Pentominous by John Bulten

Pentominous by John Bulten

PDF

or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing and a letter entry mode.)

Theme: Multiple Choice

Author/Opus: This is the 66th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster John Bulten.

Rules: Standard Pentominous rules.

Answer String: Enter the letter associated with the pentomino occupying each cell in the marked row from left to right then in the marked column from top to bottom, separating the groups with a comma. Use CAPITAL LETTERS and ignore the black box!

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:15, Master = 10:00, Expert = 20:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for other Pentominous puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Pentominous to get started on. More Pentominous puzzles can be found in Plenty o’ Pentominous by Grant Fikes and Murat Can Tonta and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.

  • Nikolai says:

    This is an immensely impressive construction. Thank you!

    According to https://www.visca.com/regexdict/, “futility” and “infinity” are two longest pentomino words in the English language. Search for ^[filnptuvwxyz]{7,}$ to get all with seven letters or more; some fun runner-ups are “fulfill”, “utility”, and “willful”.

    I’ve known this for a few years now, but it never occurred to me to place one or both words on a grid whose area is _not_ a multiple of five and then use the holes to force uniqueness. This is a very clever way to go about it; still, even so it must have been very difficult to get the puzzle to work.

    The race for longest coherent pentomino-words-only sentence in a puzzle is on!

  • Freddie Hand says:

    Just out of interest, how would one go about becoming a contributor?

  • Michael says:

    @Freddie, you should send the puzzlemasters an email (submissions@gmpuzzles.com) when you have a puzzle you’d like to send over!

  • Freddie Hand says:

    OK thank you!

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