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Number: Puzzle #2011
Genre: Tapa
Author: anurag.sahay
Appeared at: August 13, 2010
Very nice puzzle. All the question marks make it look intimidating, but it solves very smoothly.

Number: Puzzle #413
Genre: Panorama
Author: Maarten
Appeared at: September 26, 2007
This one was really nice!

I never really got the hang of solving Panoramas. I solved a few 1* and 2* ones in the past and that was a struggle. Yesterday I decided to make a serious effort to 'crack' the genre and became so engrossed in them I solved over a dozen, spending entirely too much time doing so.

That's true of course.

->At the time I spotted it though, I had my eyes fixed on the top right quadrant of the puzzle trying to get all I could from that cluster of balls. I hadn't done anything with the bottom right yet so the 2 line segments coming up from R7C8 weren't filled in at that time. The uniquess issue topside happened to be more obvious to me at the time than the collision waiting to happen downwards.<-

It's a very, very minor clue, and, like I posted earlier, it only shows when doing things in a very specific order. It also becomes completely unnecessary about 5 seconds later. It certainly doesn't take away from the puzzle at all.

That would make it a little easier to solve through internal logic. (Or maybe it doesn't, it's tricky to judge having already solved it.)

But I do think that's preferable over having it at about the same difficulty by allowing for the meta-logic of uniqueness. It makes for a more 'pure' puzzle, but I guess that's a matter of taste.

By the way, the uniqueness clue I noticed is in a different spot and it showed when I was filling in some trivial starting moves. It probably only shows when doing things in a certain order. I'll describe it in white text:

Spoiler ->After marking the line going from R1C5 to R1C9, and the two downward line segments from R2C6 and R1C9, you can tell that R4C7 and R4C8 can't be crossed by vertical lines because there's 2 ways to link them together in the R2C7-R3C8 box.<- End spoiler

It's a totally unnecessary clue of course, but like I said in my previous post, if it's staring me in the face, it's hard to ignore.

Interesting, given that a topic about using uniqueness as a clue just resurfaced yesterday on the general forum.

This puzzle has another 'uniqueness clue' somewhere that's very blatant and hard to ignore while solving. It feels kind of stupid to look for a more 'fair' leap of logic when a uniqueness clue is staring you in the face.

Consider me interested in Mucha's closing question as well.

Number: Puzzle #1983
Genre: Heterocut
Author: anurag.sahay
Appeared at: July 30, 2010

Nice puzzle, though it took me a long, long time to finish it, much longer than most other 2 star heterocuts.

Maybe I missed something obvious, it wouldn't be the first time.

All clues are correctly given. You're overlooking something.

Edit: beaten to the punch!

I'd hardly call myself an expert in Battleships puzzles, but I can give you some solving tips that can help solve puzzles like this one. (Which is one with 16 subs and just 6 number clues, maybe the one you're referring too?)

First, try if you can determine numbers for rows and columns that don't have them. In the puzzle I linked to, you can easily determine numbers for every column. Rows are tougher, but you don't need to have them all at the start, because the column numbers will give you a lot to work with.

Also, in puzzles like this, you need to put waves in every spot that you can determine, and sometimes you need to run possibilities. For example, if you know that a row/column needs 3 subs, there's only a small number of patterns you can put them in, and there may be adjecent positions that will have waves in every case.

This site has some very skilled puzzle creators. A lot of the puzzles here require breaking with the formulaic solving approaches you can get trapped in if you're used to 'mainstream' puzzle magazines. I've become a lot more skilled at solving since I started puzzling here.

That's very much like what I did, except I went with a 24 square limit instead of 23 squares, to actually construct a solution of less than 25 squares. (That was the bonus question.

) As a by-product, I found that there wasn't a smaller one than 24.

Interesting link, and I'm impressed that a page dated februari 2007 is still being updated so promptly.

I can do it slightly smaller, just one less square.

I think I figured it out, though I should probably doublecheck. I may have dismissed some scenarios a bit too quickly.

Are you taking anwers on PM?

I never really got into skyscrapers, but with such praise for this puzzle, I had to check it out.

I'm fond of puzzles that offer very few clues. This one just came together like magic from almost nothing. Really nice!

I like posts like this, pointing me to interesting puzzles. There's just so many of them, I might never have gotten to this one if I hadn't read the above.

Love the design! Working on it right now and managed to put in a few numbers already.

This one is a bit too easy, because it seems I can only put in correct connections.

Number: Puzzle #1919
Genre: Masyu
Author: Giovanni
Appeared at: June 4, 2010