Yesterday's Empires and Puzzles Daily Diamond Challenge problem:
My solution:
In my opinion, this is the kind of puzzle and foresight that can really step up any player's game. Being able to spot a diamond in this board when so many other players wouldn't give a board like this a second thought can really give you the edge you need to turn losses into wins. Especially if you're a daily player, you're bound to see this exact set up again sometime, somewhere.
It's simple to make this diamond. Match the purples horizontally toward the top middle of the board. That sets the blues up for a nice five-line diamond.
Again, even though this diamond took only two moves, I have a strong feeling that most players would have just skipped over the initial set up without realizing that there was a diamond to be had. Perhaps they would have given up looking for one when they couldn't find a way to bring the bottom blue tile up one space. Maybe they would have tried to make the vertical purple match toward the right side of the board to hopefully bring up a green tile that would bring up the blue next turn. Perhaps they would have tried to make a purple diamond by bringing up purple tiles not yet on the board.
Reminder of two basic premises of these puzzles:
1) The initial set up ("the problem") is the way the board was when I first spotted the opportunity to make at least one diamond. You can learn to spot these too, perhaps even one or two moves earlier than I can.
2) Diamonds in these puzzles are made from tiles that are already on the board. There is no hoping for the 20% chance that a tile in your needed color shows up in the spot you want. That's not to say that you shouldn't play for that opportunity sometimes, but again, the point of these puzzles is being able to spot diamonds that don't require playing the odds.
Today's problem: See if you can spot the diamond below. There may be more than one, but there is definitely at least one that is currently on the board.
Solution tomorrow.
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