Genre Spotlight 70: Trapezoids (Puzzles 358 and 359)

For our last spotlight (at least on a regular basis), I spent a long time thinking about what genre to do before realizing that we hadn't had a non-square grid yet.  (Tawamurenga doesn't count.)  Here's my opportunity to fix that!  This genre is Trapezoids, originally invented by Dan Adams in 2016.  It's a genre that only works on triangular grids, using that geometry in an interesting way.

Rules. Shade some cells black.  Shaded cells must be in clusters of three, forming trapezoids.  Trapezoids may not touch orthogonally.  All the unshaded cells must form a single connected group.  Each number indicates the number of shaded cells in the (up to six) cells surrounding the clue.

            

Small note: Dan's original puzzles don't seem to have any clues along the border of the grid.  I found border clues easier to work with, so added them into my constructions. 

Genre Spotlight 69: Key West (Puzzles 356 and 357)

Only two more left!  Not sure what I'll do for the last one; probably nothing special, to be honest.  Also, if you're thinking "wait, wasn't dj close to 400 puzzles before?", I realized yesterday that the numbering has been wildly off since May!  Whoops.

For today's genre, we've got a type that is hot off the pzprxs presses!  This type is Key West, first appearing way back in Puzzle Communication Nikoli 53.  Upon reading the rules, your first impression may be "wow this is very similar to Sukoro".  Indeed, the two genres share many common structures.  But the ruleset here is different enough to provide an alternate feel.

Rules: Place a number between 0 and 4 in every island, and draw orthogonal bridges connecting them. Orthogonally adjacent islands cannot have the same number. Numbers indicate how many bridges are connected to this island. All islands with a number above 0 must be connected into a single network.

       

Genre Spotlight 68: Oasis (Puzzles 354 and 355)

Today's genre is Oasis, a neat shading type invented by Matej Uher for WPC 2016.  I've been long scared of this type and never really attempted it.  I'm glad I gave it a go, it's much more reasonable than anticipated!  Still not easy, though....

Rules: Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. No 2x2 area may be entirely unshaded. Cells with circles cannot be shaded. A number in a circle indicates how many other circles it could reach by traveling only through empty, unshaded cells.

          

Genre Spotlight 67: Turnaround (Puzzles 352 and 353)

Oh no, two loop genres in two weeks?  Who have I become?

Today's genre is Turnaround, a puzzle type by Indonesian constructor chaotic_iak.  It is similar to a few other genres, mainly Inaba's Pearl Loop, which count loop turns near given clues.  

Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some cells. A number indicates how many times the loop makes a turn within the three-cell portion of the loop with the clued cell in the middle.

             

Genre Spotlight 66: One Point Loop (Puzzles 350 and 351)

For today's genre, we have an Inaba type called One Point Loop.  The ruleset seems strange at first glance, but it has an equivalent interpretation that is much easier to think about when solving.  Like similar genres which only have one clue type, it takes some finesse to make interesting deductions happen, and moving clues around can seriously damage previous logical steps.  But this genre is fun to solve!  It feels like a version of Every Second Turn that has a bit more friction.

Rules: Draw a loop on the dotted lines passing through all black circles.  Each segment of the loop must contain exactly one circle, possibly at one of its endpoints.

           

Genre Spotlight 65: Trixo (Puzzles 348 and 349)

Before beginning this post, a small update.  Currently, we're on entry 65 -- it's been a long ride!  However, all good things must eventually come to an end.  I always planned for this series to last only a year or so, and it'd be good to end on a nice, round number.  The last entry of the Spotlight series will be Entry 70.  (This means that the last post will be in mid-December.)

Today's genre is Trixo!  This type was invented earlier this year by PuzSQ/Discord user xetto.  It's an interesting type!  Feels Inaba-like, in a way.  (Though I said that about Corner Disorder last week.  Shrug.)

Rules: Place some shaded trominoes onto the grid to form a single diagonally connected network.  All clued cells are shaded.  Cells marked with a "╳" must touch another tromino diagonally.  Cells marked with a "◯" must not.

          

Genre Spotlight 64: Corner Disorder (Puzzles 346 and 347)

Today's genre is a bit different than usual, because it's a type I just made today (Sunday)!  More specifically, the idea for this ruleset came while playing with a different genre called Quarry.  This type, from michael3.14 in the CTC server, has the same rules for black and white squares, but also permitted unclued regions which satisfied certain properties.  These unclued regions felt tough to force because of the way the white circles work.  What if we removed the unclued regions, then, and loosened the remaining rules a bit?  

This is what I came up with.  It may not be in the spirit of the Spotlight series, but I spent enough time constructing these (and fixing some uniqueness issues in my first attempt) that I felt it was worth posting.

Rules: Divide the puzzle surface into rectangles, each containing exactly two circles.  Black circles must be located in a corner of their region.  White circles must not be located in a corner of their region.  Gray circles may be of either color.

           

Genre Spotlight 63: Bunnyhop (Puzzles 344 and 345)

This post was originally about a different genre, but constructing puzzles in that type proved difficult, so I pivoted to a different type.  As it turns out, this one is also difficult to construct.  You know it, you love it or hate it, it's Bunnyhop!  Invented by Hempuli, known for his hit game The Plumber Thing and literally nothing else.

Rules: Draw lines along the edges of cells to form a loop. Every line segment goes through a cell, connecting two corners located along the same edge. Every cell must be visited exactly once. The loop cannot branch off or cross itself.  Black cells cannot be visited.