Genre Spotlight 68: Oasis (Puzzles 394 and 395)

Today's genre is Oasis, a neat shading type invented by Matej Uher for WPC 2016.  I've been long scared of this type and never really attempted it.  I'm glad I gave it a go, it's much more reasonable than anticipated!  Still not easy, though....

Rules: Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. No 2x2 area may be entirely unshaded. Cells with circles cannot be shaded. A number in a circle indicates how many other circles it could reach by traveling only through empty, unshaded cells.

          

Genre Spotlight 67: Turnaround (Puzzles 392 and 393)

Oh no, two loop genres in two weeks?  Who have I become?

Today's genre is Turnaround, a puzzle type by Indonesian constructor chaotic_iak.  It is similar to a few other genres, mainly Inaba's Pearl Loop, which count loop turns near given clues.  

Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some cells. A number indicates how many times the loop makes a turn within the three-cell portion of the loop with the clued cell in the middle.

             

Genre Spotlight 66: One Point Loop (Puzzles 390 and 391)

For today's genre, we have an Inaba type called One Point Loop.  The ruleset seems strange at first glance, but it has an equivalent interpretation that is much easier to think about when solving.  Like similar genres which only have one clue type, it takes some finesse to make interesting deductions happen, and moving clues around can seriously damage previous logical steps.  But this genre is fun to solve!  It feels like a version of Every Second Turn that has a bit more friction.

Rules: Draw a loop on the dotted lines passing through all black circles.  Each segment of the loop must contain exactly one circle, possibly at one of its endpoints.

           

Genre Spotlight 65: Trixo (Puzzles 388 and 389)

Before beginning this post, a small update.  Currently, we're on entry 65 -- it's been a long ride!  However, all good things must eventually come to an end.  I always planned for this series to last only a year or so, and it'd be good to end on a nice, round number.  The last entry of the Spotlight series will be Entry 70.  (This means that the last post will be in mid-December.)

Today's genre is Trixo!  This type was invented earlier this year by PuzSQ/Discord user xetto.  It's an interesting type!  Feels Inaba-like, in a way.  (Though I said that about Corner Disorder last week.  Shrug.)

Rules: Place some shaded trominoes onto the grid to form a single diagonally connected network.  All clued cells are shaded.  Cells marked with a "╳" must touch another tromino diagonally.  Cells marked with a "◯" must not.