Thursday, June 19, 2025

Genre Spotlight 44: Deity Loop (Puzzles 346 and 347)

Today's genre is an old one, I think.  Again unsure of the origins, though I suspect it's Japanese.

Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of all cells. Every visit to a particular region must occupy an equal number of cells. A clue in a region indicates the number of cells occupied each visit.

           

Monday, June 16, 2025

Genre Spotlight 43: Irunuri (Puzzles 344 and 345)

Wow, it's been two months since we last had a non-snake shading genre!  Let's celebrate with today's type, Irunuri.  Just like last genre, I don't know the origins of this type; please let me know if you have any information!

Rules: Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Numbered regions must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells. Within a region, the shaded cells must have 180° rotational symmetry around its center. No 2x2 area may be entirely shaded. 

            

Thursday, June 12, 2025

Genre Spotlight 42: Passage (Puzzles 342 and 343)

Today's genre is Passage.  Like a few other types in this series, Passage is relatively common on PuzzleDuel but uncommon in other places.  I'm unaware of the origins of this genre, let me know if you have any information!

Rules: Shade some cell to create a 'snake' - a chain of blackened squares which doesn't touch itself even diagonally. The start and end of the snake are marked with gray circles. The snake should pass straight through all cells with numbers (i.e the snake cannot turn on a cell with a number). Numbers represent the length of the corresponding straight segment of the snake.

           

Sunday, June 8, 2025

Genre Spotlight 41: View (Puzzles 340 and 341)

Today's genre has been on puzz.link for a while but is still somewhat niche.  View is an old Nikoli type that feels like Sukoro in many ways.

Rules: Place a number into some cells so that all cells with numbers form one orthogonally connected area. Numbers represent how many numberless cells are connected to them in a straight line horizontally or vertically. No two orthogonally adjacent cells may contain the same number.