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Comment by rjh29 | Hacker News Reader

If you like these puzzles, consider giving Nikoli some money, as they are a relatively small Japanese puzzle magazine and invented many of them. I find their handmade puzzles a lot more fun than the autogenerated ones this program makes.

https://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/

https://nikolibookshop.stores.jp/

I recommend 'The Pencil Puzzle 2022' (and other years) which has puzzles from their entire range. English instructions are included.

My absolute favourite is Slitherlink. I've never been more addicted to a puzzle game than the DS version: https://www.eurogamer.net/puzzle-series-vol-5-slitherlink-re...

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I'm also a fan of Nikoli-style puzzles. (My favorite is Nurikabe.) Nikoli themselves used to offer an iPhone app with lots of good ones, but it's sadly unavailable now.

https://puzz.link/db/ is a great source of community-made puzzles in this style that are playable in a browser. Also worth a look is https://www.gmpuzzles.com/blog/ if printing and playing on paper is okay.

I agree with you that human-made puzzles are much more interesting. The generated ones become boring quickly.

>playing on paper

Printing is no longer necessary! GMPuzzles have been providing Penpa+ (a Javascript puzzle tool) links for all new puzzles for a while now and are in the process of backporting all their backlog puzzles for digital solving, too. It's really awesome :)

Thanks, it's been a while since the last time I played GMPuzzles... clearly I should do it again.

I've been a fan of Nikoli puzzles since discovering them through the US Puzzle Championship exam years ago. I always wanted more practice but had a hard time finding paper puzzle books to work with. Especially if I didn't want a book with Sudoku. Anyhow, just a few months ago, I discovered two puzzles books at Barnes and Noble!

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/iq-puzzles-1-nikoli/1131029... https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/iq-puzzles-2-nikoli/1131029...

> Slitherlink

One of the best mobile puzzle games ever

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ejelta.sli...

Note that you can encode hand made (or other externally generated) puzzles in a format that Simon Tanthams app accepts, and share them.

I'm not aware of anyone actually doing this for most puzzles, but the crossword world often lets you download puzzles in a generic format to play in different apps, and the apps often have ways of regularly downloading new puzzles from the web.

I believe there's also apps that can prefill a soduko grid from a photograph of a grid, so maybe a translator could be built to pass those to the Puzzles app in the appropriate format.

I just checked Nikoli, and now I am getting a definite desire to play Shakashaka ( https://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/puzzles/shakashaka/ ).

Which is not in Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection. Guess I will have to code it one day. Edit: or just use web implementations - there are many...

Most implementations probably use algorithmically generated puzzles, which are less fun than human-created puzzles.

There's Slant in the collection, which seems similar... haven't played Shakashaka though, might be mistaking.

Here's Slitherlink and a ton of other puzzles playable on the browser: https://www.puzzle-loop.com/

I enjoy this collection, they all have a similar and consistent UI. I enjoy their Nonograms, Star Battle, Tents, Hashi and I've just tried their new Mosaic puzzle, seems fun enough.

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