Best of 2014: Loop Puzzles
We had 59 loop puzzles in 2014 in several distinct genres.
One of the best Masyu puzzles was this classic “Dominoes” theme from guest contributor Murat Can Tonta:
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Another highly rated Masyu was this Deformable Masyu from Serkan Yürekli:
Three puzzles tied for the most FAVE votes and were separated based on the number of solvers to determine the order of the top 3. With 11 FAVE votes but the most solvers was a Slitherlink (Sheep and Wolves) by Thomas Snyder called “Surrounded!”:
In second, also with 11 FAVE votes, was one of the few puzzles we got from Palmer Mebane this year (almost all of which earned lots of praise). This Yajilin was actually a 2013 submission that we held onto until this year’s April Fool’s week for obvious reasons:
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And the best Loop puzzle of 2014, with 11 FAVE votes but many fewer solvers for a 30+% Fave/Solve ratio is this Castle Wall, also by Palmer Mebane:
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These best puzzles have been gathered in this PDF.
The first time around I didn’t manage to crack this castle wall, but since it’s listed among the best I gave it another try. I finally found the break-in which I used something like 4 times. Even after you get the trick, it’s still not trivial to get to the solution. Very impressive puzzle !
Edit : counted a bit better : I used the break-in 7 times bhg bs gur sbhegl gvzrf gur cnggrea bpphef