01:23 pm - Puzzles 55-8: Polyominous
First off, a reminder (or introduction if you missed it earlier): I'm running a contest right here on my journal right now that technically isn't a puzzle but is very puzzle-like in nature; it's called "Oxendo", and you can check it out with that very link.
Grant Fikes - aliases include "mathgrant", "foxger", and "President of the Zotmeister Fan Club" - some time back in 2008 got sick of waiting for me to make another Puzzlesmith contest (es having missed my first - and so far only - one back in 2005) and decided to open es own reader-submitted puzzle gallery. Since then, four more "Logicsmith Exhibition"s have graced es weblog, and in a surprisingly non-ironic manner, I have managed to miss all but one of those myself... but what is ironic about it is that I kept asking em over and over to do more of them. Especially given that four of them were for Polyominous puzzles - something I consider a specialty of mine (I'd also note that Grant just up and stole my name for them!), I have long thought this a serious problem. Although I still plan on some more Puzzlesmith contests of my own - and eventually getting around to remaking the images for the first one! - I figured I'd take care of this chunk of unfinished business first, and in style: behold, my first puzzle tetraptych!
See Puzzle 7 for instructions.Puzzle 55
Grant's first Exhibition had a lovely required givens pattern for a ten-by-eighteen grid. Even with only two entries to the original Exhibition - one of which was Grant's emself - I still was surprised no one else did what I did with the grid, something that came to mind pretty much immediately. I'm sure you'll know what I mean when you get to it.Puzzle 56
This is the one I actually managed to not miss. Grant offered up a smaller grid with a denser required givens pattern in the hopes of pulling in more submissions, and it worked. The astute may notice that my '5's here look different. That's because this image is based off of the one I originally sent to Grant, which is before I started generally using the larger digits, much less finalized my "bigalpha" font. I figured I'd leave it that way for historical purposes.Puzzle 57
The required givens pattern for es third gallery was so cluster-friendly that I figured I had to do something fairly technical in order to make the resulting puzzle actually interesting. As is hopefully immediately apparent, I'd like to think I succeeded. With apologies to Thomas Snyder, a mindgame: try to guess before you start solving whether any implied polyominoes will require a digit other than '1' or '4' :)Puzzle 58
Grant's fourth Exhibition is for a different puzzle type - a weird one I have no experience with - and I have no real interest in that at this time. However, es fifth and most recent gallery is arguably even weirder - instead of a givens pattern, the requirement was quantity-based: exactly four of each digit from '1' to '9' (in any rotationally-symmetric pattern). In the write-up, e seemed quite willing to dole out accolades for those squeezing in two-digit implied polyominoes; I have to admit to making this in response, although what exactly I'm trying to say with it I'll leave as an exercise for those who really ought to be doing something else with themselves.
Right, so now that that's done... Logicsmith Exhibition 6, please! - ZM
