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Letters In Boxes #4
What if the letters in our Letters In Boxes puzzles took second priority, after the boxes they're in? How would your view of the puzzles change? It's like trying to imagine eating a hot dog when you can only taste the bun, or driving a car while sitting on the roof (which I suppose is what riding a motorcycle is). The letters themselves are problems enough, but what about an extra layer of complexity, brought to you by the very containers they're delivered in?
In this week's Letters In Boxes challenge, your task is to tackle those puzzles from the outside in. Each puzzle is a "common" logic puzzle, although not necessarily one you might have seen before. Your first goal is to determine what type of puzzle you're facing, then solve it. Even then, you still have to sort out where to get the letters for your next clue. It's a logic/word puzzle sandwich! Which are exactly like motorcycle/hot dog sandwiches. The first puzzle might look eerily similar to something you've seen before, but after that, you're on your own. (Okay, a hint: Here is a good place to search around.)
You can spot your first puzzle below. Click on it to open the puzzle in a new window. Once you solve it and extract an answer from the spread of letters, switch your attention to your address bar (in this case, http://images.jayisgames.com/lettersinboxes/4thlibstart.gif). Change the filename of the image (namely, "4thlibstart") to your answer (be sure to stay within the same directory, and use all lowercase characters) to see if you're right. If you're successful, you'll see your next puzzle. If you're wrong, you won't see much of anything, but you can hit the back button on your browser to try again.
This batch of puzzles contains five, yes, five puzzles to solve. On the fifth puzzle, you'll find the email address for sending your final answer. We'll hand out a prize to the first correct entry we receive, plus ten additional randomly-selected correct entries. Please include your Casual Gameplay account display name with your entry. You must be at least 13 years of age to enter. Only one submission per participant, please. Offer void where prohibited. Your deadline for submitting your answers is Monday, June 20th at 11:59 PM (GMT-5:00). If you can dig your way to the depths of this daunting dilemma, you might have a dashing diversion delivered to your door! (Which is to say, you could win a prize of some sort.) Good luck!
Update: Congratulations to these 11 winners! :D
All eleven winners were given a choice of prizes or an entry into a GRAND PRIZE drawing to be held at the end of August! Congratulations and thanks for playing with us! Look for another Letters in Boxes again soon!
- homero ...First!
- Ravrius
- Chaos
- m5rammy
- Seraku
- nerdypants
- Grizix
- han519
- snickerless1
- nightsoil
- sillyme2
Walkthrough Guide
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This contest has ended! Before we get to this week's answers, would you like some solving tips for these puzzles?
Puzzle 1
This puzzle was a standard sudoku puzzle. You're probably familiar with a lot of the techniques to solve this puzzle... Or you could have just thrown the nine letters into an anagram solver.
Puzzle 2
This puzzle is a Masyu puzzle. The goal is to make a loop that passes through all the circles, such the path passes straight through the white circles (but must have a turn on at least one side of the circle after that) and that the path makes a turn in a black circle, with two straight lines before and after the turn.
First and foremost, it's important to remember that you don't need to make the loop in one fluid motion. The best strategy is to fill in portions of the path as you can logically deduce them, then fill in the gaps later.
Since you can't pass through the outside boundaries of the puzzle, you could assume that any white circle next to a wall would have to be passed through parallel to the wall.
Keep an eye out for black circles next to the wall, or even one space away from the wall. Since the path needs to continue in a straight line for two spaces after the turn, you can assume that the path won't go in a direction where there isn't enough room. Rather, it'll go in the opposite direction from that.
Once you've marked off some starting lines for yourself, the rest of the puzzle should fall into place if you keep the original rules in mind.
Puzzle 3
This was a LITS puzzle, where the goal is to fill in each cage with a tetromino (like the L, I, T, and S Tetris pieces) so that no two same-shaped pieces were adjacent to each other, no 2x2 blocks are formed, and all of the blocks form one contiguous shape.
