hutt's puzzle dump

     In the close distance, a pair of trolls are guarding the castle gate. Felix tells Renn, "Stow your axe and follow my lead." The men approach the gate at a friendly pace. Troll 1 says, "Halt! Where do you two think you're going?" Felix says, "To the gate." The trolls share a short-lived chuckle, then Troll 1 says, "Very well, then. But we can't let you pass any farther." Felix inquires, "What if we answer your riddles three?" The trolls smile widely. Troll 2 says to the other, "We've had no one to riddle but ourselves. Come on, it'll be just like old times!" Troll 1 gives in. Renn steadies himself.      Troll 2, who noticed Renn's ax, writes an equation into the dirt. 2*3*5=60 <4>      He says, "Here is riddle one. Just some simple practice, eh?" Renn asks, "Isn't this nonunique," then, "Isn't this impossible?" The troll says, "Your weapons may be more po...

  At last, they enter a chamber which resembles an intentional dungeon. Cracks between the patterns etched in the walls allow mystical blue firelight to shine through and illuminate the room. When Renn asks Felix if he recognizes the repeated array, he responds, "It's the magic square of order three. All the rows, columns, and main diagonals have the same sum." The grid on the door to the next room is four cells wide and tall. Above it, a plaque is inscribed which suggests this is the last room before the treasure. Rules: Fill in the 4x4 magic square using the integers from 1 to 16. Numbers along an arrow line sum to the attached circled number. The circled pair should be concatenated in reading order: for example, if 7 was in the left and 15 was in the right, the sum of the three numbers on the line would have to be 715. penpa link (has answer check)

FYTTE THE FIRST   in which findings are more noteworthy than expected.     By digging in the appropriate spot, the explorers find two things. One is a relic of some previous harvest: a rotting core with its seeds still clinging on. The other is a rusty hatchet. Renn picks up the hatchet and inspects it with a sense of curiosity. Felix says, "I recall you consider yourself somewhat of a berserker. This could be much more fun to whirl around you." With a brief sense of impatience, Renn asks, "What's the power?" Felix carefully picks up the core by its stem and throws it in a slow slight upward arc to Renn, who swings the hatchet at it. Not only does he succeed in slicing it, but the core is cut perfectly in half through and including the stem. A slight smile grows on Renn's face as he says, "It's not half bad. I'll take it for a swing." He runs to an edge of the glade to snap off some low-hanging twigs and spends a handful of minutes trying t...

(last updated on the same day to add an example for the first type)  On rare occasions, a dream of mine can end with cracking open a puzzle book and finding something I don't recognize as an existing genre. If I'm lucky like I was last night, then I might be able to leaf through a few pages and glance at multiple examples of clue types and suggested input types. Then when I wake up, it becomes an interesting challenge to try to invent a fun ruleset that could apply to anything I can remember. The fact that I can only barely remember certain aspects makes it more lateral than instructionless puzzles typically are. This first type was inspired by a puzzle I thought allowed multiple loops with really large numbers as clues, but I specifically remember looking at some of the lengths of rows used by a portion of the grid to verify that they were factors of the number in the portion. Since I decided to go for an edge input instead, the end result feels like Lohkous, but I think the l...

(last updated 10/29/25: fixed the explanation of the tiebreaker to align with the description) 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, a two of diamonds loses to an ace of diamonds and a two of spades. How does that sound?" For lack of a better option, they agree and draw their cards. The unlucky...

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...

 This type brings back old memories of a puzzle book from Mindware called "Code Breakers" which was essentially systems of equations with the variables playfully disguised as colored circles. The key differences between these two ideas are that Letter Weights only uses addition but finds additional logic in requiring the solution to be composed of a specific set of numbers, typically leading to logic vaguely reminiscent of Kakuro. 1. (1,2,3) ALLELE=10 2. (1,2,3,4,5) TEAMMATE=24, MATTER=17, MEET=9 3. (1,2,3,4,5,6) SIT=9, SLIT=12, SHEETS=26

 I found out about the USPC through the Thinky Puzzles Discord and decided to try solving it this year, just to see what puzzle competitions are like. I found it to be very fun, despite having both slight nervousness and overconfidence before starting. The puzzle types introduced some new concepts to me I was surprised I hadn't seen before, especially the integration of Scrabble-like crosses in lieu of shaded squares in logic puzzles. One concept that I felt like expanding on after the competition was inspired by the choice to have a set of four puzzles each reliant individually on either the sum, difference, product, or quotient of the lengths of perpendicular runs or lines. It occurred to me that while I was familiar with mystery operation puzzles through KenKen and Math Path, I had not seen a mystery operation that related to perpendicular lines. I started making this ruleset using only the four basic operations in a sort of variant Balance Loop, before realizing that the Balanc...

