Puzzle 151 ("Pinwheel", Tapa-Like Loop)

It's my birthday today!  Can you guess how old I am now?

This puzzle was annoying to construct, surprisingly.  I ended up using noq a lot for testing, since many of my grids would only touch three of the four quadrants.  (The center clues are quite powerful.)  Once I came up with something that had a unique solution, though, I realized I completely changed the dynamic of the puzzle.  Is it better?  No clue.

I found an interesting deduction in Tapa-Like Loop when constructing this.  I'm not sure if this puzzle requires it, but it certainly makes your life much easier if you find it.

Online interface

Puzzle 150 ("Tilted Square", Tetra Chain)

It's been a while since we've had this theme. 😉

This genre recently appeared in Puzzle Communication Nikoli Issue 181.  I like it!  It feels like a fusion of LITS, Yajilin, and (to a lesser extent) Chained Block.  Diagonal adjacency genres are pretty cool (and, funnily enough, Nikoli calls this type of ruleset a fad!).  Be warned, though, this is not the most gentle introduction to the type.

(Also: Nikoli calls this Tetra Chain Y, because another puzzle in that issue has the same tetromino adjacency rules.  I don't like the Y there, so I removed it.  This name is tentative, though.)

Rules: Shade some cells in the grid to form tetrominos which do not share an edge.  Clue cells cannot be shaded and indicate the number of shaded cells in the direction of the arrow up to the border of the grid.  Identical tetrominos cannot touch at a corner, and all tetrominos must be connected diagonally (i.e. by corners).

Online interface (Penpa)

Puzzle 149 (Akari)

Hi!  Have another Akari puzzle; it's been a while since I last posted one here.  Not much else to say about it.

Online interface