Thursday, 10 October 2024

Menderbug

Heavy Dots is an old (and fairly obscure) genre by Prasanna which will be featured at WPC. It's got quite a lot of rules, but they make for some interesti—

🚨BEE🚨DOO🚨BEE🚨DOO🚨 NEGATIVE CONSTRAINT ALERT 🚨BEE🚨DOO🚨BEE🚨DOO🚨

Rules:
- Divide the grid into regions along dashed gridlines so that no region contains a 2×2 group of cells. (Equivalently, every gridpoint has at least two region borders connecting to it.)
- Each region may contain at most one number, indicating the area of the region.
- Black dots must have exactly three region borders extending out of it, while white dots must have exactly four region borders. (The black and white dots contain a small “3” and “4” respectively as a reminder.)
- Not all possible black and white dots are necessarily marked, but unmarked gridpoints adjacent to a black or white dot must have exactly two region borders connected to them. (This includes gridpoints on the edge of the grid.)
See the diagram below for some examples violating the last rule.

📝 Notation tip 📝: Drag across an edge to place a faint "skeleton line" (see example solution), indicating the absence of a region border. This is particularly useful to keep track of vertices which already have all the borders they're allowed to have.

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 Heavy Dotterel 🐦!

Example (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/ysse2xtg
Puzzle (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/yvad2fc2