Start by filling in the cages that have only four blocks. There's no guessing what tetromino will be going in those cages.
Next, mark what squares can't be filled in, due to the fact that a tetromino going in that spot would create a 2x2 square. With any L, T, or S piece that you put down, there's going to be at least one square that you can mark off as unacceptable.
When solving a particular cage, try using trial and error to determine how they could be filled in. Over time, you'll notice that there are certain patterns that are always followed in cages of the same shape. For example, if you have a cage of five squares that looks like a 2x2 square with a tail of one square hanging out, you know that that tail square must be filled in, because you can't have 2x2 squares filled in. Then, you know that the square immediately adjacent to the one must be filled in. After that, use the surrounding squares to determine if it's a L, T, or S block.
Puzzle 4
This was a Ripple Effect puzzle. These puzzles are like sudoku, except with two different rules: Each cage will contain X different digits, from 1 to X, where X is the number of squares in the cage. Plus, there must be a gap of Y spaces between any number Y and another occurence of itself in a straight line, horizontally or vertically.
Not sure where to start? Well, take a look first at all the cells with only one square in them. Given the first rule considering how each box must have each digit from 1 to X (where in this case, X is 1), you know that the only numbers that could go in those single-boxed cells is a 1.
Next, keep the second rule in mind. Any square that is immediately adjacent to a 1 must NOT be a 1; there must be a 1-space gap between them. So, you could use this information to determine what boxes must hold a 2, and so on.
Don't forget to look at the boxes from multiple ways. For example, if you get stuck trying to figure out where in a cell a 3 must appear by eliminating possible locations, instead try figuring out which numbers must NOT appear in a particular box by the clues around them.
Puzzle 5
The final puzzle was a Kuromasu puzzle, which fans of the Simon Tatham Puzzle Collection might recognize as Range. The numbers tell how many squares (including the number the square is in) are visible from that spot, horizontally and vertically. Black squares are added to the puzzle to represent walls. Walls can't be horizontally/vertically adjacent, and all the white (empty) squares must be contiguously connected.
One good place to start is by looking for higher numbers close to edges. Since you know their visibility in certain direction(s) is already limited, you can count out squares where there must be empty squares. For example, take the 9 on the right edge of this puzzle. Since its visibility can't extend to the right, and it can only extend to a total of six squares vertically (counting the square the 9 is in), you know the three squares to the left of the nine must be empty.
Right then, here's the solutions for this week's puzzles:
Puzzle 1
Puzzle 1 Answer
This first puzzle was a sudoku puzzle. If you solved the puzzle, you found the word SKEPTICAL running diagonally down the puzzle. But then again, popping all the letters into an anagram solver could have saved you a bunch of time.
Puzzle 2
Puzzle 2 Answer
Puzzle 2 was Masyu! I liked that because it rhymed. If you solved the puzzle properly, you could follow the letters in the loop to spell (with the spaces) "CONGRATULATIONS NEXT PUZZLE FILENAME IS STAPLER DOT GIF". Again, this puzzle was very much cheatable, if you were able to guess at the path of letters without solving the loop. But be careful, this was the last puzzle you could cheat on!
Puzzle 3
Puzzle 3 Answer
This was a LITS puzzle. After solving, the unblackened letters would spell "FOURTH FILE IS SCALLOP".
Puzzle 4
Puzzle 4 Answer
The fourth puzzle was a Ripple Effect puzzle. After filling in the grid, blacking out the letters that corresponded with odd numbers (or just noting the letters that corresponded with even numbers, whichever you prefer) gave the phrase "LAST RIDDLE IS FESTIVAL".
Puzzle 5
Puzzle 5 Answer
The final puzzle was a Kuromasu puzzle. The blacked out boxes spelled MANGLED, which was your final answer.
We'll announce the winners after we've contacted them!
Posted by: Steve
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June 21, 2011 1:03 AM