zotmeister | Puzzle 49: Smullyanic Dynasty

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Puzzle 49: Smullyanic Dynasty

See Puzzle 4 for instructions. This one took me less than five minutes to make the graphic for, and over two hours to test solve and repair! It originally lacked the center given, which I put there when I realized the original solution was not unique. Thankfully, that didn't sequence-break the puzzle at all. One peculiar "feature" of this puzzle is that it has a particular weakness to metalogic, the use of which I of course discourage, but I must admit that this puzzle makes for an interesting study because of it. I challenge you to NOT use advance knowledge of a unique solution (metalogic) as a solving aid; once you've solved the puzzle, try to find the metalogic shortcut (if you hadn't already). - ZM

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Cool that you mention metalogic. I'm nowhere near the hardcore puzzlemaster you are, but the workings of metalogic in general fascinate me, and I like to pick 'em apart for their own sake. I'd almost say that figuring out metalogic is more of the fun for me than the puzzle itself.

And then I drink a toast with rice wine, for my own sake.

I'm rather fond of metalogic, metadiscussion, and the like, as could be inferred by some of my remarks to other's journal entries, most recently my "comment" (?) here. I'm just glad someone "fell for it", so to speak.

What is it with you and multilingual puns, anyway? - ZM

Welcome back, zot! Figured out the puzzle, after a few false starts due to insufficiently reading the rules. And now I'm poking around and trying to find this metalogic spot (which is all too appropriate for a Smullyanic puzzle).

metalogic spot (which is all too appropriate for a Smullyanic puzzle)

You know, you have a point there. - ZM

There are a lot of puzzles that become orders of magnitudes easier if you know that they have a unique solution. Or for that matter, merely by knowing that there is a solution at all makes many puzzles much easier.

I know many puzzle solvers (puzzle purists?) think that unique solutions should be mandatory, which I haven't really put much thought into "yay or nay", but when you include non-recreational (or they could be recreational I guess) puzzles in the mix, you don't always have that luxury. I'm thinking odd math puzzles, but any problem could be considered, I guess.

On the other note, you're mouseover of "discourage" is getting cut off on my instance of Firefox. I'm not likely to "View->Page Source" to figure out what you were trying to say.

Any puzzle that does not have a unique solution cannot be solved purely deductively - eventually there must come a point in solving such a puzzle where no further deduction is possible (and a guess therefore required) since any remaining choices can each lead to a "solution". For my own creations, I find that unacceptable.

I'm pretty sure that there's a plug-in for Firefox that fixes truncated title tags; it gets mentioned in xkcd comments a lot. - ZM

I discovered if I select the text and left-click on it, the context menu lets me choose "View Selection Source", which just shows me the page source of the selected text, allowing me to get at it much faster than installing a plugin.

With xkcd, I just read the comments, someone whines and moans, another provides the text that got cut off. Perhaps I should just install the plugin and not be quite so lazy.

Alternatively, you can right-click the link and select properties, which will pop-up a resizable window containing the tooltip.

Hmm. The mention of metalogic suggests a rule for some kind of new puzzle: either there is or isn't a unique solution, and part of the puzzle is trying to figure out whether it's unique or not.

As for this puzzle itself, I hate to say it but I'm actually confused about the instructions. The original puzzle has no blank squares; are the blanks zeroes, or unknowns? Should probably clarify since the original rules don't cover this case as far as I can tell.

- Ian / Gannon

I've actually toyed with the idea of creating a puzzle that has a self-referencing rule, such that if it would appear to have multiple solutions, some class of them would be ruled invalid, leaving only one proper solution if metalogic is considered. That is a daunting task, however, and I haven't come up with any such design that I really like yet.

Rule 4 says "When a cell has a number in it..."; rules 4a and 4b are the restrictions numbers place on the puzzle. Any cell without a number has neither of those restrictions, and therefore only has the other three rules to define its nature. In other words, they're "unknown", in the sense that you're not told what number(s) could go in there. Upon close reading, it seems that the concise wording I gave implies that every cell should be numbered, so I'll fix that. The numbered list of rules is correct. - ZM

leaving only one proper solution if metalogic is considered

Actually, Seeking Syren comes close to this, in that the node path could potentially take multiple routes, but any that are ambiguous (contain loops) are verboten. This is the closest I've come, and apparently I haven't even taken advantage of that potential yet. - ZM

hello, im new to your blog.
i was looking google up for games and got here.
i solved the sample ones (puzzle 4) in 10 min.
the one above i didnt get at first, but reading over and over the rules i found a way to deal with the blanks: if (dynasty rule) = (all knights connect to ONE group) then (i got it right) else (i failed)
you are a great puzzler (puzzle-maker?)
cheers!
kundra.

Yes, the idea is that all the knights must form a solid mass.

Thanks. I like the term 'puzzlesmith' myself; it implies a technical proficiency. - ZM

Do you still check your the same email address you used to for solutions? (3 letters @ 3 letters . 3 letters). There are several submissions I sent which have been unanswered. Nice puzzle. (and yes, I found, but chose not use, several meta-logical deductions.)

I do check that address, but to say I am behind in solution checking would be a massive understatement. They've been sitting in my inbox, waiting for me to give them some attention. Right now, it looks like Thursday evening would be good for me to try to make a dent in going through my backlog. - ZM

Hopped on a nice boat and found myself here.
Half a month old but these are really clever puzzles!
I wasted some time at work on this one before getting it.

Glad you like them! More are, as always, coming soon.

I always seem to discover (or re-discover) Canned Dogs right before it dies again. There seems to be less doujin soft coverage now, but it's still a fascinating read.

By the way, I think "Roman Cancel" is an excellent name for a blog. In fact, I'd probably think that even if I weren't a big Guilty Gear fan. - ZM

(deleted comment)

Not so much "dead" as "in a coma". I have more puzzles written and waiting, along with some more fiction and some devastating bitch sessions; I'm just trying to bring myself to actually post it all here. Hopefully, it will be sooner rather than later. - ZM

My sincere apologies for deleting the original comment - it was entirely accidental. - ZM

These Smullyanic Dynasty puzzles seem to work really well. I wonder how much less dense clue layouts can get -- there seemed to be a few unnecessary clues here, though I guess they were needed for symmetry.

Thanks - always glad to see someone enjoying my original designs.

As far as I know, the theoretical minimum density of givens in a still-uniquely-solvable grid is 1/6, since two givens can be made to define a four-by-three rectangle. Of course, that wouldn't make for a very interesting puzzle. - ZM

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Puzzle 49: Smullyanic Dynasty

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