#starbattle

Let's knock out a few carts tonight. First up we have a couple pretty neat driving games, 280 ZZZAP and Dodgem.

Both control basically the same, using the paddle at the top of the joystick to steer and I have to admit that both are relatively fun to play. The over the top crashes in 280 ZZZAP are a hoot and Dodgem really just makes me want to play Monaco GP.

As far as I can recall, I've not played the arcade version of 280 ZZZAP/Midnight Racer though it does look familiar.

Next up is The Incredible Wizard, a home version of Wizard of Wor. I didn't spend much time with this one, (I think it froze a couple of times) but from what I was able to play, it handled well enough though I did get caught on some corners a few times.

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.

Star Battle Week Puzzle #3: Stars staring STAR

Puzzle number three for this week is another 2 star puzzle though this time the regions spell out the word “STAR”. As a reminder on how to solve this I quote myself from yesterday:

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 2). Stars cannot touch one another not even diagonally.

Unlike yesterday’s puzzle this one is rather easy but I still enjoyed writing it so I hope you enjoy solving it. 

Star Battle Week Puzzle #2: Double the stars, double the fun

For the second star battle of the week, I decided to try and write a two star, star battle puzzle.  This means that every row column and region contains two stars. However, two stars still cannot touch each other even diagonally which is the biggest key to solving this puzzle.

This puzzle turned out to be probably harder than I intentioned so don’t worry if you have a hard time with it. However I can assure you that there is only a single solution to this puzzle. 

Star Battle Week Puzzle #1: PUZZLE

Welcome back to a new week of puzzleaday. This week I’ll be writing star battle puzzles. As a reminder on how to do these puzzles I quote myself from earlier:

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 haven’t been able to find a good site that gives a better explanation for these types of puzzle with a good example. However this site gives an example with solution for a clearly much harder star battle puzzle that has 2 stars per row,column and region. It also gives a short history of this puzzle type for people who are interested in that.  If someone finds a better online source to help people get started with this type of puzzle let me know.

My goal for constructing this puzzle was to have some of the region shapes spell out letters to the word PUZZLE. If you look all the regions besides the two on the right side approximate the shape of one of the letters.

However this was very hard to do in order to get a solvable puzzle and in trying to get this theme to work I ended up probably making the puzzle a lot easier than I expected. So those who are used to these types of puzzles will probably solve this one very quickly.