Puzzle 148 – Matchstick Puzzle

I’m 20 today!

There are 20 matchsticks arranged in the shape of the word TWENTY below. Your goal is to move just 4 matchsticks to make an expression which, when evaluated, equals 20.

Like every year, it’s hard to guarantee uniqueness. I think it likely is unique, but even if it’s not I’d be interested to see what creative solutions you can come up with.  If you want to check your answer against mine, the MD5 hash of the expression I have, with no spaces, is f7195be5dde9a77f21175cd8049ed557

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P.I. HUNT 3

If you’ve been watching the countdown on the right, then you know that it’s time for P.I. HUNT number 3! That’s special because it’s the closest number to pi there’s going to be unless I decided to make a hunt for May 3rd (.1415… of the way from P.I. HUNT 3 to P.I. HUNT 4.) This year is also special because it shares the same starting date as another puzzle hunt that you should definitely also check out!

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As you know, I’m recruiting you to help with the case of Mr. Boddy’s untimely death, which we at the police force believe to be a murder. The reason I came to you is because I heard you’re used to solving unusual cases, like that recent kidnapping by Mystereo Cantos, and some of the evidence is… well… it’s not what I’m used to dealing with.

I’ve gathered up all of the suspicious materials found in the mansion after the body was found and taken and documented pictures. None of the suspects have been identified yet, so I’m tentatively giving the suspects codenames after what they left behind: Suspect Scarlet, Suspect Mustard, Suspect Green, Suspect Peacock, Suspect White, and Suspect Plum. You can see the objects in the picture below, but make sure to also click on the links to pdfs below which contain more detail about exactly what I found at the scene of the crime.

Once you find someone you believe any of the suspects in this case, send it to me at jack[dot]l[dot]lance[at]gmail[dot]com to receive some of the more confidential puzzling evidence.

Suspect Scarlet

Suspect Mustard

Suspect Green

Suspect White

Suspect Peacock

Suspect Plum

Puzzle 147 – Hashiwokekaro

This is a Hashiwokekaro puzzle. Here are the rules for Hashiwokekaro:

Draw zero, one, or two straight bridges between each pair of islands. Two bridges cannot cross, and bridges cannot cross through islands. The number on an island describes how many bridges are connected to that island. You must be able to get from any island to any other island through bridges.

Some words and then puzzle 146 – Pentominous

The puzzle at the end of this is a normal pentominous puzzle.

Hey! I haven’t made any logic puzzles in a while, or posted anything on here. If you’re curious, here are some things I’ve been doing:

I’ve started to get a lot more into game making. Logic puzzles are interesting, and while I like them, they can get very repetitive. There’s a lot of variation in the type of puzzle, and especially with the twists and new modifications you can do on them, but for me, it doesn’t even start to compare to the amount of variation you can get in making the ruleset and levels for a game.

I made Puzzlescript games called Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Season Finale. The first four can be played in any order, and you can don’t have to play each through the whole thing before moving on to the next. You should at least have played a bit of the first four before starting the last one.

The other game I made was a Unity game called INF I made for Ludum Dare in under 48 hours. It placed 12th! This was basically the first non-Puzzlescript game I ever made and released, so I was insanely happy with this.

I’ve been programming a lot, which makes sense because it could be said to be at the center of my interests, making games, math, logic, and making things.

Also, if I’m making a list of things I’ve been doing, I guess school really has to go on that list (To be honest though, I think I’m more productive about non-school-related things at times school is happening. I don’t know whether that’s because of a more regular schedule, boredom motivating creativity, or whatever else.) My winter break recently ended and this semester started a few days ago.

Speaking of days, there’s FIFTY UNTIL PI. (Using a bit of a “creative” reading order.) I’ve lastly been working on P.I.HUNT 3 a lot, which is bigger than P.I.HUNT 2, and most likely bigger than P.I.HUNT 4 as well. There are a lot of cool ideas, so I’m excited to be able to show it to you all! 🙂

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Puzzle 145 – Stostone

This is a Wednesday stostone puzzle

Puzzle 144 – Stostone

This is a Tuesday stostone puzzle.

Just in case you didn’t get enough of this type from the one trivial puzzle that doesn’t even use the fitting-together mechanic, I made a few more to post.

Also, the game Patterna just came out on Steam! It’s a game similar that I designed a whole bunch of puzzles for (I think 13 of the 70), so that’s pretty exciting! (This wasn’t the first game released on Steam that I’ve had some amount of puzzles in, because of Doors, but Doors doesn’t have very good puzzles, and I don’t recommend it. There’s another unrelated game coming out later this month too!)

 

Puzzle 143 – Stostone

This is a Monday stostone puzzle.

 

 

Stostone Rules

Stostone is a new puzzle type by Nikoli. Shade exactly one stone, a connected group of cells, in each region, such that no two stones in different regions are adjacent. If a number is in a region, it tells the size of that region’s stone. If you let the stones all fall down, they must cover exactly the bottom half of the grid.

See the example below, where the 1st grid is the puzzle, the 2nd grid is the solution, and the 3rd grid is what it looks like if all the stones fall down.

 

Puzzle 142 – Corral [In/Out]

This is a Friday corral puzzle, with the exception that cells with numbers are allowed to be inside or outside the loop. Note that cells outside the loop only see cells outside the loop, until blocked by the loop or the edge of the grid.

In case you didn’t like Wednesday’s In/Out which only contained the digit 2, I made this one so that 2’s the only digit that doesn’t appear!