Sunday, 25 May 2025

Walker

The US Puzzle Championship (https://wpc.puzzles.com/uspc2025/) is ongoing this weekend! It’s used to select the US team, but is open to solvers from around the world. At 3 hours long, it’s much longer than Puzzle Ramayan or Puzzle Grand Prix rounds. The puzzles are worth checking out, either to solve in the contest or to try after without the time pressure!

Here’s Touch Match, one of the genres in the contest! I wanted to write a puzzle with more unusual cell shapes, but we've run out of everything but squares I've used a rectangle grid shape for this puzzle, and hopefully more will arrive by my next puzzle!

Rules: Place several triominoes on the board. Each triomino contains exactly one circle. Numbers in circles equal the number of triominoes which orthogonally touch the triomino containing the circle.

Interface Note: The composite modes Line OX and Edge IO both work well for this genre! Feel free to select whichever you prefer, the checker will accept either. (In the example solution, both modes are drawn.)

Example (Penpa): https://tinyurl.com/2yaawvwr

Solve in 2:00 or under for a Speedy Sloth! 🦥
Complete in 4:00 or under for a Quick Crab! 🦀
And all solvers who complete the puzzle will earn a Friendly Flameback! 🐦

Puzzle (Penpa): https://tinyurl.com/2djrpdyd