New puzzles Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays

Big Machine

I have a mild obsession with the novels of Victor LaValle, including his 2009 novel Big Machine, several editions of which feature cover art of a spiraling line, including the audio edition I enjoyed. I often name puzzles as the last step, but in this case I started with the title and set the puzzle “inspired by” the cover art.

Crossing Over

There’s a big green rectangle with some weird edges, and it anchors the grid. But there’s this weird rotating line careening wildly across the grid, with very different properties than the rectangle. It grabs a couple of points, but mostly takes its own path. Oh, and also a switch of sorts, a single black dot. I think of it as a circuit, with the peach line representing temporary wiring. But I’ve used that metaphor when naming other puzzles, so it’s time to pick names differently. Note: Some testers considered this a 1 or 1.5 difficulty, while others rated it 2.5 at least!

La La La

There are eight L shapes in this puzzle. No, I didn’t forget the green ones: two of the peach ones aren’t L-shaped. There are ten lines bent into right angles, but two are bent in a different direction from the others. And I don’t care what anyone says, it’s not an L if the horizontal bit is longer than the vertical bit!