hutt's puzzle dump

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...

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 ...

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.

The innkeeper says, "I'd like to get a replacement rug out of the cabin before you all leave tomorrow. Let's say it's a three-person job: two can hold the rug by the ends while the third can assist with the doors." The newcomer volunteers, but the rest shuffle in place. He continues, "Since Miss Vitale is away and I can't in good conscience ask Ophelia, that leaves ... seven of us, of which two should go." He looks around the event room for a method of deciding. "Let's make a deal. I have a standard deck of 52 playing cards. Each of us draws one. The two who get the lowest ranks, counting aces as above kings, must go. If there's a tie, the first suit alphabetically should go. So, an ace of diamonds loses to a three of diamonds and an ace of spades. How does that sound?" For lack of a better option, they agree and draw their cards. The unlucky two decide to wait until later in the evening and pass some time playing poker. The 45 rema...

After the tournament, the newcomer asks the room if anyone in attendance has heard of the Montagues. At this, Ande tenses and stoically utters, "Be ruled by me. Forget to think of her," then continues the excerpt by turning around, falling to his knees, and pleading through a throe of despair, "O, teach me how I should forget to think!" The newcomer tries to deduce meaning from the water enveloping his sclerae and exclaims, "Oh. No, not those Montagues. I refer to a couple with their own island and mansion. They host events like this." There's a smattering of no's from around the room, with the sole exception of the event's winner, who was still being moved by the performance like a one-story home and garden would be moved by a bulldozer. The trance is broken when a chalice slips from the champion's hand and besmirches the ornate rug outstretched on the floor beneath, begetting profuse apologies. The actor sheds some more genuine tears. Rul...

Rules: Determine who won each game of the tournament. The rules and events of each of the three rounds are provided in the narrative below. No games end in a tie or forfeit.  Ande leans against one of the green walls of the event room and thanks everyone for coming. Everyone else at the hotel is seated at a table in front of a chessboard. The boards are unset, and all the pawns are missing, but this is intentional. Ande asks the pairs to decide who goes first, then reveals the rules. "For the first round, players take turns placing a piece into the center 4x4 region of the board. Both players should have the full back rank of a traditional setup, meaning it should be possible to fill the region if both players place every piece. White goes first; white's first turn is free, but every subsequent placement must attack the last piece that the opponent placed. The game ends when a player is unable to place a piece. Whoever places the last piece loses." Some people misundersta...

Rules: The following section of the narrative has been altered. There may be multiple ways to fix it, but only one is canonical. The canonical solution will suggest a thematic word. The newcomer gets to watch the debt of a flyer by a door. The one gluing it sees him and says, "You're here nearly! It starts at six o'clock." The newcomer asks, "What apery will occur at this upending tournament?" "I've come prepared to arbitrate the rounds, but nobody else knows how I've deigned it yet. Expect the unexpected," he replies with a truthless grin. On the flyer is one mage of a king and some text. The newcomer scrutinizes it and asks, "Do you know the frightful way to display lines of text? You've defied the monospace lettering to such an extent that thee lines are completely uneven. I can tell you about the better method afterward." The newcomer shifts his dragged shoes across the floor as he enters the event room

A man in his mid-thirties lugs a suitcase back down a road. It does not take long for him to arrive at his car. He retrieves a key fob from a pocket of his brown jacket and aims it at the car. It unlocks. He opens the trunk. It is packed with several bins of files. He searches for one in particular. Once he locates it, he shifts around some of the other bins to free it from the trunk and fit it into the suitcase. After ensuring that the car had not been broken into, he locks it again and walks back toward the hotel. Rules: Solve as a Tren . One block has already been provided. The resulting solution must be possible to solve as a Rush Hour puzzle in which the provided block must exit from the bottom. penpa link (no answer check)

The newcomer walks downstairs and enters the lounge. The walls are painted a uniform green, in contrast with the mostly red furniture. Since there aren't any windows in this room, nor is there any electric lighting in the hotel, the atmosphere is set by wall-mounted candles. The clerk sits at a spruce bar on the side of the room farther from the dining room door and has a cup of a bottle of something cheap from behind the bar. The newcomer sits at a stool beside him.  The clerk says, "Fancy a drink? It's just past five-o-clock. Perfect time for it." When the newcomer declines, the clerk says, "I never told you my name, did I? My surname has a whimsy to it, but you can call me by my first name, Dan." The newcomer nods and surveys the space behind the bar. On the various shelves are oddly shaped wooden containers. When he points them out, Dan says, "There used to be a fellow who came here with Anastasia every day. Charming gent. About her age. Bit eccentr...

