Mark Sweep's puzzles

Last year I had the pleasure to create some puzzles for the UK Puzzle Championship. Basically I was asked to create some well-known types, some more unfamiliar ones and perhaps a few variants. The UKPC was divided into two rounds of 90 minutes each, with 540 points up for grabs in each round (so 6 points per minute). Round 1 can be found here and round 2 can be found here .  Below you can find the puzzles I created.   1.1 Mastermind (10 points) I always like a small word puzzle in contests. That's why I created this one with mostly (stereo)typical words associated with the UK. Rules Identify a secret code comprised of letters (digits in the example). Each row represents a guess at the secret code, with black dots identifying letters that are in the correct position and white dots letters that are in the guess but in a different position to the code. The dots are given in no specific order, and each letter in the secret code contributes at most one dot, with black dots given p...

One of the most well known Tapa variations. This puzzle has a bit of a tricky start. Rules Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the lengths of the blocks of consecutive shaded cells in the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue. There may not exist a run of more than three consecutive shaded cells horizontally or vertically anywhere in the grid. No 2x2 region may be entirely shaded . Solve online

Here is a bigger puzzle to celebrate the first ten puzzles on this blog. Enjoy! Rules Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. No 2x2 region may be entirely shaded. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent something in the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue, depending on their location in the grid: Tapa (top left): the lengths of the blocks of consecutive shaded cells. TapaQ (top right): the number  of blocks of consecutive  shaded  cells. PataQ (bottom left): the  number  of blocks of consecutive  unshaded  cells. Pata (bottom right): the  lengths  of the blocks of consecutive  unshaded  cells. In addition, the four 5x5 squares (outlined in blue) are exact clones of each other. The X in these squares cannot be shaded. Note that for Pata or PataQ clues, other clues also act as unshaded cells. Solve online