Mega Pic-A-Pix

This week Conceptis spoiled us with a coloured mega Pic-A-Pix puzzle. It took me several days to finish doing small parts at a time. Now it is finished and as always, the picture is just beautiful!

Relaxing Holiday

I was on holiday. Despite my decision in the beginning of the summer vacation I just had to go to Israel for one week. The trip was too short but the feeling to be away from home made me wonders. My mind was totally reset from the past school year and even after I came home I have been able to relax instead of worrying all the things I should be doing at the moment.

At home I have spent the days in my social networks but mostly I have enjoyed my puzzles. Nowadays my main interest is Pic-A-Pix. Here are 4 screen shots of last week's 6 puzzles.

This week all the others are back to work and I am spending my days with Piitu. I should really start planning next year but as it seems I am not making very good progress. Sometimes I hope I had a job I could leave outside my home. This way it seems I am at my workplace all the time...

Solving a Conceptis Color Pic-a-Pix Puzzle

I think I have spent too long blogging about other things but finally I got into recording a session about solving my favourite type of Conceptis puzzles, a color Pic-a-Pix. These I prefer solving on the computer because I always have trouble finding the right color pencils even though my house is basically filled with ones my children got from school and left behind when they moved away. The other problem is that color pencils are much more difficult to erase than regular pencils.

This particular puzzle can be found here along with other similar bigger puzzles. Because this is a very easy puzzle, I could solve each colour on its own. With harder puzzles that solving method is either impossible or at least makes solving the puzzle even harder.

Notice that you can watch the video on full screen. I made it with ScreenToaster which is an excellent tool for recording your screen. The video is stored on the website and you don't have to upload any software on your computer.

Capture your screen in seconds

The Satisfaction of a Solved Puzzle

In February when my holiday started, I took a huge challenge to solve a 110x175 Pic-A-Pix puzzle. It was not as hard as I had imagined but it took a great deal of my holiday. I am not complaining; those hours were very enjoyable. I almost got it finished before the end of the holiday but I got affected by the most common problem, miscalculation in some clue. I erased the area in the centre probably 5 times, always getting a little bigger part right. At that point I was ready to take a break from it, but said to my daughter that she could solve it if she wanted to, and she did! The wrong block had appeared actually very early and that is why I had not got it fixed. I should have gone a bit lower. Now the colouring of the puzzle has taken longer than the solution. I finished it last night watching who won the Survivor China. Here it is (the darker areas on the background are mostly shadows...):

The fantastic thing about this puzzle was all the detail. It made solving interesting and the result very lively.

Now my husband says that I have to frame it and hang it on the wall. That is something I just can't do. It has a 175x110 puzzle on the other side...

Related posts: Skiing Holiday With a Puzzle

Skiing Holiday With a Puzzle

I really have been neglecting my blog! One of the reasons has been my work and the computer classes. I have a new Finnish blog Kompuutteri about computers and updating that for the students has taken me more time than I ever would have expected. Explaining programs and Internet as clearly as possible is not as easy as it may sound. Things I consider matter-of-course can be totally unknown to someone else.

Now I am having my skiing holiday. It has been a tradition in the Finnish school system as long as I have been involved, either as a student or a teacher. We don't really have skiing conditions here in the south by the sea but I prefer the old name instead of just a winter holiday which is used nowadays.

I had very many good intentions about my blogs and cleaning the computer files as well as cleaning the house but I needed some relaxation after the tiresome week in school. I subscribe to a couple of Japanese magazine and the latest issue of Logic Paradise had a huge 110 x 175 Pic-A-Pix included. I decided to give it a try:

After the first day I had some progress to keep my spirits up:


There were mental distractions as well as physical :) Piitu is actually an experienced solver. I have a picture of her solving a puzzle with me when she was a couple of months old.


After two days I was confident I would manage it:


And then I was hooked! I had to take breaks but soon my mind started to wander back to the puzzle and there I was, solving the puzzle forgetting all about the other things I should have done. The totally white spaces in the picture are reflections from the flash light. The paper is glossy and the it is not straight any more. At certain angles all the light reflects back.

As you can see I have made some attempts on the right by counting the overlaps but they did not get me very far. The solution advances along the picture. At some points when I have thought I was stuck, the next step was found after a break with a clear mind. There have always been clues which I just did not notice the first time.

Even though I have not followed my original to-do-list I feel so relaxed and happy. This is something I could do all the time.

A Starter's Guide to Japanese Pic-A-Pix Puzzles

I have very often written about my favourite Japanese puzzles, Pic-A-Pix –puzzles, like Conceptispuzzles has named them. Other names for these puzzles are also used. However I have never adviced how to solve them. A new techniques article was published in Conceptispuzzles website last week. The problem with these puzzles is that the solving methods can vary very much and people can use their own logic in solving. I decided to show my technique with the same puzzle which is used in the article. I also want to point out that solving can always be done by logic. No quessing is needed and usually ends up in a mess!

