Genre Spotlight 55: Black Belt (Puzzles 368 and 369)

Today's genre is Black Belt, an old Omopa from the early 2000s that didn't receive too much attention at the time.  I (re?)-discovered this type during a discussion on Discord, when Nick Baxter linked to an old webpage containing pictures of Nikoli magazines.  (I dismissed the genre in the Omopa collection, because the given example misses two important rules!)

Rules: Draw a single closed loop of shaded cells, connecting squares horizontally or vertically.  The loop may cross itself but otherwise may not touch itself orthogonally (that is, the black cells cannot form a 2x2 block or a T-shape).  Clue cells may not be shaded and depict the number of cells vertically or horizontally (up to 4) which are shaded.

           

Genre Spotlight 54: Ice Walk (Puzzles 366 and 367)

Today's genre has started to gain some popularity in the wider puzzle sphere, but is still niche enough that it probably works for the Spotlight.  Ice Walk is a Nikoli genre that didn't really take off until it was ported it to puzz.link several years later.  This type is very good, and I'm glad it is getting the recognition it deserves.  (Please, Nikoli, make a sequel to the Omopa collection!)

Rules: Draw a loop through the centers of some cells which passes through each numbered cell. Two perpendicular line segments may intersect each other only on icy cells, but they may not turn at their intersection or otherwise overlap. The loop may not turn on icy cells. A number indicates how many cells make up the continuous non-icy section of the loop that the number is on.

          

Genre Spotlight 53: Hasu no Mura (Puzzles 364 and 365)

For today's genre, I wanted to try something different.  Hasu no Mura is a fairly recent type, first appearing on PuzzleSquareJP in 2023.  It has had modest success on the platform ... but I could not, for the life of me, wrap my head around the clues.  This week, I wanted to try and understand this genre a little more, and this mission was a success.  While this type is still not one of my favorites, I do appreciate the genre a bit more.

Rules: Shade a connected network of orthogonally connected cells.  No 2x2 square may be fully shaded.  Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the sum the areas of all unshaded regions diagonally adjacent to it.  If a region uses multiple of these cells, it is only counted once. 

          

Genre Spotlight 52: Tawamurenga (Puzzles 362 and 363)

Today's genre is a bit more well-known than some of the others in this series, but only because it has an implementation on puzz.link.  The name "Tawamurenga" may be easy to confuse with "Tapa", but the genres are quite different.  Tawamurenga is a Nikoli Omopa type dating to volume 127.

Rules:  Shade several cells in the grid.  Cells with numbers cannot be shaded and indicate the number of shaded cells adjacent to it (up to 6).  There can not be a horizontal run of 3 or more shaded cells.  Each shaded cell must have at least one shaded cell below it (unless it's on the bottom row).

            

(Example taken from puzz.link.  One interesting point that isn't mentioned in this example: the shaded cells, overall, need not be connected.)