Birthday Puzzle 2024

I make a puzzle every year on my birthday, always trying to make something brand new that pushes some personal limit. This year, I've gone with something, um, substantially less accessible than puzzles I've made in the past, but it "needed to be made" more than any of my other puzzles.

There is the concept of a "PokeDoku", which is a Pokemon-inspired take on a Sudoku. It consists of a 3x3 grid that must be filled out with 9 Pokemon total, and each row and column shares a characteristic, like "Fire-Type" or "Mega Pokemon". I found these puzzles very unsatisfying - there are many answers for each spot, and your score is determined by how few players chose that particular answer. Also, the categories are arbitrary, and it's only 3x3, where Sudoku is a full, perfectly balanced 9x9. So, I set out to try and make a better PokeDoku, and the result is below.

Now, if you happen to be one of the few people who identify as both a puzzle fiend and a Pokemaniac, you may be able to solve this puzzle without any kind of direction, so I'll just give you the puzzle and the most basic instructions.

• Your goal is to fill out this 6x6 grid with unique Pokemon such that each row, column, and colored 2x2 square has something different in common. (These are big, obvious characteristics and not something like "They both have a height between 4'11" and 6'1" ".)
  
• All variants of Pokemon present in the main series games can used, using their in-game names. Temporary form changes are associated with the base Pokemon, but are still considered their own Pokemon (with their own names).
• There are a few very similar sets of Pokemon that will fill this grid, but there is only one unique solution when it comes to the row, column, and square characteristics.
  

 

But I do want to give a bit more direction to make this puzzle accessible outside of the hardcore Pokemaniacs out there, so read on for those details.

• Columns in the puzzle represent Pokemon that share a type. All columns have a unique type.
  
• Rows in the puzzle represent Pokemon that start with the same letter of the alphabet. All rows have a unique letter.
  
• Squares in the puzzle represent the Pokemon's generation in order, starting from Generation I at the top left and ending with Generation IX at the bottom right.
• Regional variations of Pokemon go by the same name, and therefore start with the same letter. Alolan Rattata is referred to as Rattata in-game, and so counts for R, not A.
• Temporary form changes of Pokemon do have a different in-game name: Mega Pidgeot counts for M, not P. However, the temporary forms are assigned the generation of their base form, not the generation they were officially revealed.
• As mentioned above, there are a few cases in which multiple Pokemon can fill a single square (these Pokemon would have to share a type, a generation, and the first letter of their names). But there are only six types and six starting letters that are possible, providing a unique solution up to symmetry.

 You should have everything you need to solve the puzzle! It should be completely solvable without any guesswork.

Happy solving! I might do a breakdown of the puzzle here in a month or so, because hoo boy, it was a problem with too many constraints.

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I still haven't been able to figure out the HTML encoding problem that makes my 2023 Birthday Puzzle work perfectly in the webpage... but change the font of everything :( To be honest, it was a borderline miracle that I was able to get that much working!

So, here's a spacer to prevent it from messing up the home page.

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Gathering 4 Gardner 2024!

It was my second in-person Gathering! After fighting for approximately six years trying to get into the conference, I wasn't going to miss any of them, and it was an amazing one, with a lot of talks about the newly-discovered Spectre and Hat tiles - including from Chaim Goodman-Strauss and -the- Roger Penrose. I can't remember the last time I was starstruck. And then RFP showed the audience his amateur drawing of a pigeon - he had made some tessellation art using the Spectre - and it was the best thing I've ever seen.

I gave a talk on the Egg Sandwich problem. It honestly didn't feel quite as "revolutionary" as Hexprimes, and I was a bit worried that it would be boring or too trivial for the mathematicians and pros out there. After all, it's more or less a simple geometry problem, and without any far-reaching implications, unlike Hexprimes. But, it seemed to be very well-received, and I was humbled by many folks who are definitely masters of their fields coming to me and telling me they enjoyed my silly little story about an extra sandwich.

I also wrote up a paper about Puclow, the Last Substitution Cipher - I may elaborate on that in a post eventually!