Puzzle 152 ("Medium Nikoli" Series, Kakuro)

The next puzzle in this series is a Kakuro, possibly one of the most controversial genres in the list.  Kakuro is already a polarizing genre -- extending its size to 15x15 makes it even more so.

The Nikoli style of Kakuro is very different from the style of Kakuro often seen on puzzle contests.  These puzzles focus more on Kakuro as a crossword genre rather than a mathematical genre.  More emphasis is placed on common number patterns and crossword logic; arithmetic is often kept to a minimum.  I tried my best to replicate this style in this puzzle, and I think I succeeded for the most part.

I personally believe that these puzzles are easiest to solve on paper; having eyes on the entire board at once (and, in particular, having smaller cells overall) feels better to me.  Thus, I've attached a PDF version of the puzzle closer to Nikoli's style.  I recommend printing this out to solve, but Penpa and puzz.link options are also here as usual.  The numbers were a pain in the butt to format; I'm probably not doing this again.  Nikoli, please don't sue me for forgery.  😛

Online interface (Penpa)

Online interface (puzz.link) 

Offline interface (PDF)

(A picture of the puzzle is hidden from the main feed for file size considerations.)

Puzzle 147 ("Medium Nikoli" Series, Slitherlink)

Again skipping Dotchi Loop because I'm not in the mood.

Constructing this Slitherlink puzzle was way more difficult than I expected.  There were a few factors making this happen, I think:

• The Nikoli slitherlinks in Pencil Puzzle 2022 are 15x25, not 10x18 like I originally thought.  This made the process way longer to complete.
• Compared to the other genres in this series, Slitherlink requires an exceptionally large number of choices to make when constructing.  I found myself wanting to strike a balance between difficulty and smoothness, and so I had to choose my givens very carefully.
• There were some parts in the middle that I wanted to make sufficiently important; one of these, in particular, took a long time to construct.
• I had to resist the temptation to use more subtle logic most of the time.  In particular, I actually needed to scrap a good chunk of the first half because I realized it was too difficult!

Not sure when I'll be constructing a puzzle of this size again.  In the meantime, enjoy.  Difficulty tows the line between "Hard" and "Extra", I think.

(Edit: Fixed to make one part of the puzzle smoother.)

Online interface

 

Puzzle 143 ("Medium Nikoli" series, Heyawake)

Next up in this Nikoli series is Heyawake, a puzzle genre with more than its fair share of puzzles on the internet.  (Technically, Dotchi Loop should have been next, but I'm not quite in the mood to construct a large puzzle in that genre right now.)

Unlike all the other genres covered thus far, I had no expectations of region symmetry when making this puzzle; symmetry felt like an active hindrance that would do more harm than good.  That being said, I still stuck to a certain visual theme during the construction.  (Can you guess what theme?)

Despite Heyawake being one of my weaker genres, this puzzle was pretty fun to construct.  I think it helped that most of the tweaking afterward involved polishing the last quarter of the puzzle, which I wasn't happy with at first.  

Difficulty "Hard", I think.

Online interface