The three of us make our way through the tunnels, but it begins to feel like we're moving in circles. The Sashigane map tells us where to turn but not the order to do so.
I sit down for a bit to ponder. 26 gates, none of which are numbered; surely this means something...
Then, it becomes clear: 26 letters! It's not anything to do with numbers. "Do either of you still have the Easy as ABC?" I ask.
Walker nods and pulls it out of their pocket. I unfold it and compare it to the map.
"Okay, we're near the entrance, let's try the first gate again."
This time, we pass through gates based on alphabetical order. I check the signs at each one. They may be painted over, but now the colors of the paint are sequentially going around the color wheel, suggesting we've worked it out!

But then, after the Z gate, we appear back at the entrance.
I groan a bit, "Okay Al, you probably know what's going on here right?"
"Unfortunately, no." He sighs. "It's about what I'd expect, but I don't know the trick here."
After a short silence, Walker speaks up. "They're named Usowan after the puzzle genre, right?"
"Oh yeah I think we forgot to mention. The Clues are all named like that."
"...The genre where exactly one clue per region is lying. I was just thinking, since they kept calling you that, it might mean something?"
Each of us realise the answer at nearly the same time.
"Sashigane is made up of L-shaped regions." I begin.
"And L stands for Liar!" Alcazar adds.
Walker begins to run through the A gate again. "The L gate is lying!"
We tail behind.

On the twelfth gate, we make a left turn instead of a right, and it brings us through a small dark tunnel that eventually opens up to a spacious circular room with a large skylight. Sitting in the middle is a small figure wearing black and white. They turn around and take off their mask.
"Took you guys long enough! Have fun solving that Liar Loop did we?" Usowan smiles.

911919503540113438

Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of all cells. A clue in a region means that no visit the loop makes to the region may occupy exactly the indicated number of cells
Example Puzzle: https://tinyurl.com/yn6b9lsp

Hint if you need it! In loop puzzles we often talk about "avoiding early loop closure" as a technique to keep in mind, and this will definitely be helpful in this puzzle, but perhaps a better way to think about the same thing would be to "avoid creating multiple loops", which will be particularly handy at the end 😄

Solve the puzzle in 3:00 or less for a Speedy Sloth 🦥
Solve the puzzle in 5:30 or less for a Quick Crab 🦀
And all other correct solves earn a Lyre-Lyrebird 🐦

Solve on Penpa+: https://tinyurl.com/yuyxnmc3