Broken Sign Blog
Puzzle #095: Gravel
11 May 2023
Today, I am very excited to finally publish Gravel. I created this genre (or an earlier version of it) exactly one year ago. But because none of the online tools support tilted grids, I never felt comfortable publishing it officially. Now Pedro was so kind to implement Gravel in the Kudamono Editor, which makes both constructing and solving Gravel a lot more enjoyable.
Puzzle #094: Guide Arrow (Loop)
3 May 2023
Guide Arrow has been one of the more popular recent puzz.link additions. Today, someone accidentally called it “Guide Loop” and thus this variant was born.
Puzzle #093: Heyasnake (Solitary)
29 April 2023
This was another of my entries to the most recent Logic Showcase. Halfway through constructing the other entry, I wondered whether there should be a restriction on how many snakes can visit a region. I ultimately decided to call this a variant because it doesn’t feel integral to the ruleset, but it results in a bunch of interesting logic that seems worth exploring.
Puzzle #092: Heyasnake
29 April 2023
This was one of my entries to Logic Showcase #46 on Puzzlers Club, “It’s supposed to be touching Dynasty”. The prompt was to take a dynasty genre and replace the “shaded cells can’t be adjacent” rule with something else. I actually submitted four puzzles with different rulesets this time, and I’m putting the two better ones on the blog. They were tied for third place.
Puzzle #091: Slitherlink (Divergent)
25 April 2023
The Cracking the Cryptic Discord server has started running some guest series of puzzles. There was a Slitherlink variant series over the last month to which I contributed this puzzle. Similar to Twopa or my previous Rail Tool, you need to find a pair of solutions such that each clue is satisfied differently in both solutions.
Puzzle #090: Coral-Like Loop
17 April 2023
I continue my exploration of [Wall]-Like Loop genres. I’m quite fond of the logic in this one. In particular, allowing unused cells outside of the loop but not inside leads to some interesting deductions I haven’t seen elsewhere.
Puzzle #089: Turn and Run
14 April 2023
This is the second puzzle from my Logic Masters qualification practice that I wanted to share and my favourite from the entire set. Turn and Run is a really interesting directed loop genre that I’d love to see more of.
Puzzle #088: Numbered Snake
14 April 2023
A month or two ago, I made a whole bunch of practice puzzles to prepare for the qualification round for this year’s Logic Masters. The puzzles were all a bit rushed, because I had to get through almost 30 genres in a couple of weeks, but there were two constructions I was particularly happy with that I’ve been meaning to put up on the blog.
Puzzle #087: Grandstands
11 April 2023
Here’s a semi-original genre. (Yes, it’s a loop genre, of course it is.) I was originally exploring this ruleset as “Canal-View-Like Loop” which is also something a few other people have looked into in the past. But (a) that’s a mouthful, (b) I thought these rules are nice enough to deserve their own name, and (c) “Grandstands” is just such a perfect fit.
Puzzle #086: Touch Slitherlink
31 March 2023
It has been brought to my attention that I have made the only Touch Slitherlink in the database right now. Here’s another to keep the first one company.