When the newcomer re-enters the bedroom, the innkeeper is looking through a filing cabinet for some papers. He pulls out a folder and opens it to reveal the contents of the front. A paper had been manually shredded and jumbled to obfuscate it. "This is my financial statement for last year. I trust you won't tell anyone the specifics?" The newcomer shakes his head no as the innkeeper starts to rearrange it. "This three-digit number in the top-left is my revenue for the past year. The three-digit number in the bottom-right is my costs of operating. So, you can see what sort of situation I'm in." Rules: Solve as a Fillomino after rearranging the columns. All parts are displayed in the correct rotation. The correct grid will be a rectangle with no gaps or overlaps. The top-left corner and bottom-right corner of the grid have been marked to prevent symmetry-based nonuniqueness.

The main room of the innkeeper's suite is slightly larger than those of the deluxe suites. Along the back wall are pictures like those in the other room that display a partial history of the hotel. A set of drawers and the staple wardrobe help hold down a nice rug. There is plenty of unused space. The door to the left is ajar and leads to a bathroom. The innkeeper opens the door on the right and leads the newcomer into a bedroom. The newcomer gets a sense of déjà vu by recognizing the style of the bed from the deluxe suites. Hastily buried in the wall on the right side of the room is a wall safe held shut with a combination lock. The safe protrudes slightly from the otherwise flush wall, revealing shoddy craftsmanship: the sides of the safe are composed of several metal plates glued together. The front is held on by some obvious hinges instead of glue. "Now," starts the innkeeper, "I know what you're about to say. This is the least secure safe you've ever see...

Now that the paint has been sorted, the newcomer finally finds time to study the details of the room. The walls are an uncommon lavender. Various pictures are hung on the left wall. Crowding the base of the wardrobe are a broom, a dustpan, a vase of roses, a tainted bucket of water, a hammer, nails,  spackle, a trowel,  detergent, bars of soap, dish soap, glue, and towels of various sizes. Neatly hung in its center is the traditional outfit. The innkeeper says, "Miss Vitale is out today on paid leave. She said there was a family emergency with distant relatives. I'm holding her key until she returns. I would have liked to have my room cleaned today." Some of the patrons had not left the hallway. "Say, would you mind helping me with that? I heard you say you're a journalist and I know you're keen to see as much as you can while you're here. Besides, it gives you an alibi for spending time with me." The newcomer agrees and grabs the broom from the ward...

She sees herself out, leaving him to finish settling in. There are a few minutes of silence until a battery of loud thuds emanates from the opposite corner of the hotel. He instinctively runs out of his room toward the noise and enters an open door with the number eight. The innkeeper stands by the back wall. He stares at a collection of paint cans on the floor. None of them are leaking, but there is a wooden board beneath them propped up by something small. The newcomer looks up and finds that one of the supports of a shelf had broken off under the weight of the cans, shaving the glue off the other. The innkeeper bolts to the door and locks the two of them inside. He admits, "I don't want them to have another example of how run-down this place is." Under a minute later, there is a rattle of the knob and a knock, which the innkeeper dismissively responds to with an affirmation of safety. The patrons discuss theories in the hallway, their voices nearly inaudible through th...

As they leave the room, he asks her about her scarf. "My mother weaves one of these every year for every patron." "Did she ever teach you?" "No, but I'm sure I could figure it out if I wanted to. After all, she taught herself." He pauses with the key turned the first way in the lock. "I thought she said her husband taught her." She looks at her shoes and says, "Samuel was a sailor, spent his whole life on the sea. She never told me he wove. Unless you think she was talking about knots?" He disregards the discrepancy and turns the key the other way, allowing the door to click open. He does not share her excitement. His room is a bit larger than hers, not even counting the connected bathroom on the left. The wardrobe against the right wall is empty and the sheets of the queen-sized bed alongside the back are untucked. She sprints over to the bed and sinks into the mattress. He lays his suitcase by the door, sits beside it, and begins ...

The newcomer stands in front of a door on the second floor labeled with the number one. It matches the digit on the key in his palm. He is about to place the key in the lock when he hears footsteps coming up the stairs. They recognize each other. The diver observes the key in his hand and takes an interest in seeing his room. "I've always wanted to see what the deluxe suites look like, but the actor never allows anyone in." He thinks for a bit and says, "How about this. If you show me your room first, I'll show you mine." The unpacked suitcase is still by his side. She accepts the offer and opens the door to the adjacent room. The plasterboard is painted a soothing tint of blue. A window in the back wall overlooks the forest with the lake, offering a slight glimpse of a small building not very deep in the woods. In the back-right corner is a bunk bed; next to it is a side table with drawers. On the table is a battery-operated lamp and a necklace featuring an...

