Broken Sign Blog
#115: World Puzzle Championship 2022
7 August 2023Last year, I had the honour to provide a number of puzzles to the World Puzzle Championship, held in Krakow, Poland, that year. There’s an embargo on those puzzles where only the WPF may publish them, but that has expired by now, so I can finally share them here as well. There’ll be a bit of a wall of text while I talk about the individual puzzles, so scroll down for a whole bunch of solving fun.
I was initially contacted because of a “New Generation” round where inventors of recent genre provided some puzzles in those genres (Rail Pool in my case). After I had made those, I was asked whether I wanted to contribute to other rounds as well and so I did, for a total of 27 puzzles across the entire event.
So let’s talk about the puzzles! Round 1 was a “welcome” round presented as a countdown. Each puzzle used a large irregular grid shaped like a number from 9 to 1 and only used clues with the corresponding value (except the 9-puzzle which was a Pentominous themed around Poland and the championship instead). The final puzzle’s grid spelled out “GLHF”. I contributed a Country Road for #8 with the extra gimmick of having only a single clued region.
The next round I contributed to was Round 3, which was in fact the “New Generation” round mentioned above. It included four Rail Pools of increasing difficulty. I’m very happy with themes in all of them, and also the logic of the last one in particular. I also made a fifth as backup, which ended up being used for the playoffs (you’ll find that further down the post).
Round 8 was a round of many many small puzzles (6x6 at most), to which I contributed a few. The Spiral Galaxies is a bit meh, and the Tents a bit gimmicky, but I think the rest are neat little puzzles.
Round 10, was a super fun round. It was initially pitched as a round of puzzles that look like they might be misprints, but we eventually settled on puzzles that defy genre conventions (ideally in a way that was permitted by a standard wording of the rules, to keep the surprise for the event). I had four puzzles in this round, and they are among my favourites in this list.
First up, we have an Aqre with regions that are not aligned with the grid. We had to tweak the tweak the wording of the rules a bit to make it unambiguous, and I had done a bunch of Aqres with regions shifted away from the grid before, so some people guessed what the gimmick of this puzzle would be. But I still managed to keep a surprise by rotating the regions by 45 degrees, something I hadn’t done before. I picked the grid size so that the grid and the square formed by the regions have almost the same size, which I think helps sell the visuals.
My next contribution to the round was a Statue Park with a pentomino bank, but where each pentomino is formed by diagonal connections. This does a few weird things, in particular shapes can seemingly touch. And one of the pentominoes poses a particular challenge, but I don’t want to spoil too much. It’s a tough puzzle, but I’m extremely happy that I managed to pull this construction off.
My third puzzle was a Yajisan-Kazusan with diagonal clues. I don’t have a ton to say about this one, it’s fine.
And my final puzzle in the round was a Country Road with only a single region but internal borders and a neat WPC theme. I also quite like how this one turned out.
Round 13 was the final regular (non-team, non-playoff) round of the event and was designed to be a “Boss Rush” filled with tough puzzles. The Castle Wall was originally written as a harder puzzle for the playoffs but ended up getting moved here instead. The Rail Pool… you’ve already seen my first attempt at making a puzzle with these rules for this round. That ended up way too hard even for this round, so I made this new puzzle instead. It still ended up being the hardest puzzle in this round, and the second hardest in the entire event.
That brings us to the playoff-like rounds. These were filled with puzzles that either were cut from other rounds, or written specifically for the playoffs without any particular guiding theme.
The first of these, round 15, was a team tournament. I think my puzzles in this one were all written specifically to fill up the playoffs. Wittgenstein Briquet is a neat genre I’ve come to like through Toketa. The question marks in the puzzle are a bit ugly (and maybe non-standard for the genre), but this being a contest puzzle, I wanted to have a bit more control over how much information the clues provide. The Heyawake is nothing special but it solves nicely. The Shimaguni is quite neat without any number clues and probably the trickiest of the bunch (but suffers from some uniqueness shortcuts, as this genre often does).
Round 16 was the Wildcard round which allowed one competitor from a lower placement to qualify for the playoffs. I only had one puzzle in this round, which was a small but tricky Fillomino.
Finally, Round 17 were the actual playoffs. My first puzzle here was a Transparent Tapa-Like Loop. I think this is the best puzzle I made for the entire event. I originally made it for the Boss Rush round and I think it’s a bit unfortunate that it got moved to the playoffs. It’s a “high concept” puzzle that I think just doesn’t fit very well into the super stressful situation of the playoffs and would’ve made more sense in a round where people go in expecting tough puzzles.
Next was a Chained Block with a cute tetromino theme. I remember putting this one together after someone’s throwaway comment on Discord along the lines of “Chained Block at WPC or we riot”.
Then we have a Double Back. I had completely forgot that I made this one, but I just solved it again and it’s actually pretty neat.
The BACA in this round is another of my favourites from the event. The theming is super clean and the logic is also quite interesting (especially the break-in).
And last but not least we have the extra Rail Pool that was cut from the New Generation round. It was meant to be one of the harder puzzles in that round, so it’s also quite tough for the playoffs (especially getting started with it). I’m quite happy with the theme and logic and extremely sparse centre.
