Genre Spotlight 34: Hanami (Puzzles 286 and 287)

The next genre in our Spotlight series is Hanami.  Team Japan constructed this type for 24HPC several years ago, though I wouldn't be surprised if it appeared earlier.  There are many similar-looking rulesets, which boil down to "Shikaku, except not all cells are covered with rectangles".  This version is one of the simpler implementations of the idea.

Rules (adapted from 24HPC 2014): Reveal all positions of the sheets in the park. Sheets are rectangular (square) shape. They don't overlap other sheets or cherry flowers (white circles). Every sheet includes exactly one number, which represents the area (the number of cells) of its corresponding sheet. All remaining (uncovered cells or flowers) cells must be connected orthogonally. 

     

Genre Spotlight 33: Triomino Divide (Puzzles 284 and 285)

The third obscure genre we showcased in the LPO is another Naoki Inaba type called "Triomino Divide".  Actually, I'm slightly lying here; its original name was "○△× Division". We changed the symbols to match those of Voxas, which meant the original name no longer applied. During the contest we gave it the name "Triomino Voxas", but it seems as if the genre was called "Triomino Divide" in an older WPC, so that's the name I'm going with here.

Rules: Divide the grid into triominos.  Given edges must separate two distinct triominos.  If an edge contains a circle, the two triominos touching the edge must relate in the following way:

• A white circle indicates that the two triominos bordering the clue must have the same shape and orientation.
• A gray circle indicates that the two triominos bordering the clue must have the same shape, but not the same orientation.
• A black circle indicates that the two triominos have different shapes.

         

Genre Spotlight 32: Second Corner (Puzzles 282 and 283)

Second on the list (no pun intended) is Second Corner, a genre from the 2008 Japan Puzzle Championships.  Earlier this year, I went on a bit of an archival kick and extracted the 2006 through 2008 JPCs from the Internet Archive.  While doing so, I stumbled upon this type and thought it was interesting enough to pursue further.

Rules: Draw a loop passing vertically and horizontally through all non-black cells, including those with arrows.  Arrows and numbers show the number of spaces to the second turn of the loop following the loop in the direction of the arrow.  (The loop is not directed; arrows can go in either direction.)

 

Genre Spotlight 31: Arrow Flow (Puzzles 280 and 281)

Welcome back!  As promised, here are some genres (and actual puzzles!) from the most recent Logic Puzzle Open, which took place one week ago.  First up on the list is an old Inaba genre called Arrow Flow.  It's a genre that, while somewhat difficult to get used to, has some interesting ideas and room for exploration.

Rules: Place arrows pointing in four directions in each empty cell. The same arrows cannot be placed in adjacent cells.  Starting with any cell with an arrow, following the arrows from cell to cell, a cell with a number can be reached. A cell with a number indicates a total number of arrows that leads to this cell.

          

The (green) edges in the solution are not required, but may help with determining the rules.  (This is also why we changed the grid lines from solid to dashed for the contest.)