Here are two Nikoli-style Slitherlink puzzles on 10x18 grids. These are always more difficult to construct than I expect. It's pretty easy to make a puzzle with lots of easy steps, but it's much harder to create one which feels intentional. I also tend to force linear solve paths in my puzzles, so when constructing a Nikoli-style grid, those intentions must be thrown out the window.
I think both puzzles before are successful attempts at the style, particularly the second one.
This puzzle is a Sus-Shikaku, a variant invented (?) by Prasanna Seshadri for last year's Puzzle Ramayan contest. Apparently, this clue pattern was quite similar to one of the grids on the actual contest. Regardless, this one is pretty tough.
Rules: Standard Shikaku rules, with a twist. Divide the grid into regions so that each region contains one circle. Regions containing black circles are still rectangular, but regions containing white circles are not rectangular. Numbers still indicate the area of the region contained in the clue.
The next few posts on here will be reposts of various puzsq puzzles I've written this year. I didn't want these posts to "dilute" the Spotlight (whatever that means), but now that the Spotlight is over, there's no reason not to cross-post them here.
First up, a Yajilin from way back in January. At the time, I was messing with Cross+A generation, and wanted to see if it was possible to construct a symmetric Yajilin faster than Cross+A could. The answer was "yes", although cspuz ended up being really helpful with the ending. I'm super happy with how this one turned out.
For our last spotlight (at least on a regular basis), I spent a long time thinking about what genre to do before realizing that we hadn't had a non-square grid yet. (Tawamurenga doesn't count.) Here's my opportunity to fix that! This genre is Trapezoids, originally invented by Dan Adams in 2016. It's a genre that only works on triangular grids, using that geometry in an interesting way.
Rules. Shade some cells black. Shaded cells must be in clusters of three, forming trapezoids. Trapezoids may not touch orthogonally. All the unshaded cells must form a single connected group. Each number indicates the number of shaded cells in the (up to six) cells surrounding the clue.
Small note: Dan's original puzzles don't seem to have any clues along the border of the grid. I found border clues easier to work with, so added them into my constructions.
Only two more left! Not sure what I'll do for the last one; probably nothing special, to be honest. Also, if you're thinking "wait, wasn't dj close to 400 puzzles before?", I realized yesterday that the numbering has been wildly off since May! Whoops.
For today's genre, we've got a type that is hot off the pzprxs presses! This type is Key West, first appearing way back in Puzzle Communication Nikoli 53. Upon reading the rules, your first impression may be "wow this is very similar to Sukoro". Indeed, the two genres share many common structures. But the ruleset here is different enough to provide an alternate feel.
Rules: Place a number between 0 and 4 in every island, and draw orthogonal bridges connecting them. Orthogonally adjacent islands cannot have the same number. Numbers indicate how many bridges are connected to this island. All islands with a number above 0 must be connected into a single network.
Today's genre is Oasis, a neat shading type invented by Matej Uher for WPC 2016. I've been long scared of this type and never really attempted it. I'm glad I gave it a go, it's much more reasonable than anticipated! Still not easy, though....
Rules: Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. No 2x2 area may be entirely unshaded. Cells with circles cannot be shaded. A number in a circle indicates how many other circles it could reach by traveling only through empty, unshaded cells.
Oh no, two loop genres in two weeks? Who have I become?
Today's genre is Turnaround, a puzzle type by Indonesian constructor chaotic_iak. It is similar to a few other genres, mainly Inaba's Pearl Loop, which count loop turns near given clues.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of some cells. A number indicates how many times the loop makes a turn within the three-cell portion of the loop with the clued cell in the middle.
For today's genre, we have an Inaba type called One Point Loop. The ruleset seems strange at first glance, but it has an equivalent interpretation that is much easier to think about when solving. Like similar genres which only have one clue type, it takes some finesse to make interesting deductions happen, and moving clues around can seriously damage previous logical steps. But this genre is fun to solve! It feels like a version of Every Second Turn that has a bit more friction.
Rules: Draw a loop on the dotted lines passing through all black circles. Each segment of the loop must contain exactly one circle, possibly at one of its endpoints.
