A Naoki Inaba (JP) type, as seen on Para’s Puzzle Site.

Draw a loop through adjacent vertices that cannot intersect itself; each number indicates the total length of all straight segments adjacent to it, where segment length is always measured up to the nearest turns in the loop.

Let’s see how well WordPress’s scheduling works again. Happy Chinese New Year!

Nikoli Slitherlink + Masyu hybrid; I don’t know who first put them together but combinations like this aren’t rare.

Draw a loop through vertices that cannot intersect itself; each number indicates how many of the four edges around it are drawn; the loop must pass through all large dots, and it must go straight through white dots while turning either before or after (or both), while it must turn on black dots without turning either before or after.

mathgrant’s hybrid type: a Fillomino (write a number in every empty cell so that every group of cells with the same number that is connected through its edges has that number of cells) where each tetromino has had their 4s replaced by one of L, I, T, or S describing their shape, and they obey the rules of LITS — they can touch if they are not congruent, they must all be connected, and their squares cannot form a 2x2 block.

So winter vacation started and parents had planned a trip to southern Taiwan, to get closer to nature and walk around and stuff.

Also, the MIT Mystery Hunt, the absolute granddaddy of all the other puzzlehunts in terms of age, structure, and size, happened this weekend. Originally, I didn’t have a team and just planned to look at the puzzles after they got archived and try solving some puzzles read the solutions while constantly thinking, “How could anybody ever solve that?” Because of that, I wasn’t planning to even bring my laptop at first; then I could force myself to study some long-overdue ring theory during the nights. I was taken aback by a private message on Saturday morning from somebody with many different names inviting me to remote-solve for Random Thymes.

Me: !!!!!!!!!!

This is another MellowMelon’s Double Back. Briefly, draw a closed loop through all square centers visiting each bold-outlined area twice. Shaded cells do not influence solving, only aesthetics.

It’s mostly easy, I think. It’s okay if you don’t know what the theme means. (Yes, chao, I want more contrib points.) Also, WordPress seems to have stopped automatically linking images to their files. Hmm.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? This is something I constructed semi-experimentally to stop failing at an entire genre of puzzles, and then procrastinated posting just about forever. I only test-solved this on paper; I hope I didn’t do anything silly while digitizing.

Rules paraphrased from USPC because I can’t find any good links: Write each of the given words into its own snail; letters must be entered from the outside of the snail spirally inward. Not all squares will be used; squares with “-” must stay blank. Each letter can appear at most once in each row and column.

Noticed this at meander lawn who has a really broad puzzle blogroll… I don’t really know what I’m doing and may have misinterpreted something, but here goes. (Ahahaha puzzle 33 on 11/22… I wish it was intentional :P)

Draw a path through square centers which enters and exits through the given places. Outside the “ice barns” (the gray things), the path may turn freely but may not self-intersect; inside “ice barns” the path may self-intersect but may not turn. Each ice barn (not necessarily every cell but every region, I think) must be passed over. The path must pass through each given arrow in the given direction.

Yes, a “big” crazy mutant puzzle for a “milestone” (as seen on xkcd), both for this blog and for my life. Things are rough now, but I prepared this ridiculously ahead of time. It’s still not really big, but I’m not so experienced and I don’t have the inspiration for something like an entire mini-puzzlehunt. Also, I think I should attempt more word-bank-based puzzles some day so I won’t fail as completely at them.

But anyway: This is a Slitherlink combining MellowMelon’s Crosslink and Liar variations. Draw a loop through vertices that can intersect itself but must go straight both times if it does; each number normally indicates how many of the four edges around it are draw, but exactly one clue in each row and column is false. Have fun.

This is a Fillomino puzzle where every polyomino is required to be an L-shape, as in Sashigane. Write a number in every empty cell so that every group of cells with the same number that is connected through its edges is an L-shape (with arms of positive length and 1-cell thickness) with that number of cells.

My second, and now symmetric, attempt at this crazy self-invented mutant; puzzle 22 was the first. A word of warning: I can’t solve this without bifurcating near the end, so logic purists may be disappointed, but I like the clue arrangement too much. In fact I suspect this puzzle could have many more clues removed without affecting uniqueness, so tight are the rule constraints in this type.