Genre Spotlight 16: Sea Serpent (Puzzles 249 and 250)

Sea Serpent is one of many snake genres, which can be a sticking point for many solvers.  (It's me, I'm many solvers.)  I don't actually know too much about the history of this type; I was able to find it in a 2003 24HPC round but am not sure if this is actually where the genre originates.  There are definitely aspects of this type which can be annoying, but overall I think it's friendlier than normal Snake.  Sea Serpent doesn't have a "no diagonal adjacency" rule, and it's possible to place clues which behave more locally.

Rules: Shade some cells to form a non-intersecting path which does not touch itself orthogonally. Circles mark the ends of the path. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the total number of shaded cells that appear in the indicated directions.

(Example taken from WPC 2011.  Here the snake is represented by a path rather than by a group of shaded cells.) 

Genre Spotlight 15: Top Heavy (Puzzles 247 and 248)

I first saw Top Heavy a few years ago in a Puzzle Ramayan contest and thought it was cute.  At the time, I made a TomTom hybrid but never ended up constructing any vanillas.  I still believe that this type is cute -- it reminds me of Fuzuli in several ways -- but constructing one of these is not easy.

Rules: Place numbers from the range given outside the grid into some cells so that each row and column contains each number once. When two numbers touch vertically, the one on top must be larger.

                

Genre Spotlight 14: Mine Shaft (Puzzles 245 and 246)

Mine Shaft was a genre localized on Puzzle Picnic back when the site was still live.  I can't seem to find it anywhere else, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's appeared multiple times and I never realized.  Mine Shaft is really a Snake variant of sorts; IMO "Hydra" would be an appropriate name for it.  I actually think it's superior to Snake in some ways.  While the less-restrictive structure of the solution means you generally need more clues to make puzzles unique, it also allows for more localized progress in areas, and I think there's more you can do with it overall.

Rules: Shade some cells in the grid to form a "mine shaft" -- that is, an orthogonally connected group of cells which contains no loops (not even 2×2s) and does not touch itself diagonally.  Given circles indicate all cells which are adjacent to exactly one other shaded cell.  Numbers above and next to the grid indicate the number of shaded cells in the corresponding row or column.

       

Genre Spotlight 13: Tile City (Puzzles 243 and 244)

I'm capitalizing on this one during its puzz.link implementation honeymoon phase.  (Feel free to deduce the length of my backlog from this information.)

Tile City was introduced by PuzzleSquareJP user _AtomicNeoN_ way back in February 2022.  It seems to have been quickly relegated to obscurity, as there are very few puzzles after the initial batch.  That said, the recent online interface has resulted in a small resurgence of the type.  It's a neat ruleset!  It combines a familiar "no 2x2" rule with interesting logical steps that result in a unique feel.  (In particular, there's a 4-star on PuzzleSquareJP that I tried but couldn't break into....)

Rules: Shade some cells such that each region is either fully shaded or fully unshaded. No 2x2 region may be entirely shaded. Each group of orthogonally connected unshaded regions must contain exactly one region of each size, from a region with only one cell up to the largest region in the group. Regions containing numbers must be unshaded, and the number represents the size of the largest region in its group.

         

Genre Spotlight 12: Minesweeper (Shape Bank) (Puzzles 241 and 242)

This may seem like a new variation from the title, but it's not really that new.  The main focus/inspiration of this post is actually Minesweeper (Pentomino), a somewhat rare but very cool riff on Pentomino placing puzzles.  That said, there's no reason the ruleset has to restrict the puzzle to just pentominos; in theory, any bank of shapes could do, right?

Rules: Place the given shapes into the grid, rotations and reflections allowed. Shapes cannot cover the numbered cells, and different shapes cannot be placed in adjacent cells that share an edge or corner. Numbered cells indicate how many of the surrounding cells (including diagonally adjacent cells) contain parts of the shapes.

    

Genre Spotlight 11: Golem Grad (Puzzles 239 and 240)

Next on the list is Golem Grad.  This type, originally invented by Serkan Yürekli, borrows heavy inspiration from Nurikabe but has a few details that make it different in practice.  It's a cool and underrated genre!  I've been wanting to make some for a while, and the recent Kudamono implementation finally gave me the motivation to try it.

Rules: Draw paths through the centers of cells connecting each circle to exactly one other. Paths may not cross each other, themselves, or through cells containing numbers. All cells used by paths (including the cells with circles) must form one orthogonally connected area. Each number represents the size of the area of cells not used by paths that the number is in. No 2x2 region may be entirely used by paths.

(Example taken from USPC 2022, which in turn was taken from Grandmaster Puzzles.)