Hello, and welcome to Puzzles for Progress!
I've had the good fortune to cowrite the Logic Masters India contest Picking A Name For Our Puzzle Contest Was Harder Than The Actual Puzzles Are 2 (PANFOPCHWTTAPA 2 for short; variously referred to as PANCAKETAPA 2, PAFNUTYCHEBYSHEVTAPA 2, PANFOPCWHTsTAtuePArk*, etc.)
There were an astounding 460 participants (likely an LMI record for non-sudoku) and a top time of 11:17 for all fifteen puzzles. I'm very proud of all the puzzles we created, and so grateful to everyone who participated.
To take the contest unofficially, click here, and then simply follow the instructions! While your score won't count, you'll still get a sense of what participating in a contest feels like.
However, if you want to solve the puzzles more casually, I've formatted those created by me in normal Puzzles for Progress style below, and have also linked those not made by me.
Anyway, the puzzles by me. First we've got a difficulty 1 Star Battle, which I designed to be an introduction to the genre. It should be a fairly straightforward solve.
I also set a difficulty 1 Nurikabe, which was similarly designed to flow smoothly, repeating the same style of deduction in what I think is a really satisfying way.
Finally, I created a difficulty 2 Slitherlink for the contest. Except for some two 0s ands 3 at the bottom, every clue is in a run of four clues representing each possible Slitherlink clue from 0 to 3. I'm proud that I was able to get this aesthetic theme to essentially work without compromising logic.
The puzzles below are by other authors: David Altizio aka djmathman, Botaku, and Priyam Bhushan aka punchingcatto. The difficulty 2 Star Battle has some edits suggested by me, but the rest I just tested. I can definitely vouch for their quality, though! These puzzles are probably better than mine.
Two quick notes first: that Hidato is similar to common PfP type The King's Tour, except that 1 does not need to touch the highest digit.
Second, the rules of Statue Park, because they weren't in the Penpa links: Place all the given shapes (statues) in the grid so that they don't overlap or touch each other by a side. The shapes can be rotated and reflected. All the empty cells (lawn area) must be orthogonally connected to each other when all shapes are placed. Black circles indicate cells that must be used by one of the shapes. White circles indicate cells that must remain empty.
Enjoy solving!
*Backstory: I realized that the puzzle Tapa was a substring of sTAtue PArk, which I thought was pretty cool. And last time, we featured Tapa, this time Statue Park! I then searched for other logic puzzles which are subsequences of other logic puzzles. The other good ones I have right now are TENTaiSho and tAsQuaRE (based on checking the puzz.link list for short puzzles). I would be curious to hear about others!
