#32 - UKPA 2026 puzzles & leftovers

For this year's UKPA open I teamed up with Lennart Muijres (Leonardo024) to create a puzzle set. I already had the idea to have an entire set using stained glass clues, basically due to a Stained Glass Yin Yang I really liked during 24HPC. 

So we got together to figure out genres where this would be feasible, taking into account the final combo puzzle. For the combo puzzle we started setting together, after which we focused more on individual subgrids by ourselves. We initially only had one puzzle per type and the final combo puzzle. However, we ended up making some extra easier puzzles so that there would be more things to solve in all difficulty ranges. Our full round (round 4) and all the other rounds from UKPA open 2026 can be found here. Below are just the puzzles I created along with some thoughts. Our entire round lasted 75 minutes and had a total worth of 455 points.


Stitches (Stained Glass)

I liked this combination more than I anticipated. I have also grown more fond of Stitches last year, it is quite an interesting puzzle type. The puzzles came out quite nicely (maintaining symmetry was a bit difficult sometimes). The leftover puzzle is one I made before we decided to go with grids shaped like the letters of UKPA.

Rules

Punch holes into some cells and place stitches into the grid, each being a line connecting two holes which are orthogonally adjacent across a region boundary. Each hole must be used by exactly one stitch. If two regions share an edge, exactly one stitch must span between them. A clue outside the grid indicates the number of holes in the corresponding row or column. A black dot must touch more unused cells than holes. A white dot must touch more holes than unused cells. A grey dot must touch an equal amount of each.


Example


Puzzle 1 (10 points)

Solve on Penpa


Puzzle 2 (41 points)

Solve on Penpa


Leftover (medium difficulty)

Solve on Penpa





Country Road (Stained Glass)

For some reason I always really enjoy setting Country Roads. Personally, the second leftover puzzle is my favorite, as it contains a nice theme, but also solid logic. However, it was deemed too hard for what we intended for the contest.

Rules

Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some cells which passes through each region exactly once. A number in a region represents how many cells in the region are visited by the loop. Orthogonally adjacent cells across a region border may not both be unused. A black dot must touch more unused cells than loop cells. A white dot must touch more loop cells than unused cells. A grey dot must touch an equal amount of each.


Example


Puzzle 1 (12 points)

Solve on Penpa


Puzzle 2 (30 points)

Solve on Penpa


Leftover 1 (easy difficulty)

Solve on Penpa


Leftover 2 (medium-hard difficulty)

Solve on Penpa


Stained Glass Combo

It was a lot of fun to think about possibilities how to identify which grid is which together. I had also never really sat together with someone physically to design a puzzle. Quite happy how the full puzzle turned out. Only 5 points for identifying all grids may be a bit of an underestimation if you are not experienced with the variants.

Rules

There are four grids that are respectively a Country Road (Stained Glass), Nanro (Stained Glass), Shimaguni (Stained Glass), and Stitches (Stained Glass). Assign each grid to one of these puzzle types (each puzzle type is used exactly once), and solve the corresponding puzzle. The Country Road and Stitches rules are the same as above.


Nanro: Place a number into some cells so that all cells with numbers form one orthogonally connected area and no 2x2 region is entirely numbered. Each region must contain at least one numbered cell, and every number in the region must be equal to how many numbered cells the region contains. Two cells containing the same number may not share a region border. A black dot must touch more numbered cells than unused cells. A white dot must touch more unused cells than numbered cells. A grey dot (marked with =) must touch an equal amount of each.

Shimaguni: Shade a single group of orthogonally connected cells in each region. Shaded groups must not be orthogonally adjacent. Regions with numbers must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells. Each region must contain at least one shaded cell, and no two adjacent regions may contain the same number of shaded cells. A black dot must touch more shaded cells than unshaded cells. A white dot must touch more unshaded cells than shaded cells. A grey dot (marked with =) must touch an equal amount of each.


Example



Contest puzzle (245 points: 5 + 4x60)

Solve on Penpa














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