hutt's puzzle dump

 I consider this genre to be on the more difficult side amongst the walks due to how the way the path is allowed to move is dependent on how it moves in other not given and often remote sections of the grid. Although it may seem looser at first than Fire Walk or Ice Walk, the alternating pattern introduces an aspect of parity that tends to increase the nuance of deductions. These three puzzles were made yesterday. https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?roboticwalk/7/7/5a0540e82sg3zy69l https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?roboticwalk/7/7/vs32q61gfuo7g1zl8p https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?roboticwalk/9/9/al04440i4g2220al0p3h3h3z5h3h5j3g4s3k5p

I think the main appeal of the 2025 puzzle, at least for me, is how much care was taken in coming up with entries that belong in one category but allude to another. It would not surprise me if every category represents 45 other categories with its entries. It's a bit like setting up a lot of puns. I was inspired to try to do something similar on a smaller scale. It was fun but taxing to keep all the possibilities in mind and form connections between them. The following list of 225 things can be grouped into 15 categories of 15 things. To make it approachable, I'd say the puzzle is solved when all 15 categories have been identified, which doesn't necessarily require sorting all the things. 5 11 13 311 400 Aerie Alfa All fours Alpha Andalus Angerona Angers Anvil Archie Aria Math Arial Aries Arizona Arles Astros Atlas Ballade Bastille Black Jack Bodhi Bond Bordeaux Born Bourré Boxing Brave Bravo Brest Bridge C4 Caelum Caelus Caen Cambria Math Cancer Candara Canine Carpenter Ca...

 I've been making progress with lots of different kinds of puzzles this month. For the classics, I finally found the time recently to buy a puzzle game about a week and a half after its release; I've been spending so much time solving it that I've already unlocked part of the postgame. For other games, I've reached the two-thirds point in my latest pack and I've recently been invited to help design puzzles for a small project. For mysteries, I figured out on a surface level what happened to the Kudamono editor: I'm pretty sure it's just being migrated to a new domain, and I'm feeling optimistic that nothing is truly lost. For metapuzzles, I continued work on coding my puzzle solver to the extent that it can solve the example Norinori puzzle in a reasonable amount of time. Currently, my largest stumbling block is trying to figure out how to represent whether two specific cells are orthogonally connected as a Boolean expression of whether specific cells co...

 There's been a couple of new important releases this year in terms of metroidbrania sudoku. I've gotten through the smaller one and most of the way through the larger one. While I was solving them, it occurred to me that most of the variant rules included in these massive puzzles have already been established as sudoku variants. I find it particularly interesting to consider that clues often resemble their conventional symbols despite the logical solve path assuming the solver doesn't know what they mean until they're explained. Maybe this is intentional thematically in the same sense that someone might discover a useful trick or a secret passageway on their own in a game. But for me, I see black dot and my brain wants to go on autopilot, but I feel like I owe it to the creator to restrain myself until I see the popup that explains them. I think it would be fascinating to see a metroidbrania sudoku in which every single variant clue type is unheard of to the veterans. ...

 Despite having suffered from a cold, I'm getting back into the swing of things. Last week, I picked up the Patchwork project again and made a little more progress in the second part. However, at the moment, I'm focusing most of my free time on something related to algorithmic puzzle solving: I made a particularly interesting independent discovery on Wednesday and I intend to type up an informal paper on the ramifications. I've been burning a lot of my time on solving the 2025 category puzzle, but by osmosis this has inspired me to get back into setting custom Connections. The first puzzle here was set on 2/11/26 as a better version of a puzzle I've sent previously in the blog. The second was made on 2/24/26. Just as a heads up, I've been told that the first is too hard and the second is kinda lame. I recommend trying to solve the second without looking things up, as a large part of its charm is how well the cards mesh with each other. It Just Wasn't in the Card...

The following puzzles were set and shared on 2/18/26.  I especially like how the clues feel local despite being able to influence large portions of the board. https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?bhaibahan/7/7/q2i56g.q2g2.i2q https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?bhaibahan/9/9/j1n2w1s59h1h41p2h3h1k1j