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It's time for another Logicsmith Exhibition! This time, you're tasked to compose a Slalom puzzle. This puzzle has yet to appear on Puzzle Picnic; you need to draw a loop that passes through each dotted line exactly once, and in the order dictated by the numbers. Here are more detailed rules and a simple 7x7 example puzzle, and here are more Slalom puzzles to help you understand the concept. Visit http://mathgrant.blogspot.com/2009/12/logicsmith-exhibition-3-circumnavi.html for more information on the Logicsmith Exhibition!

I agree; I actually found it to be as hard as the three-star puzzles, if not harder.

Okay, here's a 10x10 LITS that I believe is definitely one-star material: http://mathgrant.blogspot.com/2009/11/puzzle-327-tetra-firma-22.html [Edit Dec 6, 2009: This puzzle is now on PuzzlePicnic at http://www.puzzlepicnic.com/puzzle?1603 .]

The solver never needs to use the rule that all the black cells are connected, and the rule that no two congruent tetrominoes may share an edge is only used once. This is the type of LITS puzzle I would recommend for a total newbie to solve, not the one-star puzzle I mentioned above.

(I am submitting this puzzle to my studio now.)

Here's another LITS puzzle that I'd like to bring up:

http://www.puzzlepicnic.com/puzzle?1289

It's rated one-star, but I don't think it's that easy at all. I had to use some semi-advanced techniques and use trial and error twice. This is far from easy, for an LITS puzzle. Now look at this puzzle:

http://www.puzzlepicnic.com/puzzle?1515

I don't think this is a one-star puzzle, either, but it's more straightforward, and I think a beginner would have an easier time starting this one than the former.

(I just realized I haven't composed any 1-star LITS puzzles. . .!)

I'm really not that huge on Futoshiki; Nikoli once published a puzzle with similar rules, though. Like Futoshiki, each number from 1 through the grid's size must appear once in each row and each column; instead of given numbers, though, the clues come in the form of greater than/less than signs (which mean the same thing as they do in Futoshiki) and numbers between two cells (which indicate the difference between the two numbers).

I've only seen it once, and there were only 5 of them, but it was interesting.

While I'm not familiar with the grading system, when I view the statistics page for my own puzzle (as opposed to someone else's), it shows a "difficulty" thing at the bottom:

Difficulty proposed by the author (mathgrant): 0.5
Difficulty proposed by the judge (Bram): 0.44
Difficulty derived from user times (13 users) : 0.5589
Resulted difficulty: 0.4802

This means that the amount of time it takes for users to solve the puzzle plays a role in determining the displayed difficulty; sometimes the judge will place the proposed difficulty halfway between two star ratings, and let the user times determine the displayed difficulty.

I agree that #1543 is much more difficult than this one. Perhaps the puzzles having the same three-star difficulty is a weakness of having only five difficulties.

Grading the difficulty of a puzzle is a tough issue. :/

Thank you; I hope to make effective use of the larger canvas. Best of luck in making this all work out!

Nikoli frequently publishes 15x15 Numberlink puzzles; they almost always have symmetrical givens. I hope that I can manage to construct one, too, although so far, I've had enough difficulty so far composing a 10x10 with symmetrical givens.

I admit, there are times when I wish some of the other puzzle studios -- like LITS, Fences, and Masyu -- could be expanded to allow me to post 10x18 or 17x17 puzzles; Hitori, after all, goes up to 20x20.

The contest is over, and the results are here.

I think you guys might like Ripple Effect puzzles. I'm starting to get a little bit of a grasp on how to construct them, and maybe you guys can make some interesting ones, too.

http://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/ripple_effect/index_text.htm

Oh, and here's an up-and-coming puzzle genre: Suraromu (Slalom). Perhaps it, too, will be of interest.

http://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/suraromu/

I am currently running a contest on my blog where you can win logic puzzle books by solving logic puzzles (natch). If you'd like to win some puzzle books, or at least have a little fun, I definitely encourage you to enter.

Do not spoil solutions in this thread.

Sounds like a cross between Nonograms and Penta.

It's time for another Logicsmith Exhibition!

http://mathgrant.blogspot.com/2009/08/logicsmith-exhibition-3-polyominous.html

Good luck!

Might I suggest Numberlink? I've gotten mildly addicted to it lately.

Rules (courtesy of my blog)
Rules (courtesy of Nikoli)

Attention, Masyu fans! This 31x45 puzzle is possibly for you!

http://mathgrant.blogspot.com/2009/07/puzzle-250-pearls-of-wisdom-27.html