Puzzle set: 24 Hour Puzzle Marathon

I contributed one round of puzzles to this year’s 24 hour puzzle marathon in Budapest. Solvers had 100 minutes time, with a target of roughly 800 out of 1000 points for the best solvers. You can download the full booklet, or go through them individually (with a bit of commentary) below.

LITS (rules) Just a medium hard LITS to prepare for the LITS+.

lits-1

LITS+ (rules) I tried to make this a diverse set, with increasing difficulty. For both this and the following Geradeweg, I decided to put a couple of puzzles in so that getting used to the type could be worth it.

litsplus-easy-growing

litsplus-x

litsplus-snakes

litsplus-3x5 Geradeweg (rules) An easy triangle-themed one, a trickier but smaller twisted-symmetric one, a broken theme (but see the first Nurikabe), and a hard 24-themed one.

geradeweg-pyramids

geradeweg-anti
twin-gn-geradeweg

geradeweg-24

Nurikabe (rules) A small but tricky one with a broken theme (but see the third Geradeweg), and a larger one with a diagonal-pairs theme that’s the first Nurikabe I’ve constructed if memory serves.

twin-gn-nurikabe

nurikabe1

Latin Tapa (rules) This started out as a nicely themed word puzzle, but I should have known that the latin square restriction was going to make constructing one hell. I’m not sure about the type, it feels a bit overspecified, but I decided to keep it in because it’s one of the few puzzles you can just work your way through.

latintapa

Sudoku (rules) Something easy.sudoku-2

Thermo-Sudoku (rules) Something hard. I might post the original version with fewer givens at some point.

sudoku-thermo-cva-easier

Row-Kropki Pyramid (rules) Something different. The variant works quite well I think.

pyramid-kropki-1

pyramid-kropki-2

Slither Link (rules) This was added at the stage where I thought my round was long enough and maybe too tricky. Though it probably doesn’t quite qualify as easy either. Also an introduction for the following puzzle.

slither-easy

Liar Slither Link (rules) Another one from the hard category. Probably my favourite in the set. Second least solved with two solvers.

slither-liar

Tightfit Skyscrapers (rules) Unfortunately I had to break the symmetry in the clues, though to start out the inherent asymmetry of the grid interacts with the symmetric clues nicely.

skyscraper-tightfit

Double Back (rules) S-theme (the plain 3×5 S is not possible in a Double Back puzzle).

doubleback-S

Word Loop (rules) Some real word puzzles, finally! This is the puzzle I wrote that solver for. That’s right, don’t try to prove it unique.

wordloop-colors
Word Search (rules) More words. The gods of Crawl.

wordsearch-crawlgods

Curve Data (rules) Pentomino theme. And the only puzzle that no-one solved. I wonder if anyone tried?
curvedata-pento
Slalom (rules) Something standard for a change. It accidentally came out quite pretty.
slalom3Compass (rules) Two easy puzzles, and very different. I really like the puzzle type.

compass-easycompass-12

4 thoughts on “Puzzle set: 24 Hour Puzzle Marathon

  1. Nikolai

    I liked the Curve Data very much. Took me about five minutes to stumble onto the idea and then about five more to see exactly how it must be implemented. I can easily imagine how it could seem unsolvable if you don’t see the trick, though.
    On to the other puzzles…

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  2. Nikolai

    I’ve been working my way through this set at the speed of a puzzle or two a day, and everything that I’ve solved thus far has been awesome :) In particular, I absolutely loved the Liar Slitherlink (and I don’t remember seeing na bcravat gung fcnaf sbhe yvarf before). Thank you!

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