And that’s it! There’s a lot of different genres and different kinds of puzzles here, so I hope you found something you enjoy. Looking back about a year after I made these, I’m happy to see how many of these puzzles hold up well, given I was still fairly new to making puzzles then.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of some cells which passes through each region exactly once. A number in a region represents how many cells in the region are visited by the loop. Orthogonally adjacent cells across a region border may not both be unused.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of all cells. Some boldly outlined regions contain number clues. If a straight loop segment visits any cells of a clued region, its length must match one of these numbers. Each number must correspond to at least one such loop segment. Question marks represent any positive integer, but numbers cannot repeat within a region.
Rules: Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells. Each region must contain exactly one circle and have 180° rotational symmetry around it.
Rules: For each tree in the grid, place a tent in an empty orthogonally adjacent cell, connecting to it. Tents may not touch one another, not even diagonally. A clue given outside the grid represents the number of tents in the corresponding row or column.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of some cells. The loop may not enter outlined cells or cells containing clues. White cells with outlines must lie inside the loop, while black cells with outlines must lie outside the loop. Grey cells may either be inside or outside the loop. A number represents the sum of the lengths of loop segments in the indicated direction.
Rules: Shade some cells so that the shaded cells are all connected orthogonally by other shaded cells to the edge of the grid, and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the total number of unshaded cells that can be seen in a straight line vertically or horizontally, including itself.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of all cells. Some boldly outlined regions contain number clues. If a straight loop segment visits any cells of a clued region, its length must match one of these numbers. Each number must correspond to at least one such loop segment. Question marks represent any positive integer, but numbers cannot repeat within a region.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of some cells that passes through every clue. Every straight line segment that touches a clue must have a length equal to the clue’s value.
Rules: Place each shape from the bank given outside the grid into the grid so that no two shapes share an edge and all unused cells form one orthogonally connected area. Rotating and reflecting shapes is allowed. Cells with black circles must be used by a shape, and cells with white circles must not be used by a shape.
Rules: Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Regions with numbers must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells. There may not exist a run of more than three consecutive shaded or unshaded cells horizontally or vertically anywhere in the grid.
Variant: Arbitrary Regions — The clue regions are not restricted to the grid that is being shaded. Standard Aqre rules apply, except that the numbers indicate the total shaded area in each region (assuming that each cell has an area of 1).
Rules: Place each shape from the bank given outside the grid into the grid so that no two shapes share an edge and all unused cells form one orthogonally connected area. Rotating and reflecting shapes is allowed. Cells with black circles must be used by a shape, and cells with white circles must not be used by a shape.
Rules: Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. If a cell with a number in it is unshaded, the number represents how many shaded cells are in a straight line in the indicated direction. If a cell with a number in it is shaded, the number is meaningless.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of some cells which passes through each region exactly once. A number in a region represents how many cells in the region are visited by the loop. Orthogonally adjacent cells across a region border may not both be unused.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of some cells. The loop may not enter outlined cells or cells containing clues. White cells with outlines must lie inside the loop, while black cells with outlines must lie outside the loop. Grey cells may either be inside or outside the loop. A number represents the sum of the lengths of loop segments in the indicated direction.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of all cells. Some boldly outlined regions contain number clues. If a straight loop segment visits any cells of a clued region, its length must match one of these numbers. Each number must correspond to at least one such loop segment. Question marks represent any positive integer, but numbers cannot repeat within a region.
Variant: Forgetful — The loop omits exactly one cell in each region.
Rules: Locate some 1x3 blocks in the grid which may not overlap each other or the clues. A clue represents how many of the (up to) four surrounding cells are used by blocks. All cells which aren’t used by blocks must form one orthogonally connected area.
Rules: Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Numbered regions must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells. A line of consecutive unshaded cells may not cross more than one bold border.
Rules: Shade a single group of orthogonally connected cells in each region. Shaded groups may not be orthogonally adjacent. Regions with numbers must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells. Each region must contain at least one shaded cell, and no two adjacent regions may contain the same number of shaded cells.
Rules: Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells. Two regions of the same size may not share an edge. Clued cells must belong to a region containing the indicated number of cells.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of some empty cells. Clues represent the numbers of consecutive cells occupied by the loop each time it enters the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue.
Variant: Transparent — The loop may pass through clues. Numbers count the total length of visits to the 3x3 block surrounding them.
Rules: Shade some cells such that each connected group of shaded cells contains exactly one clue. Clues must be shaded, and indicate the size of their group of shaded cells. Each group of shaded cells must be connected by a corner to at least one other, forming networks. Two shaded groups belonging to the same network may not have the same shape and size, counting rotations and reflections as the same.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of all empty cells which passes through each region exactly twice.
Rules: Shade some cells and place a letter from the range given outside the grid into each unshaded cell so that each row and column contains each letter once. A cell with a given letter may be shaded over or remain unchanged. A letter clue outside the grid represents the first letter seen in the corresponding row or column from that direction. Number clues outside the grid represent the lengths of the blocks of consecutive shaded cells in the corresponding row or column, in order.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of all cells. Some boldly outlined regions contain number clues. If a straight loop segment visits any cells of a clued region, its length must match one of these numbers. Each number must correspond to at least one such loop segment. Question marks represent any positive integer, but numbers cannot repeat within a region.