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.
You may have noticed that I wrote one of these puzzles for PuzzleSquareJP earlier yesterday. For some reason, I decided to make life harder for myself and not use that grid for this spotlight. Sometimes I make bad life choices.
This first puzzle is pretty silly. I had this theme idea and just needed to try it. I'm sure it's possible to execute this theme more elegantly.
This second puzzle is a bit more involved. I still tried to make it smooth, though, so the beginning is maybe a bit more clued than I'd like. The solve path tightens after a certain step.
Martini was invented by AtomicNeon and first posted on puzsq in 2022:
ReplyDeletehttps://puzsq.logicpuzzle.app/puzzle/100494
(The rule about white circles was updated a bit later, which is why the first puzzles are marked as variant)