Puzzle 196 (Skyscrapers (Gap))

Here's one more puzzle originally submitted to the WPC.  This construction was meant for the Number Placement playoffs, but didn't quite make it because it was too hard.  (I think I underestimated difficulty somewhat because of my own struggles with Skyscrapers as a genre.)

Rules: Insert numbers into some cells of the grid so that each row and column of the grid contains the numbers from 1 to 5 once each and one gap. Each number in the grid represents the height of a building and each clue outside the grid indicates how many buildings can be "seen" while looking from that direction. Taller buildings block the view of smaller buildings.  Gaps do not block the view of any building.

Online interface (Penpa)

Puzzle 80: Discount GMP Week #1.5 (Skyscrapers)

Friday's puzzle was a 3.5-star Skyscrapers puzzle.  Unfortunately, Skyscrapers is one of my weaker types, partially for the same reasons Sudoku is also one of my weaker types.  The puzzle gods are not looking fondly down on me this week.

This puzzle was an absolute pain to construct.  I constantly found my grids breaking in unexpectedly annoying ways and/or finding almost-unique solutions that were impossible to disambiguate.  Many thanks to noq for construction help here; without it, I would not have been able to get today's puzzle done.  (In particular, noq was very helpful for fixing the puzzle I originally had here; while it did have a valid solution, the seemingly only way to disambiguate the ending was through bifurcation.  I've tested this one twice now, so hopefully something similar doesn't happen again.)

Online interface (Penpa)

Online interface (puzz.link) 

Puzzle 48 ("Skyscrapers")

After setting a few Penpa puzzles, it's nice to get back into the puzz.link swing of things. 

Here's my first Skyscrapers puzzle.  Usually, with my debut puzzle(s) in a genre, I'm just focused on getting some intuition about how clues behave, and this one is no exception.  While there isn't any visual flair, I think the solve path is pretty smooth.

Online interface