Friday Puzzle #180 - 24hour Sudoku

[motris]

I've written some great sudoku in my lifetime. This is not the best sudoku I've ever written, but in my opinion this is the best sudoku themed around "24" that can be written. In a concise and appropriate number of givens, a clear visual theme is presented that also matters in the solving process. It was worth 20 points (easy-medium) at the recent

Comments

Themes

[ext_1345104]

Actually, your comments about this puzzle reminded me about something I wanted to praise in general about the American set from the 24hpc. The ways in which the "24" theme were used to simultaneously create an interesting/appealing design AND to create an interesting logical solve were really nice in most of the puzzles. So for example, in the star battle puzzle the other week, the shapes of the 2's and 4's were very important to the puzzle. The big "24" region in Palmer's Nurikabe was central to the logic, and of course his Tapa was something of an etude on properties of "2 4" clues. Even in a puzzle where the "24" theme wasn't used numerically, like Palmer's crossword using the different words for "twenty-four" across many languages, the similarities between the words had a real effect on the logic of the puzzle and made it more interesting.

It reminds me in many ways of good uses of musical or poetic structures. Someone who isn't much of a poet would find using sonnet form to be overly restrictive, and the meter and rhyme scheme might make the poem sound sing-songy and trite. But a good poet actually uses the structure for inspiration and uses it to help delineate the meaning of the poem as well as make it "pretty". A bad composer gets extra-boring when they write a fugue, but a Bach fugue is like listening to the clockwork that drives the universe ticking. Similarly, I think if I tried to make a "2 4" Tapa, the results would be repetitive and uninteresting, but when a really good Tapa designer uses it, it's inspired.

The set also again drives home the usual message of why hand-constructed puzzles can be a lot better than computer-generated puzzles.

Re: Themes

[motris]

Thanks for this really thoughtful comment. Getting themed puzzles, but also ones that had meaningful and different solves, was a real goal for me/us. That we achieved this all in less than one week of writing says it might be great to work together again.

The competitive balance was a bit off, but I think this set collectively ranks as a really great group of puzzles and I can't see outdoing it if the theme is 24 again.

Re: Themes

[ext_209009]

Thanks for the comments on the set. It is true that 24 often figured prominently into the solve. That may be because for me personally, I have a worse opinion of puzzles which are very flashy visually and don't stand out in the solve, compared to a puzzle without a visual aesthetic whose solve is of the same level of quality. It's like I got most of the value of the puzzle in the two seconds it took to look at it and the time spent solving was wasted in comparison.

I don't think I was quite able to meet that standard every time though. The pentomino markers puzzle probably tops the list of puzzles I would have redone if time had allowed, among a couple others.

I'd also like to see what standard the same author group might hit if we don't have such an insane time constraint. And rather than not being able to outdo 24 in the future, after writing 15 puzzles themed around it I wish I never had to see the number 24 again.

Re: Themes

[motris]

I'm going to butcher a quote from "Dr J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D" -

To fully understand [puzzles], we must first be fluent with its [media], [genres] and [mechanisms], then ask two questions:
1) How artfully has the objective of the [puzzle] been rendered and 2) How important is that objective? Question 1 rates the [puzzle]'s perfection; question 2 rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining the [puzzle]'s greatness becomes a relatively simple matter.

Now the source of that now twice invented quote actually says this kind of a scale is useless, but I do perceive a puzzle's value on an aesthetic (visual) and aesthetic (logical) set of axes. All my puzzles rate highly on one of the axes, and my favorites on both. I know solvers like MellowMelon prefer the logical set of axes. As a solver I do too. But as a constructor in a marketplace where my competitor's products are worth close to nothing but cost nothing, the value axis is the visual axis because the product needs to stand out on the shelf. And thus there is a balance in all my work with both goals in mind, targeting a set of focused and general audiences, often at the same time.

Besides that point, the other thing in Palmer's response that I like is the sense of never wanting to see 24 again. I did get pretty far with "23" a few years ago. So is 25 my next number to hate?