Genre Spotlight Small Update II

Hey, hi!

I'm making this post to announce a change in the Genre Spotlight series.  For the past six months, I've been making two posts a week, and while this pace has been sustainable, it's been more taxing than I first thought.  Thus, I'm making the decision to reduce the post schedule down to Mondays only, i.e. once a week.  I hope this is not disappointing to the (probably single-digit) regular viewers of my content, but I hope that I'll be able to focus a bit more on each post rather than push everything off to the last minute.

This means there will not be a post tomorrow, but there will be one on Monday.

~David 

Genre Spotlight 47: City Space (Puzzles 352 and 353)

One more shading genre!  Today's type is City Space, a somewhat obscure type invented by RSP a few years ago.  It has Cave/Kurodoko clues but also reminds me of Nuribou and Guide Arrow in some ways.

Rules: Shade some cells so that each orthogonally connected area of shaded cells is in the shape of a one-wide rectangle of at least two cells. All unshaded cells must form one orthogonally connected area, which contains no complete loops of cells (this includes 2x2s). Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the total number of unshaded cells that can be seen in a straight line vertically or horizontally, including itself.

           

Genre Spotlight 46: Kurarin (Puzzles 350 and 351)

Whoa, it's the Blue Prince number!

I'm currently in the airport and don't want to think about any blog posts tomorrow, so just like last time, this one is being posted early.  Today's genre is Kurarin, the newest genre in the Spotlight series!  It debuted in this month's Nikoli issue but it has caught on somewhat quickly compared to most other Omopa.  My personal take is that this is a more enjoyable form of Vertex Slitherlink; while the latter allows for more precise cluing, I prefer the presentation of Kurarin, and the fact that some clues are more ambiguous leads to some interesting surprises.

Rules: Shade some cells and draw a non-intersecting loop through all remaining cells.  Black circles indicate there are more shaded than unshaded cells among the cells the circle overlaps. White circles indicate more unshaded cells. Grey circles indicate the amount of shaded and unshaded cells is equal. 

          

Genre Spotlight 45: Parquet (Puzzles 348 and 349)

Today's puzzle is a shading genre from Inaba!  It's called Parquet, and while it usually tends to result in easier puzzles, it's a cute genre overall.

Rules: In each bold region, entirely shade one subregion and leave the others unshaded such that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area with no loops. No 2x2 area may be entirely shaded.

          

Small note: this is actually a substantial generalization of Inaba's original type for two reasons.  For one, he restricted his grids to a common theme (see below).  Additionally, this generalization allows for more than two subregions in any big region, whereas Inaba restricted to exactly two.

Genre Spotlight 44: Deity Loop (Puzzles 346 and 347)

Today's genre is an old one, I think.  Again unsure of the origins, though I suspect it's Japanese.

Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of all cells. Every visit to a particular region must occupy an equal number of cells. A clue in a region indicates the number of cells occupied each visit.