Thursday, 1 June 2023

Freddie Hand

Before we jump into today's puzzle, here is a walkthrough of yesterday's Tetritory, eloquently explained by Menderbug: https://youtu.be/cVTQOFoG0-o. Do give it a watch if you struggled to find the logical path to yesterday's puzzle, or if you just want to see an alternative way to approach it.

Today's your lucky day because we have even more important puzzle news - Puzzler Pride 2023 has just been released today! It's a collection of 26 puzzles from LGBTQ+ authors in the puzzle community, consisting of mostly sudoku/pencil puzzles, but with a few word/hunt puzzles thrown in as well!
See further information (and the link to the pack) here: Discord message

Today's puzzle is a Touching Pentominoes! Unfortunately I only have space for a PUNY, PUNNY intro. (also UNFUNNY)

Rules: Place each pentomino from the bank given outside the grid into the grid so that no pentominoes touch one another orthogonally. Rotating and reflecting pentominoes is allowed. Every grid point on which two pentominoes touch diagonally is marked with a dot.

Note: Pay careful notice to the "negative constraint" - two pentominoes can only touch where there is a dot! E.g. for the example, this is what makes the placement of the O tetromino unique.

Acquire a Speedy Sloth 🦥 by solving the puzzle in 4:30 or less!
Obtain a Quick Crab 🦀 by solving the puzzle in 9:15 or less!
And all solvers who complete the puzzle will be rewarded with an Quintuple Qagu 🐦

Warning: The example is a little trickier than usual!

Example (Penpa+), using a tetromino bank: https://tinyurl.com/yrz2pcd6
Puzzle (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/yc6y4562