zotmeister (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zotmeister) wrote2005-08-15 03:00 pm
zotmeister) wrote2005-08-15 03:00 pm
Substantial
I'm in the mood to make a big puzzle. And I mean BIG. Like, at least three times larger than what I've typically presented. I figure that if I'm going to start in on something that substantial, I may as well make something others are interested in solving. Rather than host a proper poll and bind myself to its results, I'll simply peruse the comments to this message, see who says what, and take it into consideration along with my own desires to choose what I construct. So what would you like to see? Oh, and make it snappy - I'll probably start work on this on Thursday. - ZM
Postscript: I have some emails to send out to those I've received puzzle solutions from. I'll get to those tonight. You haven't been forgotten♥
but I like small puzzles...
(Anonymous) 2005-08-15 07:15 pm (UTC)(link)I like small puzzles--I don't have huge objection to big complicated puzzles, but small tricky puzzles are preferred to huge straightforward ones. Things that are about Sudoku sized, if you're looking for a guideline to size.
Re: but I like small puzzles...
Since you were kind enough to share your opinion, I'll do the same. I have a few points to make in response; normally I wouldn't expound like this on a puzzle comment - there's enough expounding in my anecdotal entries - but despite this being my journal, I still feel (perhaps because I figure I have a lot of puzzle-only viewers) that my justifying myself on this is not unwarranted.
- I certainly agree that quality is superior to quantity, but when the quality is high, bring on the quantity! (Yes, you should have seen that one coming if you've been paying attention.) It is true that I will often make tough small puzzles and easy large ones, but this coming puzzle will be large and tough.
- The puzzles I've been posting here in my journal are for the most part what I'd refer to as tiny. Take Polyominous, for instance: I've posted two 9×9 [counting my sample at Wikipedia] and one 12×12, and my contest was for construction of a 6×6. I have several books of these puzzles imported from Japan, and the average grid size in one of these books is larger than 17×17, which is more than three-and-a-half times the area of a 9×9 grid. So by saying I'm making a big puzzle in comparison to what I've been presenting, from my perspective I'm really only making a puzzle of average size, if that. In fact, it makes me want to go even larger. Caveat: the type of puzzle really is a major influence on how the size is related to the difficulty. Something like Islands in the Stream or Polyominous isn't affected that much by growth; Magnetic Field would get tougher faster as the grid grows; Quadrum Quandary is a bitch enough at 9×9 and gets geometrically worse as it grows. The size of the grid will depend on the puzzle I build. If QQ wins - perish the thought - 16×16 will be far more than enough, thank you. Islands would likely be closer to 30×30.
Re: but I like small puzzles...
- I have a hardcore mentality when it comes to puzzles and games. If I feel it was worth starting something, it's worth finishing it - otherwise my time was wasted and I didn't let myself learn anything. There's no satisfaction in giving up. If I need to put a puzzle on pause and pick it up again later, so be it. If I make a mistake and can't seem to easily fix it, I bite the proverbial bullet and give my Mars Plastic a good exercise. Yes, I erase the whole thing and start over if that's what it takes. (It doesn't take as long the second time through. Not even close.) If I successfully solve a puzzle after an escapade like that, it's that much more rewarding to finish, and I'll be that much less likely to repeat that mistake. I told you all that so that I could tell you this: when I build a puzzle, I build it so that I'd enjoy it if I were solving it. If I think it's lame, I trash it and rebuild. I have hardcore solvers in mind when I compose; it would appear that you are not one of them. I would hope to inspire you to greater appreciation of the art and build your skill, but I'm not out to please everyone and am willing to accept that you're not my target demographic if that is how it must be. (That quality/quantity thing goes for a lot of things for me, including people.) I don't mean to offend; I'm simply being honest and practical.
- It's one puzzle. Out of fifteen. And it will likely be another fourteen puzzles after that one that I make another substantial one, unless I have a Change of Heart (why I capitalized that is left as an exercise to the reader). I'm not announcing a policy change; I'm just giving a friendly warning that I'm not holding back on the next one. I can't let myself be restrained all the time.
