Thomas Snyder (aka Dr. Sudoku) is a two-time World Sudoku Champion and five-time US Puzzle Champion, as well as the author of several books of puzzles. His puzzles are hand-crafted, with artistic themes, serving as a kind of “cure for the common sudoku.” Each week he posts a new puzzle on his blog, The Art of Puzzles. This week’s prescription is a Battleships puzzle themed for Saturday’s US Puzzle Championship.

This weekend is the US Puzzle Championship, a 2.5 hour internet contest to determine the US team for the World Puzzle Championship in Eger, Hungary this November. While the scores at the top can seem hard to match, this set of puzzles is always a really nice mix of different puzzle types so check it out if you can (either by competing on Saturday, or downloading the puzzles later).

This week’s prescription is one of many puzzles I wrote in advance of this year’s competition, alongside some strategy articles I posted on my blog. It is a Battleships puzzle, which in recent history has always been the first puzzle type on the test, and hopefully this USPC-themed puzzle will whet your appetite for the test to come this weekend. Best of luck and skill to all those who compete.

Rules:
Locate the position of the 10-ship fleet in the grid. The fleet is shown to the right of the grid: one 4-unit battleship, two 3-unit cruisers, three 2-unit destroyers, and four 1-unit submarines. Each segment of a ship occupies a single cell. Ships are oriented either horizontally or vertically, and they do not touch each other, not even diagonally. The numbers on the right and bottom edges of the grid reveal the total number of the ship segments that appear in each respective row or column. Ships cannot be placed in any of the cells already marked with seas.

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