All 16 entries tagged Nurikabe

Friday Puzzles #79

We’ve not had a Nurikabe puzzle for a while. I claim this is a medium, but it might really be a hard. The reason for this is that the solving path is logical enough and I don’t want to be putting off some of my readers who do love a good Nurikabe put don’t want to dip their toes into a “hard” puzzle. Give it a bit of perseverance and you will get there in the end…

Anyhow, not the worst puzzle I’ve ever done, and perhaps this was indeed the right outlet after my rather rushed talk on Wednesday. Enjoy!

#104 Nurikabe – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 19 Nov 2010 01:49 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Nurikabe |  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 #63

There was a neat little trick I put in last week’s generally well received nurikabe puzzle that I’ve decided to play with a bit this week too. I haven’t really had time to turn this one up to 11, but this at least remains a difficulty level above from your standard 10×10 size puzzle.

Edit: This version slightly modified from what appeared on Friday

#077 Nurikabe – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 30 Jul 2010 13:14 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Nurikabe |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #62

It’s been a while since I’ve done a nurikabe puzzle, although I seem to recall that I always seem to have a bit of a moan about how my nurikabe aren’t quite up to the highest standards. This, as opposed to something like my Masyu puzzles which I believe are as good as anything bar juno. It’s a similar story here – this puzzle has quite a nice “solving flow” to it, but it’s not quite as polished as I think it could be – which is not to say I didn’t give it my best shot! Nevertheless, I think this is a pretty nice idea, and will certainly have you scratching your head for at least a moment.

Interestingly, I’ve seen my traffic drop off a little bit in the last couple of weeks, which coincides with the end of the Warwick term. I’ll be keeping going throughout this summer period, but for now, enjoy!

#076 Nurikabe – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 23 Jul 2010 01:33 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Nurikabe |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #52

Well, I’ve made it through a week going at a rate of a puzzle a day. Let me tell you it’s pretty hard going, and I have big respect for MellowMelon for going as long as he did at that rate. I’m now only 2 weeks behind where I’d like my indexing to be – and so you can look forward to a couple more puzzles coming between now and next week. As an added bonus, I’ve seen my weekly traffic increase somewhat. Although I can’t be quite sure whether this is entirely because of the increased rate of publication, bearing in mind the potentially new audience I mentioned my site to at the WSC [And yes, that report IS coming!!!].

One thing I’ve found is that the stricter deadline made my creativity a little forced, and that was definitely the case yesterday, where the nurikabe – as a solve – was pretty lame. When will designers learn that disguising messages into their puzzles doesn’t please anyone? Anyhow, I initially couldn’t make my mind up whether this was a medium or a hard difficulty puzzle, but I’ve gone for hard to be on the safe side. Enjoy!

#062 Nurikabe – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 28 May 2010 12:58 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Nurikabe |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #51

Today’s entry gets an entirely new classification of (ridiculously) easy – for reasons that are (ridiculously) apparent. I must admit this was a pretty self-indulgent exercise that probably rewards me the creator far more than you the solver. All I’ll add is you’re best off solving this in MS Paint – but – Why Oh Why have I coloured in some of the clues?!

#061 Nurikabe – rated (ridiculously) easy

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 27 May 2010 17:59 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Nurikabe |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #35: bonus

Another one of those entries where I post a really lazy puzzle on a Friday, get embarrassed after looking back on it, and give things a second crack in an attempt to atone.

The magic “square” is more apparent now, although as I’ve said I’ve had to cheat and use a couple of 5’s in the middle. Enjoy!

#043 Nurikabe – rated easy

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 15 Mar 2010 18:51 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Nurikabe |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #35

Ok, so I’m a bit pressed time, so only a little nurikabe puzzle to play with today. I was going for a magic square, initially with rotational symmetry, but that was too much. I could probably flip that 6 the right way up, and get things looking a bit more square with a bit more time, but that’s life I’m afraid. There’s still a couple of subtleties to think about whilst solving this!

#042 Nurikabe – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 12 Mar 2010 15:50 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Nurikabe |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #33

What’s this!? A Friday Puzzle with out a ton of baggage being thrown out of the pram? And didn’t I promise you some more sudoku puzzles in preparation for the 2nd round of the UK’s online WSC qualifier? Well I did round 1 in an unspectacular time, and was informed the much bigger second round has to be done by Sunday. I can’t be arsed to churn out an entire two hours test worth of sudoku in a week. I should probably get on that soon, because I’ve just realised there’s potentially a fairly easy way to sabotage the efforts of someone you don’t like much.

Besides, you are probably bored of sudoku now anyway? I don’t blame you. Here’s a pretty hard Nurikabe instead. I should probably warn you at this stage that in trying to focus on the visual clock-face aspect of the puzzle, the quality of the solve began to suffer. Not that it’s not bad or anything, but it definitely falls short of perfection. Errr…I mean, enjoy!

#039 Nurikabe – rated hard

[Click for a bigger image]

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10

: 26 Feb 2010 14:32 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Nurikabe |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Friday Puzzles #26

Today I’m a little tired, having stayed up far too late last night discussing the merits of what a championship should and shouldn’t be with Thomas Snyder. The discussion became almost tediously technical – e.g. if a championship’s “goal” is to find the “best participant”, then we’d better have a sound definition of what “best” really is, before attempting any sort of statistical analysis of whether a particular format really does find the “best participant”. I claim that no championship can reasonably hope to have that “goal”.

Anyhow I don’t wish to carry on that discussion here, I merely want to excuse my laziness: being tired means that I’ve had to take a little inspiration again, rather than come up with anything properly original. Any puzzle lover should be made aware of MellowMelon’s (aka Palmer Mebane) blog – an incredible site where he puts out some high quality logic puzzles on a daily basis. I can’t claim to have had a go at all of them, since there are only so many hours in a day but I have to say I’m hugely impressed.

One such gem is this nurikabe puzzle: http://mellowmelon.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/puzzle-107/. I’ve tried to put my own (incomplete) twist on his theme today – together with a few ideas previously seen in my own puzzles. Enjoy!

#031 Nurikabe – rated hard

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009

: 04 Dec 2009 14:52 |  Tags: Friday Puzzles Nurikabe |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem