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Forseti wrote:

Lastly, there's the situation where a big cell borders a cluster of 2 adjacent small cells along one of the cluster's long borders. This puzzle needs you to count that as an illegal 2x2 square (technically it's a 2x3 square), and the assumption is a bit less obvious to arrive at.

Agreed. It's odd that the large squares are counted as 1 square long for some of the rules (number of blocks around a clue, and to not inherently violate the 2x2 block restriction), yet they are counted as 2 squares long for the 2x2 block rule when two other 1x1 squares are involved. And this is not clear in the rules at all. This puzzle is otherwise straightforward, so you can figure out what the rules have to be, it just does not seem to be consistent with the current rules description.

Number: Puzzle #2692
Genre: Tapa
Author: anurag.sahay
Appeared at: October 29, 2011

I like the logic in this one. I don't think it's as difficult as advertised but it was fun to solve, especially the lower left. There is a uniqueness clue there that can be used to make it slightly easier.

Edit: meant left, not right

Agreed, really enjoyed all of the implied polyominoes.

There is only one solution, and it follows quickly without trial and error. Remember that every square must be lit by some light. If you are finding multiple solutions, I bet that they satisfy the numbers and no two lights can see each other, but that there is some square somewhere that is not lit. I make that mistake too often... I try to be good about marking unlit squares and known non-lamp squares with the dash... It makes it very clear when there is an unlit and unlightable square somewhere.

I didn't find any guesswork necessary. There was a clear logical path. Nice puzzle. The shape of the puzzle may contribute to the difficulty. And now it is at 2* which seems appropriate.

Nice one. Was this supposed to be an entry for mathgrant's contest?

Wow, fascinating. And happy birthday!

anurag.sahay wrote:

it does not use the "the same shape cannot be used again" (or "fitting a set of shapes" as forseti calls it)property

Not quite true. If you allow duplicate shapes, there is a second solution, so the rule is needed. The point is made that it's not prominent in the puzzle, but truthfully I was just going for visual design with this one.

Thanks.

The puzzle was designed to fit the theme of the 5th anniversary contest (although the idea came to me a few weeks too late). The range was supposed to be 6-11 to represent the years of PuzzlePicnic, but unfortunately, with these clues, that does not have a unique solution without too many tweaks... and other configurations of the clues did not work out so well because of the issues with the symmetry constraint. However,<spoiler> with the range of 6-10, there is only one solution and no tweaks were needed. I wanted to change the puzzle as little as possible. It's not really accurate to say that having an unused upper range is pointless, because the puzzle would be a little easier if the range were given as 6-9, and has multiple solutions with the 6-11 range. This isn't the only Heterocut puzzle on the site that does not use the whole range. If a polyomino of every size from the lower range to the upper range were a Heterocut requirement, this puzzle using the range 6-11 would have a unique solution.</spoiler>

Number: Puzzle #2772
Genre: Panorama
Author: gmk
Appeared at: August 5, 2011

Very nice puzzle. The logical path is clear but not too obvious.

I have this issue in Firefox 3.6 but not in Internet Explorer 8. So to edit the solution I hop on IE 8... I have no problem updating the puzzle itself in Firefox, so this seems odd.

Very cool design! Congratulations on your victory!

Maybe no way around this, but I've noticed this issue when I'm on a "puzzlepicnic.com" address for one part of the site (say, the forum), and "www.puzzlepicnic.com" for the other (say, the puzzles). So if I click a link for a puzzle at "www.puzzlepicnic.com" while in the forum as "puzzlepicnic.com", it will appear that I have logged out. So then I just change the URL and it still has me as logged in. Not sure if this could be related to this particular issue or if it is separate.

Number: Puzzle #2741
Genre: Staircases
Author: Term
Appeared at: June 12, 2011

Nice puzzle

I liked the design of this one, especially the way the staircases interact.

Number: Puzzle #2399
Genre: Sum Thing
Author: Jfo
Appeared at: January 10, 2011

Nice design. I found this one much more difficult than the rating. Is there a trick to this one that I missed? Wound up using a lot of trial and error.