Showing posts with label J. Franklin Mentzer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label J. Franklin Mentzer. Show all posts

16 January 2015

Sokoban lessons - Big squares

Conditions:
- Size squares 4 x 4 goals or greater. The whole perimeter of the squares is formed by a continuous series of goals.

See also "Tiny squares" and
"Squares and small diamonds".

In this selection I do not include "rings", which I reserve for another post.

You can download all puzzles (except commercial) here:
 




Author: unknown (Thinking Rabbit)
Title: Sokoban (SEGA) #85
Date: December 1985. Then in Sokoban Perfect (1989) #117
Difficulty: 4.5
Best moves/pushes: 357/140

Original square fifty-fifty of author unknown. See another interesting version in Ultimate Sokoban (1996, Itochu Corp.) Stage 4 Chapter 2 Level 6.





Author: Eiji Takeuchi
Title: Sokoban Revenge #118 マグカップ (Mug)
Date: 1991
Difficulty: 6.5
Best moves/pushes: 182/84 (Georgi Georgiev)

Difficult "mug"! We must pay special attention in the first moves...





Author: Yoshio Sakae
Title: Sokoban Revenge #151 回転木馬 (Carousel)
Date: 1991
Difficulty: 6.5
Best moves/pushes: 1296/320

Excellent puzzle, with the windmill-shaped storage area and rooms around. It is a remodel of Sokoban Perfect #128, also of the own Yoshio Sakae.





Author: Yoshio Sakae
Title: Sokoban Revenge #274 めまい (Dizziness)
Date: 1991
Difficulty: 6.5
Best moves/pushes: 1019/342

Yoshio Sakae is an author of few puzzles of storage, but all are excellent. In addition to the previous one, I choose this. If you solve it on the first try, you're a crack.





Author: monry
Title: Ichimatsu series 3
Set: monry #10
Comment: from BanSoko 145
Date: 1992.2.12
Difficulty: 7
Best moves/pushes: 177/74

Ichimatsu is a series of 6 squares, progressively larger, up to 19 x 19 and 144 boxes. The boxes are arranged in chessboard, and the player start in the center. The solution technique is similar in all. I recommend to start with the square smaller, Ichimatsu series 1, which I do not know why, it seems to me the more difficult.

York Shen made two enlargements of Ichimatsu series 6, and GRIGoRusha added 3 boxes to Ichimatsu series 3, but I think it is easier than the original.





Author: monry
Title: ホームズの推理 (Holmes' reasoning)
Set: monry #24
Date: 1992.3.16
Difficulty: 5
Best moves/pushes: 68/24

Logical.





Author: Sven Egevad + Marek Letrab + zhenying + Jordi Domènech
Title: SE 10 a3
Comment:
four floors replaced by four boxes - M.L.
major changes - zhenying
stoned a floor, move a box - J.D.
Date: 1992. Remodel: 2008.5.8 zhenying, 2014.11.22 J.D.
Website: www.egevad.nu/sven/
Difficulty: 6
Best moves/pushes: 1685/512

Special remodel for this post :) I am happy for having contributed a bit to this old and excellent puzzle of Sven Egevad.





Author: J. Franklin Mentzer
Title: Still more! #32
Date: 1993
Difficulty: 6
Best moves/pushes: 1072/386

Ahhh nostalgia!... After the Original collection, this was my next collection of Sokoban...





Author: monry
Title: monry-light #36
Date: 1998.10.25
Difficulty: 5.5
Best moves/pushes: 557/153

Central storage area and rooms around. Excellent!





Author: Jean-Pierre Kent
Title: JPK Levels #63
Date: November 1998
Difficulty: 6.5
Best moves/pushes: 1288/455 (lsdzxy)

Fantastic puzzle, one of the best in this collection! See also #8 and #40, this last already published in "Storage: One entrance".





Author: Kazuo Fukushima + monry
Title: (untitled)
Date: 1999.2.1
Comment: published in the Japanese mailing list Sokoban-ML
Difficulty: 5
Best moves/pushes: 176/24

Transport this box! Excellent remodel from a simple puzzle of Kazuo.





Author: David W. Skinner
Title: Sasquatch III #31
Date: June 2000
Difficulty: 6
Best moves/pushes: 420/114 (G. Lyapko + W. Haas)

Entertaining maze. There is a York Shen remodel with 4 more boxes.





