Puzzle 139 ("Empty Center", Double Choco)

After Saturday's Double Choco puzzle, I decided to go for something much smoother this time.  This was annoying to construct!  I had several lofty goals when making this: symmetric chocolate, symmetric/sparsely placed clues, some surprising region interactions, and a consistently smooth solve throughout.  I think I was able to achieve all these, for the most part; I did need to add a pair of clues I didn't want to add, but this had been taking too much of my time and I couldn't find another workaround.  (You might be able to guess which pair of clues I needed to add at the end.  Oops!)

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Puzzle 138 (Double Choco)

Hi!  Have another Double Choco puzzle.  This one is quite different from (and probably significantly harder than) my previous puzzles in this genre; keep that in mind when solving.

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Puzzle 137 ("Medium Nikoli" series, Shakashaka)

Next on this very slow moving train is Shakashaka.  This is the first shaka puzzle appearing on the blog, though it's not the first I've constructed.  

This one was not as annoying to create as the Numberlink or Yajilin, but it was still somewhat annoying in places, especially with clue symmetry.  This also means I couldn't quite do as many interesting things with the solution as I would have liked, but there is at least one part of the puzzle that resolves in a cute way.

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Puzzle 136 ("Border Clues", Chained Block)

Another Chained Block puzzle!  Harder than my previous ones, I think, and it took a while to get the right finish. 

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Puzzle 135 (Akari)

I actually made this Akari about a month ago, but I didn't post it at the time for some reason.  Found it again and I like it!  It has a bit of a tricky start but resolves smoothly.  (Also, yay clue symmetry!)

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Puzzle 134 ("Medium Nikoli" series, Numberlink)

I actually skipped a few genres when going to Nurikabe -- Numberlink and Shakashaka come first!  It's time to tackle this beast.

Previously on this blog I said that the standard size for Numberlink was 17×17.  This is false -- it's actually 15×15.  This made this challenge a bit less daunting, though it still ended up being very annoying to construct.  (My first few attempts were wildly nonunique due to the same problem, and finding a solution to that problem was more difficult than expected.)

As with my other Numberlink puzzles, I'm not entirely sure that this puzzle is unique.  However, I have at least a proof sketch, and two other solvers have reported the same answers, so I'm at least confident enough of uniqueness.  Also as with my other Numberlink puzzles, I have no idea how Nikoli constructors pump these out so often.

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