going to be a puzzle here until sometime next week – I have had myself a nice and lazy and indulgent Christmas break at home with the family.

However I hope that everyone has enjoyed my offerings this year, be it my rather manic 7 puzzles in 7 days which heralded me branching out to writing a few new puzzle types; or perhaps my long Championship write-ups from Philadelphia in April and London in September; or the start of my “career” as a competition writer with both the (moderately disastrous) LMI Nikoli Selection and the UKPA Sudoku Championship (well done again Warren!); or perhaps one of the numerous twisted symmetry Masyu I always seem to resort to when I’ve forgotten to write a puzzle for a particular week.

Anyhow, I hope everyone has had a good 2010, and here’s to the promise of 2011 – not least the puzzle that’ll be edited in here later!

EDIT:

Here as promised is the puzzle. I will probably be revising Heyawake fairly soon, in response to an email I had from Otto Janko before Christmas – but for now, here is a nice small puzzle which should prove a bit of a tough nut to crack. Enjoy!

#111 Heyawake – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-11

: 31 Dec 2010 00:00 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Heyawake |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #75

A.K.A. Tom Collyer finishes unfinished business
A.K.A. Tom Collyer keeps his promises (at least sometimes, at any rate haha…)
A.K.A. Who needs a list of pentominos by the side of a puzzle anyway?

So this is a tough cookie. But it’s worth it, I promise you. 75% solves beautifully well, and the last quarter is a bit of a head scratch. If it’s too much of a head scratch, you can probably trust my good nature and use a few hinted shortcuts to finish the puzzle. Enjoy!

#092 Nurikabe – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

P.S. A few weeks back I eulogised about how great my Marathon puzzles for the LMI test were. As it turned out, the test was somewhat of a disaster, with a high proportion of broken puzzles and plenty of egg on my face. That said, there were still some rather good puzzles and you can probably expect to see a couple of them reposted on my blog on weeks when I’ve not got a spare mo to do a semi-decent puzzle.

Anyhow, the Heyawake was actually broken – which made me die more than a little inside because if you skipped over the contradiction the mistake implied, it was in my opinion the best of the three puzzles. I did fix it, but it’s not the same :(.

#093 Kakuro – rated hard

#094 Masyu – rated hard

#095 Heyawake – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 22 Oct 2010 00:15 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Heyawake Kakuro Masyu Nurikabe |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #64

This week’s puzzle is partly inspired by something that my good friend Jason Z (Ziti) sent to me earlier this week. It is probably also the most difficult puzzle I’ve ever made – If I used more than three ratings to classify my creations, then there’d have to be at least one or two more above “hard” to accommodate this beast. As it is, this is only “hard”. Enjoy, and give yourself a pat on the back when you’re done!

Edit: It appears the Warwick servers are playing up, so this may add to the challenge of solving the puzzle; I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about that. On the other hand, it gives me a chance to plug Sudoku Xtra – whose 9th issue is now out. Contrary to the name, this magazine features a lot of puzzles which are decidedly not sudoku, and is well worth a look. This month’s edition includes the recent (not this week’s that is) Heyawake and A/S Heyawake puzzles that have featured on this blog, as well as contributions from David Millar (who has put together a sudoku competition this weekend) and puzzling friends mathgrant and MellowMelon.

#078 Heyawake – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 06 Aug 2010 15:19 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Heyawake |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #59

So a week or two back I saw a wonderful twist on the rules of heyawake, courtesy of Grant Fikes. I’m sure the more adventurous browsers of this blog will have already come across his wonderful page, but for those who haven’t then give it a visit.

Anyhow, the twist is this: instead of numbers in the rooms indicating which squares should be shaded in, rooms are labelled with either S, A, or not at all. Rooms labelled S should have squares shaded in with 180 degree rotational symmetry (which includes no shading at all), whereas rooms labelled A definitely cannot have that 180 degree rotational symmetry. Rooms with no label can be shaded any which way you like, provided you don’t break the other heyawake rules, which if you’ve forgotten can be found on the very handy “how to play” section there on the left. Anyhow, Grant’s puzzle was fairly gentle, but here I’ve been a bit keener to explore some of the logic, and how it interplays with some standard heyawake tricks.

#070 A/S Heyawake – rated hard

I should also mention that some puzzles from a while back have been featured in the 8th edition of Dr. Gareth Moore’s Sudoku Xtra magazine. This is quite a cool magazine, and whilst I should stress that I’m receiving no commission or anything, it is definitely worth a look for all you puzzle fans – it’s packed with a lot of nice puzzles. As well as those WSC5 style puzzles I did, it features the Sudoku Islands puzzle from last Friday. So what the heck…here are a couple more. These are definitely on the easy side of things, but I do have some trickier ones in reserve that are part of my ongoing sudoku project. Enjoy!

#071 Sudoku Islands – rated easy

#072 Sudoku Islands – rated easy

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 02 Jul 2010 11:43 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Heyawake Sudoku Islands Sudoku Variants |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #47

Ooooh – a Sunday. Looking at the time, I think I’m currently drinking myself into oblivion. I’m hoping that this time I can keep myself away from the gin. Gin always gives you one hell of a hangover, and bearing in mind I’m due to be playing cricket later today that’s one thing I could be doing without.

But what better than a drunken puzzle to liven up any party!? Especially one as tricky as this Heyawake. Some careful thinking is required here to avoid tripping yourself up; indeed, that’s why I had to unfortunately break the symmetry of this puzzle to make sure everything was above board. Still, the solve itself was well worth tinkering with to get right, and so that’s why this one gets to be published. Enjoy!

#057 Heyawake – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

P.S. Incidentally, I thought the Hitori yesterday was harder than this puzzle – but a very helpful testing session with this puzzle has probably changed my mind. Thanks Agnieszka!

: 23 May 2010 00:00 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Heyawake |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #21

So perhaps things have been getting a little too mathsy; and certainly I could do with a sudoku break. So, here are a couple of easy Heyawake puzzles, themed with a small number of numbered rooms. Obviously when you focus on just one of the rules of a puzzle, then you lose some of the richness and variety, and this is the case with these two puzzles. As such they are both pretty easy. Still, I hope they still prove to have at least some fun factor coming from their novelty value.

#025 Heyawake – rated easy

#026 Heyawake – rated easy

I am wondering whether it is possible to do a Heyawake puzzle with no numbered rooms at all – at this stage I’m sort of conjecturing that with enough fiddling about with thin rooms in the corners it ought to be doable…whether that translates into any sort of a fun solve we shall have to see.

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009

: 30 Oct 2009 10:00 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Heyawake |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem