#puzzleaday

Prepare your eyes for yet another exciting #PuzzleChallenge

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It's time to get in some excitement with #PuzzleChallenge

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Nurikabe Absurdly Long Period of Time Puzzle #4: I’m Back!

After essentially a month off, I am back and going to try and get back into the groove of writing these puzzles. So here it is, nurikabe puzzle number four and the only real theme is that none of the clues are along the edge and they form sort of two reverse check marks.

If you need a reminder on how to do these puzzles read below:

For those who have never solved a nurikabe puzzle I’ll try to give an explanation of the rules. The goal is to color the grid so that every cell is either black (water) or white (land). All the black cells in the gird must form a single contiguous piece (all connected orthogonally) and not contain any pools that are 2x2 areas that are all filled with black. All the numbers in the grid must be part of white celled islands that have that number of white spaces all connected orthogonally. Every white cell in the gird is part of one single numbered island (set of white tiles).

For those who are confused, sites like this and this can help give a better sense of the rules. These sites can also have other nurikabe puzzles that you can solve interactively to get a sense of how these puzzles work. I specifically have solved many of theses puzzles at www.puzzle.nurikabe.com to get a sense of the type of solving needed for these puzzles.

Nurikabe Week(s) Puzzle #3: Two 11s, Eleven 2s and Two 1s:

Here it finally is, the third of my five nurikabe puzzles. This one is a 10 x 10 grid containing two large clues in the center and a whole bunch of small clues on the outside.

If you need a reminder of the rules read the following quote:

For those who have never solved a nurikabe puzzle I’ll try to give an explanation of the rules. The goal is to color the grid so that every cell is either black (water) or white (land). All the black cells in the gird must form a single contiguous piece (all connected orthogonally) and not contain any pools that are 2x2 areas that are all filled with black. All the numbers in the grid must be part of white celled islands that have that number of white spaces all connected orthogonally. Every white cell in the gird is part of one single numbered island (set of white tiles).

For those who are confused, sites like this and this can help give a better sense of the rules. These sites can also have other nurikabe puzzles that you can solve interactively to get a sense of how these puzzles work. I specifically have solved many of theses puzzles atwww.puzzle.nurikabe.com to get a sense of the type of solving needed for these puzzles.

Nurikabe Week(s) Puzzle #2: Filling in the Center

Because of other things getting in the way and the fact that it happened to be really hard to write this puzzle, I missed posting a puzzle for the last two days. So contrary to what I said on Tuesday I’m going to be posting this Nurikabe puzzle today and then another three Nurikabe puzzles next week (probably split Monday Wednesday Friday but who knows) in order to round out the five Nurikabe puzzles. 

Today’s puzzle is a 12 x 12 nurikabe puzzle with the theme being that all the clues are congregated towards the corners leaving the center of the puzzle completely empty. 

If you need a reminder on how to do these puzzles read the quote below:

For those who have never solved a nurikabe puzzle I’ll try to give an explanation of the rules. The goal is to color the grid so that every cell is either black (water) or white (land). All the black cells in the gird must form a single contiguous piece (all connected orthogonally) and not contain any pools that are 2x2 areas that are all filled with black. All the numbers in the grid must be part of white celled islands that have that number of white spaces all connected orthogonally. Every white cell in the gird is part of one single numbered island (set of white tiles).

For those who are confused, sites like this and this can help give a better sense of the rules. These sites can also have other nurikabe puzzles that you can solve interactively to get a sense of how these puzzles work. I specifically have solved many of theses puzzles atwww.puzzle.nurikabe.com to get a sense of the type of solving needed for these puzzles.

Since there are only going to be three puzzles next week I'm planning to start posting the solutions to the previous puzzles along with some thoughts on how I constructed them. I’ll probably do one of those a day.

Nurikabe Week Puzzle #1: As Easy as 1,2,4

I’m back from my vacation and we’re jumping right back into the swing with a week of nurikabe puzzles (also known as Islands in the stream or cell structure). Since I missed yesterday that means one day this week there will be two puzzles since I like keeping with patterns.  

To remind you of the rules I quote myself from a month ago:

For those who have never solved a nurikabe puzzle I’ll try to give an explanation of the rules. The goal is to color the grid so that every cell is either black (water) or white (land). All the black cells in the gird must form a single contiguous piece (all connected orthogonally) and not contain any pools that are 2x2 areas that are all filled with black. All the numbers in the grid must be part of white celled islands that have that number of white spaces all connected orthogonally. Every white cell in the gird is part of one single numbered island (set of white tiles).

For those who are confused, sites like this and this can help give a better sense of the rules. These sites can also have other nurikabe puzzles that you can solve interactively to get a sense of how these puzzles work. I specifically have solved many of theses puzzles atwww.puzzle.nurikabe.com to get a sense of the type of solving needed for these puzzles.

The original theme for this puzzle was to have one island each of all the numbers from 1 to 10. However I wasn’t able to fit the number 3 in so it basically seems like I can’t count. 

Star Battle Week Puzzle #5: I Give it 3 Stars

For the final puzzle of Star Battle week I decided to try and make a star battle puzzle with three stars. The result is the monstrosity above and the largest puzzle I have written so far as a 13 x 13 grid. For those who have forgotten I quote myself:

The goal In these types of puzzle is to place stars in some spaces on the grid so that each row, column and bolded region contains the indicated number of stars (in this case 3). Stars cannot touch one another not even diagonally.

Even though the puzzle seems large, the requirement of having 3 stars per region actually makes it very constrained. In fact this is almost the smallest possible grid for a three star puzzle. Because of this fact, I think the puzzle is rather easy even though it is really large.

This puzzle brings star battle week to a close, I hope you have enjoyed them and please let me know what you think.

I will actually be away on vacation next week and therefore unable to post puzzles but I have something else planned which I’ll let you know in a post over the weekend.

Star Battle Week Puzzle #4: Better Late than Never

“Today’s” puzzle goes back to the start battles with only one star in a 6 x 6 grid. Quoting myself as a reminder on how to solve this puzzle:

The goal In these types of puzzle is to place stars in some spaces on the grid so that each row, column and bolded region contains the indicated number of stars (in this case 1). Stars cannot touch one another not even diagonally.

I tried for a long time today to see if I could create a star battle puzzle in which all the regions are the same size. Since the board is N x N that means that each region would have N spaces. However, after trying multiple times over different grid sizes I just couldn’t get regions that were all the same size to work. 

In the end to get the above puzzle to work I needed to make it so there are two regions each of 5, 6 and 7 units which really isn’t special at all.

Either way, enjoy solving the puzzle and hopefully I’ll post the last of the week earlier than this one.