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Deckardv 2024 Puzzle Night 2 Recap + Experience

No new puzzles? 

 Another "puzzle night" (i.e. a speed solving competition) happened on Deckardv's puzzle server. I participated and placed... 7th out of 22. Definitely better than my previous placement, and definitely higher than where I thought I would place.

This time, there were some more familiar puzzle genres, as well as a theme of "Missing Information". Again, I won't show the actual puzzles here (because I didn't make them), but I'll describe and show my experiences for them. If you want to see the puzzles, they're on Deckardv's puzzle server.

Puzzle 1: Star Battle \ Time: 9:46 \ Placement: 8th

First, there was a 10x10 star battle with 2 stars. However, five of the regions were combined into one "mega-region" containing 10 stars. It had some interesting logic with the mega-region.

Puzzle 2: Word Snakes \ Time: 18:09 \ Placement: 8th

Next up, a Word Snakes! However, there were some missing letters that formed two eight-letter words when read in order. I used similar strategies to the word snakes from the prior puzzle night, as well as some Wordle logic to figure out which letters were missing. I thought my time would result in a bottom-half position, but I was wrong.

Puzzle 3: Nurikabe \ Time: 11:29 \ Placement: 8th

Yes, I actually placed 8th in 3 puzzles in a row. Anyways, next up was a Nurikabe with some question marks representing unique numbers. I thought the puzzle would be on the easier side, but the puzzle took a bit of casework. After a hint was given, I found the correct case and completed the puzzle.

Puzzle 4: Twist Word Search \ Time: 8:31 \ Placement: 9th

Next up, an actual word search... with some missing letters. Or should I say, missing trigrams? Each of the question marks held three letters at once, each forming an animal name. Some words took quite a bit to find. 

Puzzle 5: Heyawake \ Time: 8:08 \ Placement: 6th

Lastly, a Heyawake was given out. The Heyawake had some "E"s and "O"s representing that those regions contained an even or odd number of shaded cells, respectively. I tried bashing some Heyawake puzzles before the contest because I wasn't that confident with Heyawake, but I didn't really need a lot of the techniques I learned. There was just a bit of scanning (due to the border rule), as well as a few common patterns and short bifurcation.

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