Broken Sign Blog
#036: Wall Maze
19 September 2022
This was actually the first Wall Maze I constructed, but I wanted to slip in a simpler one to introduce the genre beforehand and give people a feel for the basic deductions before breaking out the fancier logic.
#035: Wall Maze
19 September 2022
There’s a somewhat common variant for shading puzzles where exactly one cell adjacent to each border segment must be shaded. I’d never seen it applied to loops so I thought I’d try and make a new loop genre from it. As it turns out, this genre already exists under the name of Wall Maze, though it’s fairly obscure. Here is an introductory puzzle.
#034: FourCells
15 September 2022
After clearing all FourCells puzzles in the database, I wanted to try constructing one with logic I hadn’t seen in any of the puzzles I solved. Here is the result. Fair warning, it’s probably on the harder side.
#033: Chained Block — "Broken Chain"
13 September 2022
I’ve been meaning get into Chained Block, it seems like a cool genre. I originally wanted to make a puzzle containing only 3 clues, but David Altizio beat me to it this morning, so I went for a different number instead. The result is a bit meme-y, but I think it’s still quite fun to solve.
#032: Rail Pool — "Broken Sign"
6 September 2022
Welcome! This is the first puzzle originally made for this blog. The earlier posts are all backdated, as I wanted to keep a record of some of the better puzzles I made over the last few months.
#031: Tapa-Like Loop
30 August 2022
I recently cleared all Tapa-Like Loops in the puzz.link database, so here’s a new one. I quite like the break-in, but I’m not super happy with how much progress you can make without it. The pains of clue symmetry.
#030: Rail Pool (Crossing)
8 August 2022
I don’t have a lot of experience with crossing loop genres yet, but I think it’s quite interesting how they mess with your intuition for how separate loop segments must connect.
#029: Ant Mill
7 August 2022
While constructing my first Ant Mill, I discovered some interesting patterns that I wanted to turn into their own puzzle. I also wanted to go for much sparser clue placement this time, which I think worked out nicely.
#028: Ant Mill
6 August 2022
Ant Mill is a new genre by Eric Fox. I really enjoyed his first two puzzles, so I wanted to try and construct one myself. In principle it should be possible to make a squares-only Ant Mill, but for a first attempt I figured using one cross was justifiable.
#027: Rail Pool (Forgetful)
4 August 2022
This is by far the hardest Rail Pool (or puzzle in general) I’ve constructed to date. The break-in requires some very intricate logic and the rest of the puzzle isn’t all smooth sailing either. I really enjoy this variant though, so I’ll probably make some easier forgetful Rail Pools at some point.