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Puzzletober 2025: Inferno (UNFINISHED)

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The two who were at one point holding the rug lay side by side on and perpendicular to the bedroom's creaky bed, exhausted from fighting. They decide to make amends. As the newcomer exits the bathroom to get back to business, they all hear the sound of glass shattering against the floor. Seemingly on its own, the shelf with the oil lamp had slid off its supports and dropped the fuel onto the rug. The newcomer shouts an expletive and yells at the others to help put the rug out immediately, lest it cause a raging inferno. Rules: Solve this as a Fire Walk which passes through every cell while keeping the four isolated null spaces inside the loop. penpa link (no answer check)

Puzzletober 2025: Rowdy

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The front door of the abandoned wooden cabin creaks open slowly. There are only three rooms, one of which is essentially an outhouse. Much like the hotel, it has no electricity; however, its only source of lighting is the reflection from the moon. The newcomer sets the oil lamp on an unpainted wall's familiar wooden shelf away from any windows that might counteract its warmth. It does not take long for the three of them to find a rug of the right size. With an air of loneliness, one of the rug holders admits, "I truly wish Anastasia were here today. She's always here." The other says, "Why, so you wouldn't have to be out here? I know you wanted to avoid this." "To tell you the truth, I've grown a bit fond of her." The other lets go of the rug and says, "Trust me, you'd have better luck with Ophelia." "What the hell? You know that's a poor choice of words." "I won't let you have her. I won't." ...

Puzzletober 2025: Firefly

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In addition to the necessary warmth, the lamp provides a faint glow against the grass on the path to the cabin. The newcomer looks up into the night sky and is fascinated by how many stars can be seen. Suddenly, a yellow light appears, then disappears, then appears again. Somebody else says, "It's a firefly!" The atmosphere is ripe with cyclic flashes. Rules: Solve as a Hotaru Beam puzzle. Numbers are presented in binary, such that a shaded circle is 0 and an unshaded circle is 1. Striped circles are unknown digits. penpa link (no answer check)

Puzzletober 2025: Button

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N ow seemed to be as good a time as any to follow up on a promise, so before joining the others by the front door, the newcomer goes upstairs to room seven. Its resident awaits him. He's told, "I heard you have an eye for detail. Perhaps you can help us plan the wiring in the hotel." A wooden board with a lattice of metal pins rests on a table in the center of the room. "That gent I was talking about earlier sent this through the post office. We collected it today." Some of the pins have LEDs soldered between them and a contact switch spans a space in the center. "This is a plan for a doorbell. When the button is pressed, a wire shifts position. The lights were put in for a challenge. We'll have to fit a lot of stuff in a rather thin region." Rules: Plan wires spanning horizontally and vertically across the pins that activate every LED in series if and only if the button is pressed. Wires shouldn't branch or exit the lattice. An LED is activate...

Puzzletober 2025: Blast

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They rendezvous in the bathroom. The newcomer watches as he brings in an unlit makeshift oil lamp. He admits that he'd only just recently learned how to prepare one but nonetheless starts it like a natural. A blast of hot air emerges from the top. He starts to angle the lamp to try to direct the gust into the ice. The newcomer quickly states his worry that some oil might spill out and start melting its way straight through to the drain, but he is a little late; a droplet burrows halfway through before cooling down. They cautiously upright the lamp and rest it on the ice. The newcomer remarks that the lamp would be useful to take while retrieving the rug. Rules: This puzzle is inspired by Time Bomb with parts from puzzles like Ice Walk and Water Walk . Every lamp moves simultaneously in terms of amount of spaces traveled and ignites when it has traveled as many spaces as its number. Lamps must not exit outside the grid. The entire grid is initially made of ice tiles, on which lamp...

Puzzletober 2025: Rivals

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After hearing some faint voices across the hall, the newcomer enters the lounge. It is occupied by three people, two of whom are thoroughly engaged in a civil debate. The third walks up to him and says, "Those two have been arguing for the past few minutes about whether a hot dog is a sandwich. It got quite heated earlier, though I know it's all in good fun. They've been rivals for as long as I can recall, always trying to one-up each other. It must be fate that they got to play each other in the tournament. Before their game, he wanted to wager his room key, the one to room four, but she convinced him not to. It's a relief he listened, however hesitantly, since he lost to her... You look like you want to say something?" "Yes. There's a block of ice in one of the sinks down here." "Uh-huh... I think I have something for that in my room. Wait there for me." Rules: Shade exactly half of the cells in this grid. All shaded masses of cells must ...

Puzzletober 2025: Arctic

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The newcomer enters the downstairs restroom to see what it would be like if he didn't get a deluxe suite. The floor is the same style as the one in his bathroom, but it's significantly cleaner. To his left are three shower stalls and to his right are several toilet stalls; both use the same sliding lock mechanism to ensure privacy. Along the back wall is a set of sinks, one of which has an open window above it. The sun had set a couple hours ago. Arctic air pervades the room. Considering that some residents may be showering here later, he walks up to the window and closes it. When he looks down at the sink below the window, he finds that a blocked mass of water had frozen into ice in its bowl. Rules: Draw a directional loop within the circular grid, which may cross itself. The loop may only make a 90-degree turn if it collides with an edge wall, and otherwise must either move in an arc around the center or along a diameter. The circumference of the grid is not considered walls.