#132: UKPA Open '24 — Snakes & Hydras

Here’s my first contribution to 2024’s competitive puzzle calendar. I wrote a round for the UKPA Open Puzzle Tournament which happened last weekend. The round concept was based on a puzzle I made for last year’s EnigMarch.

#131: Hinge

I don’t post a lot of vanilla puzzles in existing genres here (those often end up on Puzzle Square), but I’m particularly fond of this construction.

#130: New Genre — Bramble

I’ve created a new genre and would you believe it, it doesn’t involve drawing loops or even paths. This post introduces the genre with a small example puzzle and three larger puzzles of increasing difficulty.

#129: Foggy Twilight Kurotto

After making the Twilight Kurotto for Black-out Friday, I figured these rules would also make for an interesting fog-of-war puzzle. You’ll have to solve this one in Penpa.

#128: Twilight Kurotto for Black-Out Friday

The Griddle has organised another pack of shading puzzles for Black(-Out) Friday. Last year, I made a Twilight Cave, so this year I wanted to explore a Twilight variant for a different genre. Check out the full PDF over on The Griddle, with many more excellent shading puzzles.

#127: Hexagonal Compass

I’m a little surprised that I haven’t seen Compass done on a hex grid before.

#126: Rail Pool / Masyu

This was originally going to be a co-op puzzle for two solvers. But after I had finished the puzzle, I realised that it would work much better as a hybrid puzzle for a single solver.

#125: S-Policy — "I of the Cyclops"

Unsurprisingly, I’m not the first to come up with this theme but I’m very happy with how clean both theme and solve path turned out. The “X” is… uh… a specular reflection off the eyeball. Or dirt.

#124: Chocolate Pentominana

I had the idea for this Choco Banana variant a couple of months ago, but only just got around to trying it out. The rules are probably a bit too strong and could maybe do without the diagonal adjacency part, but sometimes it’s fun to solve a puzzle that mostly flows from a genre’s “passive” rules instead of clues.

#123: Subomino

Subomino is a Fillomino variant that was invented last year by Japanese Twitter user @homerestaurant3 (to the best of my knowledge). I randomly remembered its existence today and decided to try and construct a puzzle. It’s quite tough, but the logic along the solve path has some nice variety.