Sunday, October 26, 2025

Genre Spotlight 64: Corner Disorder (Puzzles 386 and 387)

Today's genre is a bit different than usual, because it's a type I just made today (Sunday)!  More specifically, the idea for this ruleset came while playing with a different genre called Quarry.  This type, from michael3.14 in the CTC server, has the same rules for black and white squares, but also permitted unclued regions which satisfied certain properties.  These unclued regions felt tough to force because of the way the white circles work.  What if we removed the unclued regions, then, and loosened the remaining rules a bit?  

This is what I came up with.  It may not be in the spirit of the Spotlight series, but I spent enough time constructing these (and fixing some uniqueness issues in my first attempt) that I felt it was worth posting.

Rules: Divide the puzzle surface into rectangles, each containing exactly two circles.  Black circles must be located in a corner of their region.  White circles must not be located in a corner of their region.  Gray circles may be of either color.

           

Monday, October 20, 2025

Genre Spotlight 63: Bunnyhop (Puzzles 384 and 385)

This post was originally about a different genre, but constructing puzzles in that type proved difficult, so I pivoted to a different type.  As it turns out, this one is also difficult to construct.  You know it, you love it or hate it, it's Bunnyhop!  Invented by Hempuli, known for his hit game The Plumber Thing and literally nothing else.

Rules: Draw lines along the edges of cells to form a loop. Every line segment goes through a cell, connecting two corners located along the same edge. Every cell must be visited exactly once. The loop cannot branch off or cross itself.  Black cells cannot be visited.

                

Monday, October 13, 2025

Genre Spotlight 62: Kazunori Room (Puzzles 382 and 383)

This week, we have a Nikoli genre called Kazunori Room.  This type has actually been implemented in puzz.link for a while!  It's an interesting type.  I'm not quite sure if this genre needs an extra rule or clue type somewhere, but for now, here you go.

Rules: Place a number from 1 to N into each cell so that each region contains each number from 1 to N exactly twice each, where N is half the number of cells in the region. Two numbers of the same value within a region must be orthogonally adjacent. No 2x2 area may consist of cells which all contain the same number. Clues represent the sum of the numbers in the cells they touch.

               

Monday, October 6, 2025

Genre Spotlight 61: Martini (Puzzles 380 and 381)

Today's genre is a shading type called Martini.  It appears on puzz.link but I'm otherwise not sure where the type originates.  Perhaps it's a Nikoli Omopa?  Regardless, it's an interesting type that allows for some interesting interactions.

Rules: Shade some cells such that all shaded cells within a region form a single orthogonally connected group. Shaded groups may not be orthogonally adjacent, but must all form a single diagonally connected network. Cells with black circles must be shaded. Cells with white circles must not. A number in a white circle indicates the total number of circles that are in its orthogonally connected area of unshaded cells.