Archive for November, 2009
Consecutive Skyscraper
Nov 24th
It’s been a while since I posted a new puzzle here, what with all the excitement about Sudoku Xtra magazine, so I thought I had better do something about that right now! So to that end, here’s something a little bit unusual – a Consecutive Skyscraper puzzle.
Now Consecutive Skyscraper may sound like a brief description of downtown Manhattan, but in fact it’s a puzzle with pretty simple rules:
- Place 1 to 8 in each row and column
- Obey the Skyscraper constraints: each number outside the grid reveals the number of ‘visible’ digits looking along that row/column, where higher digits obscure all lower ones
- White bars between squares reveal all consecutive squares – those where the difference is one (such as 1&2, 2&3, etc). Squares without white bars between are not consecutive
If that isn’t detailed enough for you, try clicking the relevant links on the right, or here’s what I wrote back in April about Skyscraper puzzles:
In a Skyscraper puzzle you place numbers in a grid whilst obeying ‘building height’ constraints around the edge. These building height constraints specify the number of notional buildings you could see whilst standing at the edge of the puzzle and looking in, whereby a taller building completely hides the view of any shorter building. The idea is that a digit ‘1′ in the grid is a building 1 storey high; a digit ‘2′ in the grid is a building 2 storeys high, and so on.
If you had a very simple 3×3 Skyscraper puzzle, here’s the potential solutions to each of the possible clues:
- 1: can be either 3 2 1 or 3 1 2, with the ‘3′ hiding both the other digits
- 2: can be 1 3 2 or 2 3 1 or 2 1 3.
- 3: can only be 1 2 3 because this is the only way to see all of the buildings.
Good luck! 
Sudoku Xtra ‘community’ puzzles
Nov 20th
Sudoku Xtra issue 1 is only just on sale and I’m already starting work on issue 2!
If you’ve read issue 1 then you’ll know that I’ve proposed a ‘community’ puzzle section at the back, where people get to send in their own puzzles and I will include a selection in a special section. The idea is to try and build up the kind of puzzle community that some of the Japanese-language publications have, but which we haven’t yet seen in an English-language magazine. Hopefully it will lead to a virtuous spiral, with on the one hand people who contribute puzzles getting a larger audience for their own work whilst similarly on the other hand encouraging more people to read the magazine for the novel puzzles – and hopefully all the while encouraging more feedback too, which will help everyone.
In time for the second issue I’m not realistically expecting very many submissions – after all, it won’t be long before I need to start finalising content for issue 2, and that doesn’t give people much time to buy the magazine, think about puzzles, draw them up and submit them. So in order to help things get going I’ve approached a few people who regularly create top-quality puzzles of their own and asked them if they’d be happy to contribute a puzzle or two to issue 2. Therefore I’m very pleased to announce that David Millar of The Griddle has agreed to provide a couple of his excellent designs for issue 2. If you take a look at his site you’ll see that he regularly posts a huge variety of different puzzle types, and it will be fantastic to have some of this content to help launch the community section of Sudoku Xtra issue 2.
Now available on Amazon.com
Nov 18th
I only just posted an update and already there’s more news: Sudoku Xtra is now available on Amazon.com
That was pretty quick, and is great news! I already have my proof copy from them, and it looks just fantastic – lovely glossy colour cover, and fantastic quality printing within. It’s essentially a large size magazine printed at top book quality, and the paper it’s on is perfect for either pencil or pen solving. It’s much better quality than a regular store puzzle magazine (particularly US ones, which are typically on very cheap and thin paper).
Website feature-ready
Nov 18th
I’m happy with where the Sudoku Xtra website has got to now, with another update today pushing on all the material I wanted. It will I’m sure need further work when there are multiple issues available, but for now it’s more than good enough I think.
As mentioned yesterday, the most exciting feature (other than being able to view and buy and read about the magazine!) is the new discussion forum. It’s a pity Sudoku Pro never had one, because the old BBC MindGames one (which incidentally featured a large number of my puzzles too) was always great. It would be brilliant if we could make the Sudoku Xtra forums just as good! Here’s hoping…
If you’ve got issue 1 (or even if you haven’t!) please feel free to let people know about it – building up a readership is of course an important part of launching a new magazine, particularly one that won’t be on shop shelves any time soon!
