Monthly Archives: March 2006

Sudoku for programmers

March 23, 2006
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Blogger James has started a sourceforge project called “Project All About Sudoku.” His goal is to create a Java platform for which Sudoku-loving coders can create plugins. He suggests that plugins could include a sudoku creator, solver, or teacher. He freely admits that there are plenty of open source sudoku projects out there (and he’s right), what he’s hoping to do is bring them all to same Java platform. Of course, this is a monumental task but not a bad one. his biggest obstacle will be getting the word out about his project.

PanneRotto

March 22, 2006
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I’ve seen a puzzle game called PanneRotto mentioned on two blogs recently, and I thought I’d try it out. It’s similar to the puzzle game Rotation that I blogged about a couple weeks ago. The game involves rotating panels (hence the name, I think) around a board to create a specific pattern. To move the panels, you select a block of 12 and the 8 around the outside rotate counter-clockwise while the middle 4 remain stationary. Some of the panels are colored. These panels must be moved to a location with a border that’s the same color. The early stages are trivially easy as most of the panels are gray, but at about stage 3, the game actually gets challenging and becomes a much more complex version of Rotation.

Puzzles keep the mind healthy

March 21, 2006
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A study to be published by Popcap Games and Games for Health suggests that playing casual games and doing puzzles can help you brain stay healthy. The linked article quotes Games for Health co-founder Ben Sawyer as saying: “defined cognitive exercise can play a critical role in healthy aging.”

Of course, Popcap Games has a monetary interest here since they are makers of puzzle games. But from what I read in the article Games for Health seems very serious about doing research in this area and they note that they’ve really only scratched the surface. Their site is interesting; it’s essentially a blog about game related health issues. As it stands right now, I’d say that their project is very interesting, even if this latest research isn’t all that ground-breaking.

Flash puzzle games

March 20, 2006
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I’ve encountered a couple flash puzzle games on the internet that I would put in the “do things in the right order to complete the puzzle” category. The two games are Hapland (through the Dumb: The Game site) and Warbears (through Yunikos Special Storage — warning: there’s a solution on this site). The games both involve an environment that you interact with in specific ways. For example, you might click a warbear and have him throw a grenade or you might click a stick figure in hapland and have him fire a cannon. The set of things that you can do is limitted and you probably need to do them all at some point, you just have to know when. Of course, trial and error can lead you through the game, but there are often clues to indicate what you should do next and that’s where the puzzle comes in. The games are fairly diverting and should only require 15-20 minutes of your time. They remind me in some ways of an old computer game I used to play called Gobliiins.

New Treasure Hunt Book

March 19, 2006
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Found through the Huffington Post: A book called Secrets of the Alchemist Dar by Michael Stadther will be released. The book will contain clues that lead to $1.5 million in jewels hidden around the world. Apparently, Michael Stadther released a similar book in 2004 after hiding gold coins in state parks around the US. He made at least one starving grad student a rich man. There seem to be hints that the upcoming challenge may not even require you to travel to state parks as Stadther makes some cryptic comments about finding “the power of the internet.” Maybe you’ll be able to order the jewels from Amazon and have them shipped to your house.

Conslide puzzles

March 16, 2006
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From Passion for Puzzles, a new type of sliding block puzzle (in the style of traffic jam puzzles) called conslide puzzles. The key twist here is that two blocks may be connected by a bar that requires them to move together. The bars are raised to different heights so that they can pass over or under each other. It’s been implemented in flash over at puzzlebeast. The goal is to move the red block to the top left corner. It’s pretty challenging and a nice twist on a standard puzzle.

Untangling the web

March 15, 2006
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PlanarityI found a nice, simple puzzle game through Bernie DeKoven’s FunLog that’s sure to please anyone who feels a great sense of satisfaction after untangling a mass of yarn. The game is called Planarity and it involves a series of points that are connected by lines. At the start of each level, the points are arranged in the shape of a circle and the lines cross in a random pattern. The object is to rearrange the points such that none of the lines cross. Each level has more points than the last making each level increasingly difficult. Puzzles generally take a few minutes to solve (the first can probably be solved in seconds–more difficult levels take longer) and I like the fact that you can skip ahead to harder levels if you want to.

Puzzle Ring

March 14, 2006
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A blog called Gen Art Pulse has an entry about a puzzle ring that recently won an international design competition. The puzzle has only a eight pieces and it’s symmetrical, making it easy to put together. I have to admit it’s a pretty nifty design though. I particularly like that the final key piece, which holds the ring together, fits nicely over your finger so that it’s impossible for the puzzle to come apart while you’re wearing it. Maybe something like this would be appropriate as an award for the World Puzzle Competition championship team. Kinda like a World Series ring or a Super Bowl ring.

First Published Crossword

March 13, 2006
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In a previous post, I asked when the first crossword puzzle was published. Well, I’ve found the first know published crossword on the web, published on December 21, 1913. Thanks to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament site.

World Sudoku Championship

March 13, 2006
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Jana Tyvola from the Czech Republic pulled out an upset win in the World Sudoku Championship by beating out Wei-Hwa Huang who has multiple World Puzzle Championship titles under his belt. The London Times printed the final puzzle giving readers the chance to try their times against the winning time of 15 minutes. I was able to complete the puzzle but, needless to say, it took me a good deal longer than 15 minutes. I’ll include a link to it so you can take a shot.

Rotation – Puzzle Games

March 5, 2006
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I always enjoy simple flash games, so I was pleased to find out about the game Rotation through the Random Good Stuff blog.

The playing area is a hexagon containing colored marbles with faces. When you click on a marble the six marbles surrounding it all rotate counter-clockwise. The goal is to match the smaller layout to the upper right. You have a limitted number of moves to solve each level and the levels become more difficult as you advance.

Anyone who likes mechanical games, like the Rubik’s Cube, should be interested. The main problem that I see with the game is that you can’t save your progress, so you may have to replay less exciting early levels to get to the puzzle you want to play.

Heyawake

March 1, 2006
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I just found a collection of Heyawake puzzles, so I figured it would be a good puzzle to profile next. Heyawake is also called “divided rooms.” Like Mochikoro, Heyawake is a binary-determination logic puzzle where the goal is to determine which blocks in a grid are filled in and which aren’t. Unlike Mochikoro, Heyawake has a nice wikipedia page.

In Heyawake, the grid is subdivided into rectangular “rooms.” Some rooms have a number in the corner to indicate how many squares should be filled in for that room. Of course, there are a series of rules governing how the squares should be filled in, otherwise it wouldn’t be a puzzle. From the wikipedia site:

  • Rule 1: Painted cells may never be orthogonally connected (they may not share a side, although they can touch diagonally).
  • Rule 2: All white cells must be interconnected (form a single polyomino).
  • Rule 3: A number indicates exactly how many painted cells there must be in that particular room.
  • Rule 4: A room which has no number may contain any number of painted cells (including the possibility of zero cells).
  • Rule 5: Where a straight (orthogonal) line of connected white cells is formed, it must not pass through more than two rooms—in other words, any such line of white cells which connects three or more rooms is forbidden.

The aforementioned collection has plenty of puzzles of varying difficulty. It also has a nice example, in case someone is having trouble with the rules.