Doctor’s Note – Week 3
Today is probably the last day of the MIT Mystery Hunt and I’ll be puzzled out for the next few days, but I wanted to offer another Doctor’s Note on the state of Grandmaster Puzzles. After Jack Bross’s frightening guess of Thermo-Sudoku and Star Battle last week, I’m sure he can divine — when I say my favorite (non-Snyder) Sudoku variant, and my favorite “underrepresented” puzzle are coming this week — what you’ll see throughout the next six days.
After three weeks of puzzles, I wanted to hear your initial impressions on the puzzle difficulties here. Do you appreciate seeing a mix from “Monday” to the end of the week? Are some puzzles too trivial or too hard? Obviously some solvers will be in a very different part of their learning curves so I hardly expect to be able to satisfy everyone.
Finally, I wanted to thank Bram de Laat this week for helpful insight on the origins of Star Battle that have been added to that rules page. In addition to Bram, Wei-Hwa Huang and Nick Baxter have been particularly helpful in some of the research I’ve needed for puzzle origins and a thank you goes out to both of them as well.
— Dr. Sudoku
Hmm. I feel like I’m being put on the spot, so…
Arrow Sudoku for the Sudoku variant.
Corral for the non-Sudoku (aka Cave, Bag, etc.).
There are definitely other non-Sudoku puzzle types that I think are amongst your favorites, but Corral is genuinely underrepresented, except on the USPC (whereas, say, Battleships and Skyscrapers are really not, I’d say).
Cave or Slitherlink, going by the “Art of Puzzles” graphic.
I wouldn’t be unhappy to see more Arrow Sudoku after this masterpiece last week!
My favorite puzzles this week were the Friday and Saturday ones. I really enjoy a challenge but I also know how frustrating it can feel to be up against a puzzle that just doesn’t seem to offer a way in – so I understand that you want to start off with some more gentle introductory puzzles for solvers who are still getting their feet wet. Hopefully in the long run you will find it appropriate to ‘step up’ the overall difficulty. [But maybe I shouldn’t ask for that! That star battle was hard – any harder and I’ll be eating my words.]
My guesses for next week are Corral and Killer Sudoku – but I look forward to whatever it is you hit us with. Thanks!!
Hi Thomas,
I didn’t get a chance to solve your daily puzzles until now. Great puzzles, excellent design! I really like the weekly format (hope to see Skyscrapers soon, although I expect Corral, too).
Week 1 was the hardest for me so far. In particular, while I was able to rush through #1 and #2, my solving times for the others were way above your estimates.
The Tight Fit Sudokus in Week 2 were my favorites. I never did one of those before but enjoyed them immensely. The Nurikabe specimen were easier than I expected from you, actually, but enjoyable nonetheless.
I did the puzzles of Week 3 this weekend. Actually, I disagree with your difficulty assessment of the third Star Battle (I made a mistake early on and still beat your Master time). So, basically, I was missing a very hard puzzle this week.
In general, I would love to see at least one really devilish puzzle every week. I don’t know about sudokus, but I could really need the exercise for other puzzle types 🙂
Keep it up!
RV
Hi Thomas,
I’m loving your new site. I find the variety from Monday to Sunday really good as there’s no second guessing what’s coming next! I love the theme-ing (not sure if that’s a word) of your puzzles. Although I’m sure there’s more to come could I put a request for some LITS types, please!
I’m amazed you still put out puzzles while at MIT. I certainly had no time to do anything but bang my head against puzzles from the time I got there until the time I got on a plane back to CA Sunday night (before the hunt ended, even).
I would joke that you should put out a Tomtom using finite fields but I don’t really ever want to do one of those again 🙂
For me at least, if there are puzzle types on here I don’t like, I just don’t do them, so a variety of types is good. (I still want to see another Coded Tomtom someday…)
These entries – even the “Hunt likely to end on Sunday” were written to be posted long before Hunt started. No way I’m either missing a 9 AM post or another hour of Hunt.