AkashG23's Puzzle Locker

This event on Deckardv 's puzzle server is similar to a puzzle night—except it's much longer, and there's only 1 puzzle per day. A total of 260 participants signed up, and due to this, most of the zones I mentioned in my post on Puzzle Night 3  are quite different. This event's zones are as follows: 1st - 3rd : Podium 4th - 10th: Purple Zone 11th - 30th: Blue Zone 31st - 75th: Green Zone 76th - 150th: Orange Zone 151st and below: Red Zone I participated and placed... well, you'll see at the very end of this post. My goal was to place in the "blue" zone or higher. Puzzle 1: Star Battle \ Time: 5:24 \ Placement: 28th The first puzzle was a moderate star battle (slightly harder than GAPP-level) with two stars per row, column, and region. Just like the last puzzle event, my puzz.link UI was in Japanese, but I still knew where most of the buttons were. After looking at this puzzle's results, I thought I would place in the blue zone most of the time, but......

help I'm having instances of girls I don't directly know randomly talking to me at uni Anyways, this genre WAS one that I thought I had invented, but if you change all the clues to 5-n, where n is the value of the clue, you basically have a Look-Air (Loop) puzzle. rip me ig But I'll still attach the example puzzle ( link ) for this genre. The solution to the example can be found here , Creator's time: 3:36.0 Rules:  Standard Look-Air-Like Loop Rules \ Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some cells. Numbers represent how many of the five cells forming a cross around the clue (including itself) contain part of the loop. Each orthogonally connected area of cells not used by the loop must be in the shape of a square. Two unused squares of the same size may not have a vertical or horizontal line of used cells between them, unobstructed. Answer check only looks for the loop. Difficulty : 6.0/14 Online interface (Penpa+)

So on 8/26/2026, I was trying to verify this puzzle before the lecture for one of my classes started. And then the professor came with a skateboard and helmet and immediately loaded up the NYT Connections for us to help solve. But I did it earlier that day and STILL decided to give hints. And when he divides the class into small groups, he has all the group names be synonymous with "Group 1" instead of something like "Group 1," "Group 2," etc. to make everyone feel like a winner!  Anyways, back to the puzzle. I wanted a 10-cell renban heart centered in the puzzle. But I can't add a 10-cell renban line because with the digits from 1-9, we're only able to add a renban lines with 9 cells. So what did I do? I added a 10th digit. And with this deficit sudoku setup, we're just throwing certain sudoku logic out the window. And yes I know a "vel" (object) means something else but in reality this puzzle is dedicated to uhhh... Vel. The one on ...

Just felt like adding this because why not. Labels under the Genres ,  Difficulties , and All Labels  categories should be self-explanatory. Puzzle Types: Connection - Involves drawing lines to form a network.  Example puzzle: Serene Bridges (17) . Instructionless  - Involves deducing the rules of a puzzle, often with an example.  Example puzzle: The practice puzzles I made for Deckardv's 3rd puzzle night . Loop  - Involves drawing lines to form a loop that may cross.  Example puzzle: Truly Simple? (28) . Numbers  - Involves filling a grid with numbers.  Example puzzle: Synergia (41) . Object Placement  - Involves placing more abstract objects on a grid.  Example puzzle: Light Up (39) . Puzzle Hunt  - A more open-ended puzzle genre; solvers often have to find the rules themselves.  Example puzzle: MIT Mystery Hunt (will add a blog puzzle here when I add one of this type). Region Division  - Involves dividing a grid in...

 So the title of this puzzle kind of looks like a cryptic clue even though I'm not trying to make it a cryptic clue (literally just look at the puzzle) This puzzle has two of the constraints from the "green" puzzle I mentioned in  Synergia (41)  (which got rated on LMD as I'm writing this lol). And this puzzle has a smile! And the thumbnail has a cat that'll probably make you happy!!! Also nothing new from uni other than trying to learn asymptote code to add graphs to my notes Creator's time: 7:43 Rules:  Normal 9×9 sudoku rules apply. Variant 1: German Whispers \ Adjacent digits along a green German Whispers line must differ by at least 5. Variant 2: Killer Cages \ Digits in a killer cage do not repeat and sum to the value in the top-left corner. Difficulty : 6.0/14 Online interface (SudokuPad)

If I had made this a few days ago this would've been a practice puzzle for a certain puzzle night-like event that I am going to post about later because as I'm writing this that event isn't over yet And also uni classes have started for me! But there's a bit of a lore moment I wanted to share --- I started taking AP Calc AB/BC about 3 years ago (HS sophomore). And I felt good about myself with this path until this random kid in my applied linear algebra (can't really say too much without leaking what uni I'm going to) started talking about how last year (?) a high school junior allegedly took this class I'm taking this semester. ok akash this is a puzzle blog not a college blog stop talking about uni stuff you're boring the people who actually want to see puzzles Creator's time: 0:17.7 Rules:  Missing Middles (2) Rules \ Find the two letters that replace the blanks for each set of letters. See the bottom of the puzzle for an example and how answer ch...