Author: François Marques
Title: Kokoban #38 The jail
Date: August 2001
Website: sokoban.online.fr/
Difficulty: 8
Best moves/pushes: 217/54

Spectacular compact! A square inside a cross-shaped structure. The difficulty is guaranteed.





Author: Evgeny Grigoriev (GRIGoRusha) + Hu Yibin
Title: #9
Comment: From GRIGoRusha #11
Date: November 2001. Remodel: 2005.4.2, 2005.5.18
Difficulty: 6
Best moves/pushes: 136/47

Windmill-shaped structure. Is a remodel of Grigr2001 #11 Krenol.





Author: Evgeny Grigoriev (GRIGoRusha)
Title: Grigr2001 #40 Rebus
Date: November 2001
Website: grigr.narod.ru/sokoban.htm
Difficulty: 7
Best moves/pushes: 697/214 (lsdzxy)

Well, it's a "broken" square, but it is one of my favorite levels in this set.





Author: David W. Skinner + Jordi Domènech
Title: Sasquatch V #31 a
Comment: stoned 5 floors
Date: December 2001. Remodel: 2014.11.25
Difficulty: 7.5
Best moves/pushes: 778/308 (Mark)

Fun windmill. Special remodel for this post! See also Skinner's previous level #30, similar though more easy, and Sasquatch XI #19.





Author: David W. Skinner
Title: Sasquatch V #46
Date: December 2001
Difficulty: 6
Best moves/pushes: 1378/328 (Georgi Georgiev)

Fantastic maze!





Author: François Marques
Title: The grid - Le concurs du mois de mai 2002
Date: 2002.2.11
Website: sokoban.online.fr/
Difficulty: 7
Best moves/pushes: 166/58 (Philippe Lamat)

Difficult! Take it calmly.





Author: David Holland
Title: bagatelle2 #6 midblock7
Date: July 2002
Difficulty: 7
Best moves/pushes: 263/92

A broken square inside a windmill-shaped structure. The most interesting is that the four arms are irregular.





Author: XiBei Tian Lang
Title: 初涉江湖 (ChuSheJiangHu)
Comment: TL01
Date: c. April 2003
Difficulty: 8
Best moves/pushes: 235/50

It is the first puzzle of a series of six small squares, all of them of maximum difficulty.





Author: Sven Egevad
Title: SE 1604
Comment: assemble hard
Date: 2006
Website: www.egevad.nu/sven/
Difficulty: 6.5
Best moves/pushes: 1108/319 (yutaka yamada)

Hard! We must sweat to take out the first box...





Author: David W. Skinner + Jordi Domènech
Title: Microban variations III #22
Comment: based on Microban III #46, added 2 boxes
Date: December 2009. Remodel: 2010.10.7
Difficulty: 6
Best moves/pushes: 353/108 (Findus)

The "X"! A square inside a structure in stepped X-shape.





Author: zhenying
Title: WeiMingMing01c
Date: 2010.2.27
Website: blog.163.com/changkai_8428/
Difficulty: 6.5
Best moves/pushes: 948/290

Funny. See also the puzzle "a07", an enlarged version.





Author: Přemysl Zíka
Title: First levels #240
Date: April 2012
Website: www.zusbreznice.cz/rozvrhy-zika-premysl-sokoban.cz
Difficulty: 7.5 (P.Z.)
Best moves/pushes: 1794/588 (Archanfel)

Incredibly hard! It is necessary to do a lot of maneuvers, both in the snail-storage as in the cargo area. One of the best puzzles in this series. My difficulty rating: 8.





Author: Přemysl Zíka
Title: First levels #253
Date: May 2012
Website: www.zusbreznice.cz/rozvrhy-zika-premysl-sokoban.cz
Difficulty: 8.5
Best moves/pushes: 841/255 (Archanfel + TIAOA)

Hard from the beginning to the end!





Author: niwa
Title: Square Dance #27 Squaring the circle
Date: 2013.9.25
Difficulty: 7
Best moves/pushes: 1967/524

Interesting and fun
to solve rotatory puzzle.