I am making Puzzle 15 a size that I would consider substantial. Others may well think it enormous and want to skip it, and that's their prerogative. But if there's just one person that perseveres, solves it, and enjoys the experience, then I'm beyond satisfied. I'm not trying to please everyone - the most popular puzzle on the planet, the crossword, is something you'll likely never see me make. I'm trying to satisfy my own creative urges here in my journal, and I'm honored that others appreciate my work. I figured it was about time that they got to see what I'm really capable of with a sizeable canvas. From your description, this coming puzzle is not for you; I'm thinking of the person that figures it takes longer to get the puzzles printed out than it does to solve them and is looking for something actually worth the time and effort. I want to make one worthy of a professional. I want to prove it to myself. It just so happens that I'm willing to share. If you don't care to experience it yourself, well, as I said on day one, just ignore it and maybe it'll go away. - ZM
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Question--are you dead set committed to puzzles of the same format? I'll loosely define this 'format:' "A grid of squares; the object of which is to use the rules given in order to determine the contents of each individual square." (I took a page out of your book o' conciseness).
I personally would love to see puzzles that shift slightly towards creativity and against process, towards induction and away from deduction, and so forth. Some examples:
'Brain teasers' such as the Green Glass Door or one of the many situational puzzles wherein the solvers attempt to divine what happened.
Puzzles to the tune of "The woman in the red hat dislikes the baseball fan; Mr. Jones disagrees" where the object is to match the person with the hat with the sport with the pet (for example). On a side note, I was toying with the idea of creating a type of puzzle like that specifically for you as a present, one that required knowledge of the gaming club members to succeed.
Riddles of nearly any type.
I imagine you may dislike these, since the first and third are strongly against the grain of what (I perceive) your preferences are. Still, you asked for opinions, so I thought I would post one.
In any event, I look forward to seeing the next puzzles.
Jim
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I thought of a puzzle that is PRECISELY the kind you would love... why not invent a battlefield, a la Disgaea, and challenge your readers to cause an optimal geo panel chain reaction? Even without the roleplaying elements, the geo panel system would make for delightful puzzles.
Jim
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I'm actually glad you asked about puzzle types. I could mention that The One Ring doesn't fit that format you gave, but that'd be splitting hairs. I have really only one cardinal rule regarding what I'm willing to present here: Only present that which is patently unambiguous. If I can't precisely detail instructions, or if there are multiple solutions, then they aren't the type of puzzles I'm looking to present. Contests may be a different story - the idea there is to come up with the best solution, and there's a great deal of variety in what 'best' can mean - but my puzzles should be rigorous.
Let me give you a glorious example:
Puzzles Without Rules
It is a crying shame that that site is no longer updated. Jeb Havens is a genius. Many of his puzzles are quite elegant, and some I think are even perfectly fair, but as much as I admire his handiwork, that route is one I do not choose to take. I don't wish to invite interpretation to the art of the puzzle; lateral thinking problems don't give you a way to check your answer yourself. I don't want anything necessary hidden from the solver that e can't deduce on es own; I wish to exercise my solvers, not stump them.
Perhaps the most imperative reason is that I want to build puzzles that anyone, given sufficient time, can find the solution to, even if they need to make guess after guess to learn why certain things don't work. Hopefully they'll learn from those guesses and not need to make them in the future.
To be honest, I have a contest in the planning that is not entirely deductive - it'll be a mixture of classic puzzles and the sort of trickery that runs prevalent in alternate reality gaming. But as I noted, that's a contest.
With that established, I don't feel constrained to grids and lattices - those just happen to be easy to illustrate. The magazine-style "logic problem" (the second example you list) is not beyond me; my problem with the format is that many composers of those problems (and their editors) don't have a sufficient grasp of logically rigorous English authoring to actually build such a puzzle properly and unambiguously. I have the required skill, and point to my concise puzzle instructions as proof♥, but there's another issue: culturalism. Such a puzzle requires understanding more than just the rules; it requires understanding of every given clue. I have lots of Japanese puzzle books, but I can't solve their logic problems any more than they could solve mine, and that bugs me. They'd have to translate a lot more than a rules list, and hope that the translation is perfectly rigorous, something VERY difficult to achieve. If I build a logic problem into a story - like I did once or twice in the Sanctum days - then I may very well do just that and present it here, as at that point it'd be worth it, but if it's just a puzzle, I can probably do better.
I do have some gridless ideas. I was toying around with a card-game puzzle; my brother suggested an origami-themed puzzle. I also have board-game ideas, which have a grid but that things move around on (I actually made one of those for my last Sanctum Puzzler). Your Disgaea-themed idea would fit into that nicely. And then there's the intuition-based grid-filling puzzle archetype, which I'd be ecstatic to present if I ever figure out how to prove a given solution is unique... - ZM
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