Yajilin Puzzles...

What are people's thoughts on yajilin as a puzzle.

Does anyone else like it?

If you've not come cross it, it's a loop making puzzle.

Any strategy tips on solving this... it would be good to have a strategy guide to solving yajilin

Re : Yajilin Puzzles

Hi Gemma

Interesting to hear you've come across yajilin before... where did you hear about it / see it? Perhaps you solve nikoli puzzles?

Anyhow, yajilin is a loop forming / making puzzle that is very good fun to solve.

So we've just added a simple strategy guide for the puzzle here:

http://www.puzzle-magazine.com/yajilin-rules-strategy.php

It contains a simple sample puzzle for you to solve with or without the aid of the workthrough depending on whether you've seen yajilin before or are coming to the puzzle for the very first time.

Re : Yajilin Puzzles

I've very recently got to grips with yajilin puzzles and they have become a firm favourite - so much so that I bought the Nikoli Sudoku & Yajilin puzzle book. These and masyu are my favourite loop puzzles, and I think, once you have got used to the rules, they are actually easier than slitherlink puzzles. If there was enough intererest for a magazine to be published I would definitely buy it.

Re : Yajilin Puzzles

Glad to hear someone else likes it

I think it must be a real niche puzzle but then I've never seen it published in Puzzler publications and they seem to own 99.9999% of the print puzzles market here in the UK don't they! It's disappointing that shop puzzles are virtually all crossword, wordsearch and arrow words and nothing else really gets a look in on the logic/number puzzles front apart from sudoku.

It's interesting that the only loop puzzle you DO see occasionally in printed press is slitherlink, yet actually both masyu and yajilin are easier to do in my opinion so would be more suitable for the mass market than slitherlink which can be really hard and time consuming, particularly as many of these puzzles actually do require "educated" guessing which is not the case with a good yajilin or masyu. I do now love slitherlink but I ignored it for the first three years I was into puzzles as I found it too hard and only got into it once I'd painstakingly done about ten puzzles to learn how to solve them and only at that point really got into them!

Re : Yajilin Puzzles

Hi Christine

Good to see another new face around here! Welcome. Hope you enjoy the magazine(s)

It's great to hear what puzzles people do and don't like, and certainly your interest in a potential loop puzzles (specifically yajilin / masyu) title has been noted.

Hopefully it is something we'll get around to. There are two problems with creating a magazine of these types of puzzles. First of all, they are quite time consuming to make, it can easily take about an hour to make a good puzzle of each, so making a magazine is time consuming.

Secondly there is the practical/commercial element in that, of course, there is such little exposure to these types of puzzles in high street publications that there is little demand relatively, just because there is such little awareness that these puzzles even exist. I'm sure if more people knew about them and tried them there would be more demand as they are great puzzle types that offer a different challenge to other types of puzzles. That said the philosophy behind this site IS to offer collections of puzzles that ARE hard to find on the high street, so rest assured it is on the list, it just might take a while!

There is real depth to loop puzzles that makes them particularly rewarding to stick with - the more you solve the more little rules and subtleties you find that you can employ to solve the puzzles... even after solving a hundred or so yajilin or slitherlink or masyu you will find new patterns that you can use to help you solve the puzzles and (apart from with some slitherlink) with any good puzzle you eventually never really need to guess but can use the rules that you come across to guide you through solving the puzzles.

The flip side is that the first one or two of these puzzles you do can be very frustrating as without an understanding of these patterns and rules it feels like you just have to guess, so of the few that do encounter loop puzzles in magazines, many give up too soon because they get frustrated. They are well worth sticking with.

It's always interesting to know which puzzles our members do and do not already know about: have you encountered all the puzzle types featured on here before, or are some of them new to you? It would be fascinating to find out!

Re : Yajilin Puzzles

Yes, I am really enjoying the consecutive sudoku magazine - I have done the first twenty already! I think the ABC puzzles will be my next download - great little puzzles.

As you say, it's a shame there is not more exposure to a wider variety of puzzles on the High Street. I personally had never done a number puzzle until the sudoku craze began, when I tried one to see what the fuss was about! I soon became addicted, but after a year or two of nothing but sudoku I was ready to move on to different types of number puzzle, and now have a go at any new varieties I can find! I am surprised that not more people are doing the same, and that it is just the same few puzzles that are marketed to the general public.

The only puzzle type on your site that I haven't come across before is the binary puzzle and so I look forward to having a go at those. I will probably download the sample page in the near future and have a go. Anyway, this site was definitely a good find, plenty to keep me occupied for a while!

Re : Yajilin Puzzles

Very pleased to hear you are enjoying the consecutive sudoku magazine, that's very good going to have done 20 so far as some of them are pretty tricky (I found them so anyway, you may be an expert!)

ABC puzzles are definitely one of my favourites. I've always been quite surprised that they don't appear more often, you regularly see one or two in a mixed collection of 100 puzzles in the shop titles and it's never enough.

In fact the ABC puzzle was one of the main reasons this site was started as it's definitely one of those puzzles that fits in the category of puzzle types that is impossible to buy on their own in the shops: and it's hard to find the motivation to buy a mixed puzzle collection for a few pounds just to play a couple of ABC puzzles!

As for binary puzzles, I would definitely encourage you to try the samples first and see if you like them or not. I think they appeal to some more than others (to be honest not one of my favourites!) However that said it is one of our most popular magazine downloads, particularly in Belgium and Australia so I guess it must appear over there (never seen it in UK publications personally).

Re : Yajilin Puzzles

Still continuing to enjoy the conseuctive sudokus - no I'm not an expert by any means, but have had plenty of practise at puzzles.

I did try the binary samples and whilst I did enjoy the four that I did, I don't think I would want a whole magazine of them, but will definitely be getting the ABC puzzles.