Discussion forums for Sudoku Xtra
Nov 16th
Thanks very much to everyone who’s bought Sudoku Xtra issue 1 so far – I really appreciate it, and thanks also for your great feedback!
I’m still working on adding content to the main Sudoku Xtra site, which of course it was more important to get up and running at all in the first place rather than waiting until it was ‘finished’ to launch, and so today’s big addition is a discussion forum!
Please feel free to continue posting here about Sudoku Xtra if you would prefer, but if there’s anything you’d like to open up for discussion – or just want to chat about a particular puzzle (or even ask for help solving one!) – then the forums are probably the best place to do it.
You don’t need to register on the Sudoku Xtra site in order to post to the forums, but if you don’t you’ll be asked to type in one of those anti-spam image things each time you post – but I’ve made sure they’re very legible, so conversely fingers-crossed there won’t be any nasty problems with spam! (You should see just how much gets caught in the anti-spam message filters for this site alone – it’s quite astonishing!)
Thanks again!
SudokuXtra.com magazine downloads
Nov 14th
Well, www.sudokuxtra.com is now live – live enough that you can now go there and buy the magazine and get it immediately. So what are you waiting for?! As I posted earlier, there’s also a preview copy you can download if you want to check out some of what you’re getting first.
I’ll also be adding more content to sudokuxtra.com over the coming week, including a discussion forum.
Sudoku Xtra website
Nov 14th
Just a quick update to my previous post – there is now a preview of issue 1 available on SudokuXtra.com.
Sudoku Xtra Complete
Nov 13th
Sudoku Xtra issue 1 is now ready! It won’t appear on Amazon.com for up to a week or so – it takes a while for them to update their databases and so on, but it is on Lulu.com already if you want a printed version. For the printed version it will cost £4.99 for UK customers, but Lulu do charge postage and packaging on top of that. (Lulu do however often have discount vouchers, so you might manage to get some money off the total).
The magazine is 44 pages long, each page 8 inches by 10 inches (20cm by 25cm), and with exactly 100 puzzles in. It prints really well on both A4 and Letter paper, either 1-up (one page per sheet) or 2-up (two pages per sheet) as you prefer. There is a small preview on the Lulu site if you’d like to see what you’re getting (or read back through previous posts here too!). If you order the printed Lulu version you will actually get some extra blank pages at the back to make it up to their minimum page count for an A4 publication, so ignore the page count on the Lulu description.
Click here for a printed copy of the magazine: Sudoku Xtra issue 1 on Lulu
I haven’t yet set up the subscriber ordering site (it will be at SudokuXtra.com hopefully within 24 hours), but if you want to get in right away you can click directly on the Paypal buttons below, and then I will email you a PDF version of the magazine within 24 hours. Once the website is up and running you’ll receive the magazine immediately, so this is just temporary for the next day or two.
If you’re in the US or Canada and want a printed copy you have three choices: wait for it to appear on Amazon in a week or more (you might want to do this to get free delivery as part of a larger order), order from Lulu using the link above, or (for the 8″ x 10″ Amazon.com version but without the option of free postage) order a printed copy of Sudoku Xtra from CreateSpace.com instead, who supply the printed copies for Amazon (in fact they’re owned by Amazon too).
However the best option of all for me – the one where I get most money from the sale – is to order a download version and print it yourself. You can print either the whole magazine or just the pages you choose. If you’d like to do this you also have the option to subscribe for a year (12 issues) for the price of 11 issues, if you’re keen! This also insures you against any price rises that might happen in the coming year. Just click one of the four Paypal purchase buttons below.
