Sunday, 31 March 2024

Menderbug

Happy Easter to anyone who observes it and Happy Strange-Shaped Sunday! While constructing today's puzzle on a Snub Square grid, I ran into an interesting problem: it turns out to be impossible to draw a loop through every cell on today's grid, but proving it is not straightforward. In the end I switched genres to Koburin, so the loop doesn't have to go through every cell.

See my other (regular) Koburin for links to all previous appearances: Archive: Monday, 13 November 2023

Rules: Shade some empty cells so that no two shaded cells share an edge and draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of all the remaining empty cells. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the number of shaded cells sharing an edge with the clue. (Note that you can also shade cells which are not adjacent to a clue.)

Here's a small GAPP 101: You know how in regular Koburin (or Yajilin) you can't shade a cell adjacent to a corner? This is because the corner cell has two possible exits, and by shading one of its neighbours you block one of those exits while forcing the loop to visit the cell, creating a dead end. This situation comes up a lot on the snub square grid but might not always be so obvious, so keep an eye out for cells with only two possible exits.

Score a Speedy Sloth 🦥 by solving the puzzle in 3:30 or less!
Collect a Quick Crab 🦀 by completing the puzzle in 7:00 or less!
Finish the puzzle in your own time to become the proud owner of a Snub Square-tiled Kite 🐦!

Example (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/22ytp7v9
Puzzle (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/2yoe8sn6