Skip to main content

Deckardv 2024 Puzzle Night 1 Recap + Experience

 I participated in a "puzzle night" (i.e. a speed solving competition) on Deckardv's puzzle server! I didn't do that well, but here are some of my experiences.

I placed 25th overall out of around 35 competitors, which was a bit disappointing for me, but not too bad for my first puzzle night.

I felt like I had some fun solving the puzzles. There were only 5, consisting of both familiar and unfamiliar genres.

I won't show the actual puzzles here, but I'll show my thought processes and experiences for them.

Puzzle 1: Word Snakes \ Time: DNF \ Placement: 32nd

Word Snakes is a genre where you have to find words on a grid, similar to a word search. However, the words are all paths instead of just horiz./vert./diag. lines. I got thrown off by a word that wouldn't fit any other words but eventually found the correct solution. Unfortunately, I was a few seconds too late to have my completion time counted.

Puzzle 2: Gerrymandering \ Time: DNF \ Placement: 32nd

Gerrymandering is an area division puzzle similar to real-life gerrymandering. The goal is to divide the grid into regions such that a certain color wins. There may not be a 2x2 area inside of a region. At first, I was a bit stuck with finding the regions, but then a hint was given out. However, I still only managed to find the hinted region, and I wasn't even close to finishing this puzzle.

Puzzle 3: Star Battle \ Time: 10:17 \ Placement: 16th

Next was a 10x10 star battle with 2 stars. I was a little stuck on the break-in, but I did a few trials to progress. There were a few other points where I got stuck, but trial-and-error helped me here.

Puzzle 4: Masyu \ Time: 5:42 \ Placement: 9th

Up next was a Masyu that was slightly above GAPP-level in my opinion. Despite my general weakness in loop puzzles, this was the puzzle that I found to be the easiest of the night, which may explain the lower time and higher placement. There were a few minor choke points, but I used some basic logic to get past them.

Puzzle 5: Fitting In \ Time: 16:12 \ Placement: 23rd

Fitting In is an object placement puzzle where you have to place polyominoes onto a grid such that no two polyominoes touch each other or blocked cells. This puzzle has 6 hexominoes, two of which were identical. I first started with presumably the easiest hexomino to fit, but then thought that placement was wrong because it blocked a potential placement for another of the hexominoes. Ultimately, I realized that my initial placement of what I thought was "the easiest hexomino to fit" was correct. I had a few other choke points, but I managed to get the last non-DNF spot.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Look-Air Exploration

In this post, we'll take a deep dive into the rules of Look-Air, a puzzle genre by Nikoli . Examples and visuals will be included. Part I: Setting the Scene To start, here are the rules, according to this dictionary : "Shade some cells so that each orthogonally connected area of shaded cells is in the shape of a square. Clues represent how many of the five cells forming a cross around the clue (including itself) are shaded. Two shaded squares of the same size may not have a vertical or horizontal line of unshaded cells between them, unobstructed." Let's break down each of these rules step by step: 1. "Shade some cells so that each orthogonally connected area of shaded cells is in the shape of a square."     On the grid, each cell can take one of two states --- shaded or unshaded. If you know that a cell is unshaded, interfaces tend to use green, and if you know that a cell is shaded, interfaces tend to use black or dark gray. White is also used to show cells...
Post a Comment
Read more

14. Winds of Aeolus

10x1,200 Look-Air. Enjoy! Creator's time:  121:20 (2:01:20) Rules:   Standard Look-Air Rules \ Shade some cells so that each orthogonally connected area of shaded cells is in the shape of a square. Clues represent how many of the five cells forming a cross around the clue (including itself) are shaded. Two shaded squares of the same size may not have a vertical or horizontal line of unshaded cells between them, unobstructed. Difficulty:  11/14 Tall version (puzz.link)  \  Long version (puzz.link)
Post a Comment
Read more

My Difficulty Scale

 I measure difficulty using a scale different from the CTC server. The two scales are comparable. This scale is inspired by the osu!  difficulty scale and the MODS server's scale. My scale goes from 0  to 14  on normal puzzles, with higher difficulties representing harder puzzles. Yes, the scale goes above 14, but this blog rarely has a d15 or higher puzzle. Attached for each difficulty is an approximate real-life comparison in mathematics. d0 \ The easiest a puzzle can get. This difficulty is generally reserved for some joke puzzles or really easy example puzzles. These puzzles practically require no effort whatsoever. \  Real-Life Comparison: Addition and subtraction with integers d1 \ Most example puzzles fall in this difficulty. Puzzles here are almost never made as a joke, but are harder than d0 puzzles.  This difficulty includes puzzles that many people, puzzle solvers or not, will find pretty easy. \ Real-Life Comparison: Multiplication and division ...
Post a Comment
Read more