Thursday, 4 April 2024

bakpao

I was asked to cover for shye's slot today. I just started writing practice puzzles for the 21st 24 hour puzzle championship (which takes place next week) though, so I had to scramble a bit to get a puzzle put together. I didn't really know what to write, but thankfully there's always some inspiration to be found in Nikoli books!

Today's puzzle is a Sansa Road (サンサロード)!

This is a cute puzzle type featured in Nikoli's most recent two Puzzle Communications (vol. 185 and 186).

Rules:
- Shade some cells so that the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. No 2x2 region may be entirely unshaded.

- All unshaded cells have exactly two or three unshaded orthogonal neighbours. Triangles mark every unshaded cell with three unshaded neighbours.

- A black circle indicates there are more shaded cells than unshaded cells among the cells the circle overlaps. A white circle indicates there are more unshaded cells. A grey circle indicates there is an equal amount of unshaded and shaded cells.

⚠️ BEE DOO BEE DOO ⚠️ It's the negative constraint alarm again! Note that all triangles are given, meaning there can be no other three way junctions of unshaded cells anywhere in the grid, which therefore also means every other unshaded cell has exactly two unshaded neighbours.

Acquire a Speedy Sloth 🦥 by solving the puzzle in 2:30 or less!
Obtain a Quick Crab 🦀 by solving the puzzle in 5:00 or less!
And all solvers who complete the puzzle will be rewarded with a Westerosi Willet 🐦!

Example (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/25gg86un
Puzzle (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/25629tnu