 When I first saw the name, I quarter-expected it to have something to do with Equation Paths. I ended up learning the rules through rule deduction on the original 4 puzzles' thumbnails. The ruleset has a nice balance to it, and I thoroughly respect the ability to have regions without marked operations, although a thermometer variant might help in small spaces. The rules have been adapted slightly for this set: Place a number between 1 and 16 into each cell so that consecutive numbers are connected through kings' moves. Numbered regions require the numbers in that region to either sum, multiply, subtract, or divide into that number, with numbers being processed in descending order for subtraction and division. This themed pair took a while to make and was themed off an unreleased binary Ken-Ken. The appearance of 1 2 9 was entirely accidental. I hope you'll forgive me for not wanting to construct a 12x9 puzzle in this genre.

 uploaded on 7/28/23 This puzzle is based off a type called Brain Chain which is seemingly impossible to look up the rules to due to a board game of the same name. The goal is to start with the number on the left and apply the operations in the row from left to right to reach the final number.  For example, in the diagram below, the first row as it appears would be (((((6÷1)-19)x5)-17)+5)= -77. However, to complicate the puzzle, the columns were torn apart and rearranged to make the nice pattern along the major diagonal. When the columns are put back together in the correct order, every row should end its calculation on a nice whole number, as is conventional for the puzzle books Brain Chain has appeared in. 

Added rules and images on 1/24/26 This genre was invented by Pedro. Draw digits in the grid so that all the empty space is filled but no digits overlap clues or other digits. Digits must be equivalent via length scaling to one of the Curve Data clues provided in the picture below, which holds the numerical value of the digit it resembles. Clues count the sum of all digits that occupy squares the arrow points toward. This one is a Yajilin / Curve Sums doppelganger. https://puzz.link/p?yajilin/5/10/d32d40k30d20a11j32d10e (removed some links on 4/27/26 and added genre credit)

 made on 5/26/23 Back in August 2022, Cray had introduced a few 4x4 Sudoku variants. 381. Square Sum Sudoku https://f-puzzles.com/?id=2pyegd67 382. Invisibulb Sudoku (very hard!) https://f-puzzles.com/?id=2e2jf6vr 383. Invisibulb and Square Sum https://f-puzzles.com/?id=2l869w9t 384. Invisibulb or Square Sum? https://f-puzzles.com/?id=2h4vucpr This also inspired me to do something silly: https://f-puzzles.com/?id=2zrnhym6

 made between 4/19/23 and 4/27/23, with a clarity update to the rules and the replacement of a nonunique puzzle on 1/10/25 Each zero starts a number path, which will be defined as a sequence of consecutively increasing whole numbers where each pair of consecutive numbers in the path is orthogonally adjacent in the grid. (In other words, the numbers count up like pedometers, stepping left, right, up, and down.) Paths cannot branch, cross, or overlap other numbers and symbols. Every non-number symbol must be part of at least one valid equation. Equations can read right or down and must start and stop at either an empty space or the grid edge. = cannot be part of any incorrect equation, but unfinished equations (which don't have a number immediately on one side of the =) are allowed. Every path must end within an equation.

 uploaded on 11/19/22 The following puzzle set has been excerpted from a puzzle book, but heavily obscured.

 made on 7/28/22 https://tinyurl.com/b6h4c75v This type is a mix of Masyulink by disestablishmentarianism and caged slitherlink by Toby Suren. Draw a loop across the corners, following masyu rules with the circles. Numbers are slitherlink. Cages are killer sudoku cages: the corner numbers reveal the sum of the slitherlink clues from each cell within the cage. Cages cannot include 0.

 made on 7/27/22 https://tinyurl.com/ymdubkyj The number in each circle is the sum of the numbers along its arrow (based on Arrow Sudoku). The third puzzle is not unique.

 made on 10/2/21; fixed link and added rules and picture on 1/10/25 Rules: Type the symbols from the symbol bank into the grid below so that each row and column is a valid equation. The asterisk should be used for multiplication. penpa link Somehow this only has one solution.