The first floor of the hotel includes a lounge, a dining room, a kitchen, an event room, and a bathroom with several showers, sinks, and stalls. The newcomer notices that the green-painted walls on each side of a certain section of hallway are riddled with holes. "Quite large for bullet holes," he says. Blaise replies, "Those are from arrowheads. Roger Tell, the bowman, was trying to show off his skills by firing arrows at a fly when one of the shots just punctured the wall." Blaise starts chuckling, but nonetheless recounts, "So then, he put an apple in another room with these two walls between them and just, sorry, he just..." Now Roger himself joins in the laughter. "He just kept firing arrows through the walls! He did manage to pierce the apple, mind you, but it took so many attempts. I swear, this whole place is made of drywall." Rules: Draw some arrows in the grid such that every unshaded cell contains part of an arrow. Arrows are defined a...

The newcomer carries his hat and continuously wrings it out on the walk back to the hotel. The conversations of the patrons pause when a rustle is heard not too far away in the forest. The farmer tells the newcomer, "There's quite a lot of wildlife around here. Last year, we came across some deer antlers on the ground." The economist quickly adds, "It's not a matter of concern. Deer shed their antlers about annually. The ones we found were rather impressive. I didn't know they could grow to be that complex." Rules: Draw a tree starting from the marked gridpoint that doesn't self-intersect or form loops. All nodes should be on gridpoints. There are two branches from the starting point, which split the pair into a left antler and a right antler. The left antler will have the same protruding lengths from each node as the right antler, but the order in which the lengths can be found when revolving around each node from the branch that leads to it will be...

(Last updated ~2 hrs. post-posting: "should not exceed" -> "should not be less than") The newcomer enters a small glade with a square-shaped lake. The lake is about 9 yards wide in each direction and its murky water hides the floor past the shore. Not too far in the distance are five people making conversation. He walks up to them.  The first to notice him is a man in a dull but well-ironed coat. He slides an unprotected hand out from a long sleeve to provide a handshake and introduces himself as Victor. The newcomer says, "Are you the innkeeper?" Victor replies, "Yes. Were you looking for a room?" "My car broke down about half a mile down the road. I'm going to need a place to stay for the night." Victor thinks for a bit, looking from something to something else to the inquisitive looks from the patrons, before finally saying, "I suppose I can make an exception to the reservation rule. Welcome to the hotel. I'll get a r...

As the newcomer approaches the crown of the hill, he is able to make out a figure sitting atop it on a collapsable chair. The man is dressed regally; his expensive thick coat is effective but looks out of place. When the newcomer gets close enough, the man asks, "Do you recognize me?" "No. Should I?" He tuts. "Don't people ever visit the cinema anymore? I'm Ande Aunddeen! Famous actor! Made my big break a couple years ago and been riding it since." The newcomer sits on the ground beside the plastic chair and spots the trail in the distance. The breeze runs softly past them. "I didn't want to go to the lake. I'd hate for this robe to get wet. Plus, there's something special about spending time alone in nature that nurtures my ego." The newcomer silently agrees. Rules: Solve this irregular cylindrical puzzle as a Gemini Block . You will have to make assumptions about clues that can't be seen.

He notices that the woman had been listening closely to their conversation but had now returned to trying to weave some black string under and over the white base in the frame. He finds an empty chair not too far away and pulls it closer to study her technique. She senses him watching and, pausing her progress on the row, turns to acknowledge him fully.  She says, "Leather's perfect for leaving." There is a bit of an accent. "I finished the lore prose at noon, then I cast the anchor. Here I'm lurking on the left." He nods at the speed of her hands and pretends to understand the terminology. He asks, "What are you making this for?" She replies, "It's a commemorative scarf. My husband taught me..." There's a pause, then he changes the subject: "Where's the innkeeper?" She points toward a hill by the forest in the distance. "There's a trail near that hill. It should take you to the lake." He thanks her for...

Somewhere in the rural American countryside, a man in his mid-thirties lugs a four-wheeled suitcase along an unpaved road. He is protected from the cold by a decent brown jacket, gray sweatpants, and a deerstalker hat. The only building in sight is a two-story rustic hotel. There is an old woman in a simple wooden chair  knitting something  on the front porch; she briefly glances at him as he knocks on the front door. The door is answered a few seconds later by a man between their ages who shivers at the temperature of the atmosphere. The man with the suitcase says, "Do you have a spare room for the night? My car broke down on the side of the road about a mile that way," and he gestures accordingly. The other says, "We normally only take reservations. But... seeing as this is an emergency, we'll see what the innkeeper says. I assume you've tried calling a tow truck." "No service." "I know. It never hurts to try. Can I get your name?" The ...