Wednesday, 31 January 2024

Menderbug

It hasn't even been a week since the end of round 1 of Puzzle Ramayan, but the next event on the competitive calendar is already coming up: Round 1 of this year's Puzzle Grand Prix with puzzles from Serbia is being held this upcoming weekend. One of the genres in the round is Symmetry Area, sometimes known as Fillomino (Symmetry). However, it's billed as Fillomino (Galaxies) for the GP, so I here's a vaguely galaxy-themed warmup puzzle.

We've covered Symmetry Area twice before:
- Archive: Monday, 16 May 2022 by Freddie
- Archive: Sunday, 21 May 2023 (Hexagonal) by me

Rules: Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells. All regions must have 180° rotational symmetry. Two regions of the same size may not share an edge. Clued cells must belong to a region containing the indicated number of cells.

GAPP 101: Small regions have very few available shapes in this variant. It's fairly easy to see what the options for sizes 3 and 4 are, but even at size 5 there are only three possible shapes to consider. Click the next spoiler if you don't want to work them out yourself: only the I, X, and Z pentominoes are rotationally symmetric.

Score a Speedy Sloth 🦥 by solving the puzzle in 2:30 or less!
Collect a Quick Crab 🦀 by completing the puzzle in 5:00 or less!
Finish the puzzle in your own time to become the proud owner of a Symmetric Galah 🐦!

Example (puzz.link) by Freddie: https://tinyurl.com/4f2e8wvn
Puzzle (puzz.link): http://tinyurl.com/tc5rhxfw