Puzzle requests

If there are any particular puzzles you'd like to see in issue 16, which haven't been in recent issues, please let me know! I'm always keen to make new types, so if you have any favourites you haven't yet seen please let me know!

For example I added Tapa to issues 14 and 15 because I know it is something of a favourite of various solvers and it isn't widely published. I'd probably have tried my hand at LITS puzzles too if it wasn't for Grant's excellent puzzles in the Community section. Are there any other types I should experiment with?

Hi Gareth,

I would love to see puzzles like

Starbattle, Pentomino puzzles, No Four in a row, Thermometers.

Greetings from germany and thanks a lot for your work.

Niels

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logik66
I would love to see puzzles like
Starbattle, Pentomino puzzles, No Four in a row, Thermometers.

Excellent ideas! I've always found Star Battle puzzles my personal nemesis (it's all those jigsaw regions - I'm slow at jigsaw sudoku too) so that would be great for me to practice making anyway.

Thermometers is a good idea too, and perhaps also Magnets - I should perhaps mix in a few more classic non-Japanese puzzles. Arrows is another.

Pentomino puzzles are an interesting one. I haven't really published any shape puzzles of my own in Sudoku Xtra - the one exception of my own making is "Puzzle L" back in an early issue (2, I think). I do make some for my brain training books though - I have made lots of shape sub-division puzzles of various types. Perhaps I will bring some of those to Sudoku Xtra. I've not made any strictly pentomino-based puzzles, but given how often they show up in tournaments perhaps they would also be good practice.

And finally, No Four in a Row should I think be relatively easy to make, so perhaps I will look at making some of those for issue 16.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2011 12:31AM by gareth.

I would love to see Kuromasu puzzles appearing some time. And also arrow sudoku, no 10s sudoku and maybe non consecutive sudoku since we already have the consecutive sudoku.

I tend to do japanese puzzles mostly but would be interested in branching out a bit more if the puzzles were not too difficult to begin with - it can be a bit off putting if there are loads of types you can't get started with.

I've not come across Magnets, or Starbattles, but Deb Mohanty did some No Four In a Row Puzzles in a previous issue and they were good fun. I've also come across Thermometers and enjoyed those.

Other suggestions would be Anglers and tents and trees if they were not too difficult to make.

If you need to omit some puzzles in order to make way for new ones, my vote would be for leaving out Hitori and Hashi! I missed the Yajlin this month, and I always look forward to Nathan's labyrinth puzzles if he has any more to come.

Just a few haphazard thoughts, but please keep the old favourites in there. Great to see different things keep appearing instead of knowing exactly what is going to appear on each page as with some publications.

Xtra is still by far the best magazine out there by a long chalk!

Awesome - thanks for all the ideas! Kuromasu are great, I agree - I'd almost forgotten about them all together!

Non-consecutive sudoku is easy since it's just a consecutive sudoku without any white bars. I think by and large it's more fun with the white bars, but I could certainly try making some without them!

Anglers and 'tents and trees' are both fun puzzles - I find the latter tend to crumble quickly to trial and error since so much is forced when you make a particular move, but the first one is a little bit like numberlink so I think rather good fun.

Deb's kindly offered to do some more No Four In A Row and more Frameless Sudoku for issue 16, so if he has time to do those they'll be in there for sure - awesome! In which case I might look at some of the other types mentioned, then.

As you say, it's good to keep at least a few pages fresh each issue, so I'm always keen to hear any suggestions!

Hi Gareth

Am very interested in the suggestions above. There are some there I haven't discovered yet so would enjoy seeing them. Here's some other ideas of things I'd like to see:

More:

Variants on Samurai Stars - consecutive, odd pair, inequalities, Killers etc
Neg number killers (is a Sam Star possible?)
Labyrinth
Frameless
NumCross (Maree Cassidy one in last issue was excellent)

New ones:

Mosaic
Arrow

Less:

Hashi, Hitori, 10x10 and above, Slitherlink

Looking forward to next issue already! After comments above I am spending the evening attempting Tapas. Thanks Christine for the tip.

Sue

Well I made a start on these requests in issue 16, which features Star Battle and Thermometers, plus shape puzzles courtesy of Vexus Puzzle Design and both No Four In A Row and Frameless Sudoku courtesy of Deb Mohanty, as well as more Labyrinths from Nathan Roberts and another (partially) negative number Killer Sudoku. Maybe I'll try some of the others mentioned above for issue 17.