Genre Spotlight 11: Golem Grad (Puzzles 239 and 240)

Next on the list is Golem Grad.  This type, originally invented by Serkan Yürekli, borrows heavy inspiration from Nurikabe but has a few details that make it different in practice.  It's a cool and underrated genre!  I've been wanting to make some for a while, and the recent Kudamono implementation finally gave me the motivation to try it.

Rules: Draw paths through the centers of cells connecting each circle to exactly one other. Paths may not cross each other, themselves, or through cells containing numbers. All cells used by paths (including the cells with circles) must form one orthogonally connected area. Each number represents the size of the area of cells not used by paths that the number is in. No 2x2 region may be entirely used by paths.

(Example taken from USPC 2022, which in turn was taken from Grandmaster Puzzles.)

Genre Spotlight 10: Mintonette (Puzzles 237 and 238)

Mintonette has a long yet forgotten history.  This ruleset appeared as a Nikoli Omopa type in the mid-90s (with slightly less flexibility in its presentation), but it didn't seem to catch on.  It later appeared on Puzzle Picnic, but in a much stricter form where all the clue values are equal.  (Which is pretty silly, in my opinion; part of the appeal with this genre lies in the interactions between small and large clue values.)  Its current form was popularized by Toketa vol. 11, and it has seen a small yet significant resurgence since then.

This genre has a lot of potential!  There have been other genres which count numbers of turns (e.g. Detour), but allowing these counts to play out through different strands creates some cool interactions.

Rules: Draw paths through the centers of cells connecting each circle to exactly one other.  Paths may not cross each other or themselves, and every cell must be used by a path.  If a circle contains a number, it indicates the number of turns taken by the path containing that circle.

       

Genre Spotlight 9: Double Domino (Puzzles 235 and 236)

I have a love-hate relationship with Double Domino, an old genre by Naoki Inaba.  On one hand, the idea of placing dominos in the grid is quite novel, and there are many parts of the grid that resolve uniquely for surprising reasons.  On the other hand, constructing these puzzles can be a pain in the rear end; sometimes, the parity restrictions are very strong, while other times, they are essentially nonexistent.  I tried fixing this by adding an × clue not present in the original type, but this didn't resolve my frustrations completely.

Rules: Place A and B dominoes on the board using the squares containing letters as hints. The dominoes should all be connected orthogonally, but dominoes of the same letter must not touch at the edges. The squares contained in dominoes must not form 2×2 clumps. Additionally, an "×" denotes a cell that does not contain a domino.