As of the time of writing, Haisu is about eight years old and has a dedicated puzz.link interface, but has yet to branch out into the general puzzle contest world (apart from a few appearances in 24HPC). That's quite surprising! It's a very natural idea that can lead to fiendishly difficult puzzles, so you'd think puzzle constructors would latch onto it as quickly as possible. But maybe that difficulty has turned people off. It certainly did for me at first.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting path through the centers of all cells, starting from the S (start) and finishing at the G (goal). Each clued cell must be traveled through on the path’s Nth visit to the region the clue lies within, where N is the value of the clue.
Both puzzles here aim for symmetric regions and symmetric placement of givens. This is not a requirement by any means -- many well-received Haisus ignore any sense of visual theming -- but it plays into my strengths as a constructor and made it easier for me to create them. This first puzzle attempts to be on the easier/smoother side, with a slightly overclued grid.
The second puzzle aims to showcase more of what the genre can offer. There shouldn't be any theory required, but even still, this grid is no pushover. It's definitely a contender for the hardest puzzle in this series so far.
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