Puzzle 140 ("Medium Nikoli" series, Chained Block)

Back at it again with the Nikoli series!  This time we tackle Chained Block.  Frequent readers of this blog will recall that this is not my first rodeo with this genre.

This puzzle is not as smooth as some of my others -- there are one or two places where a tiny amount of lookahead is required, I think.  However, I'm still putting it in this series because of its use of question mark clues, which denote blocks of unknown size.  Most non-Nikoli sources don't use question mark clues to their full extent, so I wanted to make something interesting happen with them in this puzzle.  This is the result.

Difficulty "Extra", and it's not even close.

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Puzzle 139 ("Empty Center", Double Choco)

After Saturday's Double Choco puzzle, I decided to go for something much smoother this time.  This was annoying to construct!  I had several lofty goals when making this: symmetric chocolate, symmetric/sparsely placed clues, some surprising region interactions, and a consistently smooth solve throughout.  I think I was able to achieve all these, for the most part; I did need to add a pair of clues I didn't want to add, but this had been taking too much of my time and I couldn't find another workaround.  (You might be able to guess which pair of clues I needed to add at the end.  Oops!)

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Puzzle 138 (Double Choco)

Hi!  Have another Double Choco puzzle.  This one is quite different from (and probably significantly harder than) my previous puzzles in this genre; keep that in mind when solving.

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Puzzle 137 ("Medium Nikoli" series, Shakashaka)

Next on this very slow moving train is Shakashaka.  This is the first shaka puzzle appearing on the blog, though it's not the first I've constructed.  

This one was not as annoying to create as the Numberlink or Yajilin, but it was still somewhat annoying in places, especially with clue symmetry.  This also means I couldn't quite do as many interesting things with the solution as I would have liked, but there is at least one part of the puzzle that resolves in a cute way.

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Puzzle 136 ("Border Clues", Chained Block)

Another Chained Block puzzle!  Harder than my previous ones, I think, and it took a while to get the right finish. 

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Puzzle 135 (Akari)

I actually made this Akari about a month ago, but I didn't post it at the time for some reason.  Found it again and I like it!  It has a bit of a tricky start but resolves smoothly.  (Also, yay clue symmetry!)

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