Saturday, 14 June 2025

Freddie Hand

I'm standing in for Walker today with a Centurion Supersized Time Bomb. Puzzle GP round 6 has now started - the competition page is here. As usual, a bonus otter 🦦 is up for grabs if you attempt the contest, which lasts for 90 minutes starting from when you access the password for the puzzle booklet. It's generally fairly tricky but there are several easier puzzles this round (worth less than 20 points).

Rules: Move each bomb so that every stone gets blown up. A bomb must take the indicated number of one-cell steps vertically or horizontally and then explode, destroying all stones in the 3x3 area surrounding it in its new location. Bombs may at no point along their path be orthogonally adjacent to another bomb or its path. Bombs may not pass through stones.

Notation Tip (as mentioned in Walker's post): You can mark bomb endpoints with dotted 0s, and drag from an endpoint to a bomb. The number in the dotted circle will count up as you drag it. You can also mark exploded stones with X's.

Here's a little GAPP 101: The paths of any two bombs cannot touch each other orthogonally. This means (for example) that if a bomb is adjacent to a cell that needs a bomb (a dotted circle), then it must be this bomb which travels to that cell.

Here's the last previous appearance of Time Bomb in GAPP, by Walker: Archive: Monday, 16 December 2024

Acquire a Speedy Sloth 🦥 by solving the puzzle in 4:30 or less!
Obtain a Quick Crab 🦀 by solving the puzzle in 9:30 or less!
And all solvers who complete the puzzle will be rewarded with a Short-fused Short-tailed Minivet 🐦

Example (pzprxs, from rules page): https://tinyurl.com/2s4crjvd
Puzzle (pzprxs): https://tinyurl.com/wmkutx9f