Saturday, 6 July 2024

Menderbug

Story time! I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with constructing Isowatari. In principle, the genre is a lot of fun to construct, but it ends up being so much fun that I always commit to overly restrictive themes (or doppels for way too many different parameters ), such that resolving the end of the puzzle becomes a huge pain and takes forever. Case in point, I had 10(!) working versions of today's puzzle before this one, because in all of them the ending required some steps that were unsuitable for GAPP. Though all of those ten versions only used the 11 pentominoes that can appear as white givens. The breakthrough happened when it finally occurred to me to include the black sheep of the pentomino family.

Previous appearances:
- Archive: Friday, 10 November 2023 (N=3) by Walker
- Archive: Monday, 25 March 2024 (N=2) by me

Rules: Shade some cells so that all unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area and no 2x2 region is entirely unshaded. Black circles must be shaded and white circles must be unshaded. All orthogonally connected groups of shaded cells must be the size indicated above the grid.

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 Sheepish Blackbird 🐦!

Example (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/268zdkrs
Puzzle (Penpa+, Landscape): https://tinyurl.com/26cnz3fb
Puzzle (Penpa+, Portrait): https://tinyurl.com/22tzmylr