Monday, 16 September 2024

Freddie Hand

Today's puzzle is a Diagonal Chains, another genre from the Innovations round from the 2019 World Puzzle Championship (the recent Hideout Fences was also taken from here). You've also seen Equality. The other genres on that list might not make it so far.

Rules: Shade some cells to create diagonal chains. Shaded cells cannot be orthogonally adjacent, and no shaded cell can touch more than two other shaded cells diagonally. Furthermore, there can be no 'loops' of shaded cells – in other words, each group of diagonally connected cells must have at least one shaded cell with less than two diagonally touching shaded neighbours. Cells with numbers cannot be shaded.

The numbers indicate the sum of the lengths of all such chains where at least one shaded cell is horizontally, vertically or diagonally neighbouring to the numbered cell.

Note: The "no shaded cell can touch more than two other shaded cells diagonally" means that the shaded cells must form non-branching networks. And the example is a bit tricky!

Acquire a Speedy Sloth 🦥 by solving the puzzle in 2:00 or less!
Obtain a Quick Crab 🦀 by solving the puzzle in 4:00 or less!
And all solvers who complete the puzzle will be rewarded with an Mononesian Monotonous Lark 🐦

Example (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/2xq7nfzr
Puzzle (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/2yjyhgo6