I just had my first
puzzle
published at the Grandmaster Puzzles
website. Give it a try.
I've really been impressed by the puzzles published at
gmpuzzles.com. They do a great job of showcasing how much more
interesting a logic puzzle can be when it's hand-crafted by a puzzle
designer, rather than computer generated. I've also enjoyed learning
many new kinds of logic puzzles, and decided that I wanted to try my
hand at composing some puzzles of my own.
My first published puzzle is a Nanro puzzle, which is a puzzle type I
only recently discovered. In a typical Nanro puzzle, the solver is
presented with a grid that is segmented into regions of various shapes
and sizes, with some of the cells labeled with numbers. The goal is to
label additional cells with numbers so that all of the labeled cells
form a single connected group, (with no 2x2 square of cells fully
labeled). Additionally, within each region there must at least one
labeled cell and the number(s) within a region must be equal to the
number of labeled cells within that region. (That is, a region may
contain one 1 or two 2s or three 3s, etc.) Finally, no two occurrences
of the same number can appear adjacent to each other across a region
boundary.
OK. So, I'll be the first to admit that the ruleset of Nanro isn't the
most elegant. The rules can't be captured as succinctly as those of
that other puzzle, ("no repeated numbers in any row, column, or
region"). Fortunately, the solving experience is smoother than the
description of the rules.
Most puzzles at gmpuzzles.com have some sort of "theme". Often there's
an interesting visual presentation. Almost always there's a
well-designed "solving path" of logical deductions that can be fun to
discover. The idea is that there's something creative that goes into
each puzzle that that distinguishes it from something
computer-generated. And that creativity usually translates to a more
interesting experience for the solver.
For this particular puzzle, the theme I wanted to explore was a
"clueless" puzzle. That is, my puzzle contains a grid segmented into
regions as typical for Nanro, but it doesn't include any initial
numbers in the presentation. So that's something unique I think (as
far as I have seen of Nanro at least). I'm not sure how successful I
was at exploring the theme in this puzzle. Hopefully it's an
interesting puzzle to solve, but I am a bit nervous that I'm bringing
down the average quality of puzzles at gmpuzzles.com with this one.
I hadn't seen it prior to composing my puzzle. But before mine was
published I found this spectacular
Nanro
by the inimitable Prasanna Seshadri. It's not entirely clueless, but
as close as possible, (just one given number), but it thoroughly
explores some of the ideas that my puzzle just touches
briefly. Prasanna's puzzle has a really striking presentation that
translates to a fun solving path. And it's obviously something that's
been generated by hand not computer-generated, (at least given the
state of the typical bland computer-generated puzzle today). So that's
a great example of what gmpuzzles is all about and the standard I'll
be aiming for with future puzzles.
So if you're interested in logic puzzles, take a look at my first
puzzle. But even more, look around at the other puzzles at
gmpuzzles.com. I doubt you'll be disappointed.