New additions

Note: These puzzles are not included in the downloadable file



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 #  $ $ $    #
 # ##   $$ ###
# #  #### #   #
#     .... * ##
 ## *#*##*#  #
 #   #.##.#* #
 ## * .*.+   #
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Author: Andrej Cerjak
Title: AC Smileys 2 #94
Date: September 2015
Difficulty: 5.5
Best moves/pushes: 366/126




In addition to the levels above-mentioned, see also:

- Howard Abed
SokoCreation #17

- Jordi Domènech
Miniatures - Part Two #1
The beautiful world of remodels 1 #42, 43; 2 #59; 5 #34
Chrysalis variations #26, 52, 67
Microban variations III #26
SokoStation variations #56, 57

- Bruno Druille
Tableau 90

- dzxmer
Panda 92 #23

- Sven Egevad
SE 242, 824, 842 (see remodel of York Shen), 859, 871, 1055, 1602

- gyjgw
20070924

- David Holland
dh2 #2 (see remodel of York Shen), 10
Maelstrom Collection #10

- Jean-Pierre Kent
#6, 8, 24, 35 (see remodel of monry)

- Aleksey Krupenko
Room 7, 27, 34, 63

- Ghislain Martin
SokoStation #26, 184 (see remodel of Marek Letrab +4 boxes), 196

- J. Franklin Mentzer
Still more! #1, 9, 24

- Kevin B. Reilly
#14 (see remodel of Jordi Domènech + stopheart)

- Erim Sever
erim174

- David W. Skinner
Sasquatch IV #34; XI #6; XII #33


- skippy + Archanfel
Snowflake


- Eric F. Tchong
Chuchubi 1 #45, 62

- Thinking Rabbit
Sokoban Perfect #73 (Hachiro Kajiwara), 102 (Yasuhiro Morita), 116, 137 (Yasuhiro Morita), 142, 214, 229
Sokoban Revenge #59 (arranged by York Shen, difficult), 90 (Yasuhiro Morita; see remodel of York Shen), 144 (Yoshio Sakae), 248 (Takahiro Suzushima), 271 (Yoshio Sakae)
Ultimate Sokoban, Stage 2 Chapter 3 Level 1

- TIAOA
SBMendonca 03 L24 (arranged by anian)
SBMendonca 04 LL19 (arranged by Archanfel), LL32

-
Přemysl Zíka
Primus gradus ad Olympo #100
Secundus gradus ad Olympo #70



24 March 2011

"Still more!", by J. Franklin Mentzer

I started playing Sokoban with Scott Lindhurst's program, Sokoban for the Macintosh (v. 1.0, April 1992), but I stopped playing at the end of 2001, just when Howard Abed left and GRIGoRusha published his first collection. I was completely disconnected between 2002-2006. In 2006 I returned to the hobby to Sokoban, thanks to the Bulgarian online web SokobanBG.

I will never be sufficiently grateful to Scott Lindhurst and its "Sokoban for the Macintosh" for the exciting hours I spent with this game...


Sokoban for the Macintosh, old version 2.0, 1996

In the early 90's, the Internet barely existed in Spain (I had no Internet access until 1994 ...), but the collections were spread very efficiently through the BBS. In those early years, until 2001, I gathered a considerable archive of puzzles.

Now I'm ordering my old file Sokoban, and I find many surprises. For example, I found the original collection of J. Franklin Mentzer, "Still more!".


About "Still more!", in MacSokoban 3.0, 1995

"Still more!" appeared in 1993, and was included - I think almost simultaneously - on MacSokoban, by Ingemar Ragnemalm (v. 1.0, February 1992) and "Sokoban for the Macintosh." However, there is a difference between the two collections: Scott Lindhurst "normalized" the maps (see above)
, so you lose the beautiful original drawing of many puzzles in the collection.

For example, here's the great puzzle #29 of "Still more!" on the original version, without "normalizing" (note that it is one more box! ...):



"Still more!" #29 (original map)

Later, "Still more!" was also included in KSokoban (v. 0.1.0, August 1998), by Anders Widell, to KDE platforms: they are the same maps as those of MacSokoban. 

The collection "Still more!" is excellent, and one of the largest collections of difficulty and loveliest of those years. I recommend it. You can download the original collection here:

- Still more! (1993, 35 levels, original collection)

About Frank Mentzer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Mentzer

http://pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showcreator&creatorid=3088

  Frank Mentzer