Note that when buying on Paypal you can click the ‘Continue’ link next to “Don’t have a Paypal account?” to pay directly with a credit card – you don’t need to create a Paypal account if you don’t already have one. The checkout process will say ‘PuzzleMix.com’, which is another of my sites.
| Issue 1 @ £3.99 GBP | Issue 1 @ $5.99 USD |
Or for a 12-issue subscription:
| Issues 1-12 @ £43.89 GBP | Issues 1-12 @ $65.89 USD |
Thanks in advance, and I hope you enjoy the magazine!
Xtra Progress
Nov 11th
I’ve been away for a couple of days but I thought I’d post an update on how Sudoku Xtra was going.
By Friday night I had a complete draft of the magazine, without solutions yet in it, and so I spent the weekend away checking through the proofs and re-solving many of the puzzles.
Today I made a few revisions and so now I can confirm that apart from laying out the solutions (and finishing the colour cover that will go on the Amazon version) it is fully complete. There are exactly 100 puzzles in the first issue of the magazine, including several full page ones, and I’ve tried to include something for everyone – so there are some large grids for the people who want them, but they don’t dominate the magazine by any means for the people who don’t like them. I’ve also included some unusual variants which you probably won’t have come across before.
Because probably the majority of readers will be printing their own copies from a download version, I’ve designed it so that each individual page can be printed alone – each sheet is a standalone ‘work sheet’ of a particular type of puzzle, including summary instructions and an example solution. So you don’t need to waste paper printing the whole thing – you can easily skip the puzzles you are less interested in, or only print them when you’re ready for them.
I’m really very pleased at how it’s turned out, and hopefully you will be too when you see it! Thanks very much to everyone who has posted here or emailed me directly with comments on what they’d like to see, as well as on Sudoku Pro – you’ve really helped encourage me to get it done quickly, and it’s definitely informed the puzzles I’ve put in. (For example I was going to not include any super-large regular Sudoku but after a few requests I’ve made sure there’s some in there, including a rather unusual 20×20 Sudoku with 5×4 boxes.)
It will be out this week, certainly by first thing Friday for anyone who would like it in time for the weekend. And that’s a promise!
Sudoku Xtra Progress
Nov 6th
(Yes, that’s not Slitherlink on the right but this is a mock-up at the moment!)
I’ve been working hard on Sudoku Xtra today and hopefully my new magazine will be ready really soon. Of course the first issue of anything will be more work than subsequent issues (I hope!), since there’s so much more stuff to do – from the title to the content to the basic design to all the infrastructure around it. Right now I’m just getting to the point where I’m happy with the page layouts and basic design, thus this posting to preview it.
Any design needs to print fine on black+white printers, but I’ve used a small amount of extra colour throughout for page top/bottoms so it looks a bit nicer when previewed on screen (and a little shinier if you have a colour printer), and I can vary this colour from issue to issue.
It’s an interesting task to design a print-it-yourself magazine because you can’t use very large areas of black/colour otherwise people won’t want to print it out (it will cost too much and on some inkjets will make the paper go all wrinkly), so with essentially just black+white and not much opportunity to use large shaded areas you’re pretty restrained – however all that said I think I’ve come up with a layout that works and won’t be too much work to update with new puzzles each issue. There’s a small sample at the top of this post.
Going forward I imagine most pages will have 4 puzzles on, which seems to work well with the 8″ x 10″ page size. People ordering a printed copy worldwide from Amazon.com will get it at exactly that size (and will get a bonus colour cover) for $9.99 and eligible for free super saver shipping. I’ll also make it available in printed form from Lulu.com, which should be cheaper for UK residents – this will cost £5.99, although they add postage costs to this. Oddly this will be supplied in A4 format due to the page sizes they support, but there’s no extra puzzle content in the extra space! It will also be available for download, and the 8″ x 10″ page fits very nicely on both A4 and Letter pages without much wasted space. You can also print it with two pages on one A4/Letter sheet if you don’t mind smaller puzzles, and it’s still perfectly legible and usable. (I know this – I’ve tested it!). Download copies will be £2.99 or $4.99 respectively.
PS As mentioned above if you look closely at the Slitherlink puzzles in the sample you’ll see they look suspiciously like Consecutive Sudoku puzzles – that’s because I haven’t substituted the graphics on that page yet!
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