Friday 9 October 2009

Friday Puzzles #18

Every so often, I suddenly stop, and think about the meanings of the words that people are using. A favourite example of mine is the word “awesome”. This is an adjective which you might apply to something that inspires awe in you. The prospect of seeing a mate down the pub isn’t exactly the sort of thing to stop you in tracks and draw your jaw irresistibly down to the floor as the sheer awe of the situation renders any other possible reaction void – and yet it’s a common enough to hear the word used in such a context. I blame Bill & Ted.

Anyhow, another such word is “inspirational”. This is commonly misused, when the careless student of hyperbole wanted the word “fine”, maybe “splendid” (though certainly not “nice”) or perhaps even they might stretch to “excellent” or “wonderful”. Well perhaps not wonderful if the thing in question wasn’t in fact quite full of wonder, but at any rate any other synonym of the word “good” would have done.

However, this week on nikoli.com, an inspirational 36×20 Masyu puzzle authored by a character with the pseudonym juno was posted. I’m sure you’d like nothing back to ram the previous two paragraphs of pedantry right down my throat, but, alas instead I shall provide you with a 10×10 puzzle that was 100% inspired by juno’s masterpiece. Enjoy!
    #022 Masyu – rated medium

All puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009.

Incidentally, I am not going to post juno’s puzzle. You’ll have to suscribe to nikoli.com to have that particular enjoyment, as well as plenty of others.

3 comments:

  1. Do all FP entries ending in a 7 get skipped?

    That definitely recaptures some of the logic juno used. I’ve never spent a lot of time writing “regular” Masyu but I always thought my approach would have to be to come up with a new pattern and then take it to 11 like juno does. I’m still really surprised nikoli.com double-popped that Masyu on the day they put up aspirin’s botsu bako masyu as well.

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  2. I think it was simply a case of my finger slipped on Friday – and for #7 I sort of grew a little tired of double-toroidal sudoku (in that incarnation). The particular numbers involved with the Penrose-style tiling just didn’t really feel nice at all and once you got past the visual impact of the puzzle it’s a fairly mundane solve – which is either far too easy or far too hard. On the other hand I have been encouraged to try my hand at a few more topologically themed sudoku in a square format…

    I don’t spend too much time writing Masyu actually – I find them remarkably easy to write, at least when they are that small. Perhaps I should try upping the size to create a more remarkable puzzle, but for now my aims for this series is to get comfortable writing some nikoli styles with the same sort of elegance as the nikoli authors, and add in any personal novelties (a couple in some nurikabe for example) in small and manageable helpings

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  3. You’re absolutely right. I’m not sure how I managed to miss that – I’ll add a quick fix to it now.

    Thanks very much!

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