The bigger puzzle above and almost the same as this smaller one can be played online on Conceptispuzzles website

The empty grid consists of rows and columns. Both have numbers which show how many black squares have to be painted on the respective row/column. The row 5 has clues 3 4 which means that on that row you will have to paint 3 consecutive squares and 4 consecutive squares but these two blocks are separate.

Well, that should be easy. The problem here is that the painted squares have to fit both the row clues and the column clues. A valid puzzle has only one solution matching those clues and that is why it is important to think which ones have to be painted and which remain empty.

The result of the painted squares is a picture. Sometimes you can even tell that something is going wrong when it looks like a person’s eye seems to be shifted near his ear. Sometimes you can’t conclude what the picture will be until you have solved it all.

Usually I check first the edges. This puzzle definitely has better places to start, but these instances are generally very rare. If none of the edges can be used, I try to find the best row or column as near the edge as possible. Keeping close to the edge is safer and easier for the starting solvers. I still use it as much as I can in big puzzles. It makes me able to check the row/column clues more often.

In the future I use the word clue when I am referring to the given number on the top or on the right. The painted squares and painted blocks are the visual representations of these clues in the puzzle.

In this puzzle three of the edges are impossible to start with. There is no way to tell where 1; 2; or 1,1 should be put in the grid. The bottom edge has clue 7 and I could use that, but the clue 10 two rows up is even better. It fills the whole row.

Now I will check what that means regarding the columns. Column a has only clue 1 and I have painted one. I’ll mark all the others done.

Column b has clue 2 at the bottom. I can’t place it starting from the bottom. If I would, I had a block of 3! That means the bottom square to be empty. Any other conclusions I cannot make at this point.

Column c has clue 3 at the bottom and I can’t conclude anything (actually I could but that is more advanced).

Column d has clue 10 and so does h. I can fill them all. In between the columns all have clues 3 and I will leave them like in column c.

Column i has again clue 3 and is left alone.

Column j is interesting. I can make the same conclusion as in b. The block 2 does not reach the bottom. I can also make the conclusion that it can reach only one square upwards. I can delete all the other squares. This is the advantage of rows/columns with only one clue. When you find it, you can exclude squares.

Now that I have checked all the columns, I will go back to rows and start from the bottom. Row 10 has only left 7 squares so I can paint them all and row 9 has left the nine squares and can also be painted.

Now I could go on with the rows, but now the edge is ready. I will go back to the columns and I can see that all the bottom clues are painted. I’ll mark the squares above them because there has to be empty before the other blocks can continue.

I could have done this before but this is the point where I finally have to do it. I mark all the clues I have used and checked.

Back to row 6. Since the right side is nearer the edge I’ll start there. To the right I need a block of 4 and the second square is black. At this point I can’t be sure of the first one, but the third and fourth have to be black.

Ahaa! I can’t paint the fifth because it would be attached to the next one and I would have a block of 5. So the first square was also black and I can mark the fifth square empty.

Now the row has left 3 squares which have to be black. Row 5 is exactly the same as row 6 was.

Row 4 has two one’s and they are there. I can mark all the others empty.

But wait, I have more blocks finished in the columns and now I can check if they match the clues.

Everything is OK, I can mark the 2’s as finished and at the same time I notice that columns b and f are ready.

Now rows 3 and 2 can be painted. There is only one way to get the 3-blocks fit. Row 1 is already finished!

Now the last thing is to check that the column clues agree on the blocks. Everything is fine and the picture is finished.

Sometimes in small puzzles you have a hard time trying to figure out what the picture is supposed to be. In these cases you should look at the picture from very far (or resize it on your computer).

This was easy to see from the big picture but the tiny one is definitely clearer.

Next time I will try to explain solving coloured PAPs. Meanwhile you can try to solve the small PAP on my sidebar :)

Conceptis Review Puzzle

As usual, holidays seem to consist of much shorter days than normal work days. One week left, and I feel I have not accomplished as much as I had planned. Transferring files between computers trying to figure out how they should be organized is not exactly very inspiring at the moment.

This was one Sunday in a long row of Sundays when I once again forgot to send my review to Conceptis of their weekly puzzle. I should do it right away after I have solved it, but usually I remember it only at moments when I am not anywhere near my computer.

So this time I am writing my review here:

The puzzle was a very nice colour Pic-A-Pix-puzzle and the size was just the way I like them. Somebody is riding on a sledge and a beautiful deer is pulling the sledge. I am not exactly sure who the man is. The clothing is not familiar; all I can think of are the heroes from our national epic Kalevala.