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Theme: TILT

Author/Opus: This is the 15th puzzle from guest contributor Bryce Herdt.

Rules: Place some of the given pentominoes in the grid so that no pentominoes touch, not even diagonally. Pentominoes cannot repeat in the grid; rotations and reflections of a pentomino are considered the same shape. The arrow clues indicate all the directions (up, down, left, and right) where the nearest pentominoes are located when looking from that square. Also, see this example:

Difficulty: 2.5 stars

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:45, Master = 4:45, Expert = 9:30

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for more Pentopia puzzles and this link for other puzzles involving Pentominoes.

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Theme: Back and Forth

Author/Opus: This is the 13th puzzle from guest contributor Bryce Herdt.

Rules: Place some of the given pentominoes in the grid so that no pentominoes touch, not even diagonally. Pentominoes cannot repeat in the grid; rotations and reflections of a pentomino are considered the same shape. The arrow clues indicate all the directions (up, down, left, and right) where the nearest pentominoes are located when looking from that square. Also, see this example:

Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the shaded pentomino segments from left to right for the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry from the next with a comma.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:45, Master = 4:00, Expert = 8:00

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for more Pentopia puzzles and this link for other puzzles involving Pentominoes.

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Theme: One-Way Arrows

Author/Opus: This is the 170th puzzle from guest contributor Prasanna Seshadri.

Rules: Place some of the given pentominoes in the grid so that no pentominoes touch, not even diagonally. Pentominoes cannot repeat in the grid; rotations and reflections of a pentomino are considered the same shape. The arrow clues indicate all the directions (up, down, left, and right) where the nearest pentominoes are located when looking from that square. Also, see this example:

Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the shaded pentomino segments from top to bottom for the marked columns, starting at the left. Separate each column’s entry from the next with a comma.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 6:00, Master = 10:45, Expert = 21:30

Solution: PDF

Note: Follow this link for more Pentopia puzzles and this link for other puzzles involving Pentominoes.

Here are our best Object Placement puzzles of 2016, selected from the 23 posts over the year.

The last year (+ one week) saw two new puzzlemasters join the team. Murat Can Tonta proved a master of clever puzzles, including this all black Statue Park puzzle.

Our other new puzzlemaster, Carl Worth, while still a “guest” of the site, contributed this Pentopia puzzle that a lot of solvers liked.

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Another Pentopia, this time a “Transparent” variation, from Prasanna Seshadri also got high marks.

The best object placement puzzle of 2016 though was this challenging Star Battle puzzle from Thomas Snyder, posted here from the US round to the Puzzle Grand Prix. Amusingly, it narrowly edged out in votes this other Star Battle from Thomas that was voted the best by the coordinators of the Grand Prix. Reviewing the votes across the board, our GMPuzzles voters do seem to prefer the super tough, unique challenges, and that is something the “Cornered” Star Battle certainly embodies.

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Theme: Quadruple Quandary

Author/Opus: This is the 12th puzzle from guest contributor Carl Worth.

Rules: Place some of the given pentominoes in the grid so that no pentominoes touch, not even diagonally. Pentominoes cannot repeat in the grid; rotations and reflections of a pentomino are considered the same shape. The arrow clues indicate all the directions (up, down, left, and right) where the nearest pentominoes are located when looking from that square. Also, see this example:

Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the shaded pentomino segments from left to right for the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry from the next with a comma. The example has the solution “21,23”.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:00, Master = 7:00, Expert = 14:00

Note: Follow this link for more Pentopia puzzles and this link for other puzzles involving Pentominoes.

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Theme: Clue Symmetry and Logic (originally on 2016 Polish Puzzle Championship)

Author/Opus: This is the 119th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Prasanna Seshadri.

Rules: Place some of the given pentominoes in the grid so that no pentominoes touch, not even diagonally. Pentominoes cannot repeat in the grid; rotations and reflections of a pentomino are considered the same shape. The arrow clues indicate all the directions (up, down, left, and right) where the nearest pentominoes are located when looking from that square, ignoring the clue cell itself. (Pentominoes can sit on the clue cells.)

See also this example:

Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the shaded pentomino segments from left to right for the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry from the next with a comma.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:15, Master = 4:00, Expert = 8:00

Note: Follow this link for more Pentopia puzzles and this link for other puzzles involving Pentominoes.

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Theme: Double Vision

Author/Opus: This is the 7th puzzle from guest contributor Carl Worth. The theme was inspired by Grant’s “Single Vision” Pentopia.

Rules: Place some of the given pentominoes in the grid so that no pentominoes touch, not even diagonally. Pentominoes cannot repeat in the grid; rotations and reflections of a pentomino are considered the same shape. The arrow clues indicate all the directions (up, down, left, and right) where the nearest pentominoes are located when looking from that square. Also, see this example:

Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the shaded pentomino segments from left to right for the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry from the next with a comma. The example has the solution “21,23”.

Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:45, Master = 7:00, Expert = 14:00

Note: Follow this link for other puzzles involving Pentominoes.