Tuesday, 28 January 2025

Menderbug

Yesterday, I finished the Lookouts chapter in Toketa Vol. 5. I love this genre, so now you all have to solve one as well. Lookouts was originally published as Aussichtspunkte in a German contest back in 2013 (incidentally, the same contest that introduced Corridors, which was featured by Walker in October), and the ruleset has a evolved a little since then. The original rules specified that there would be exactly N regions of size N. When the genre got picked up by Toketa (and later when it was featured at WPC 2019), this was generalised to a list of given region sizes. For today's puzzle, I'm going with this updated presentation, but the puzzles follow the original ruleset anyway. Other than th—

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

Rules: Divide the grid into regions of the sizes given above the grid. Each number indicates the total number of cells within its region that can be seen horizontally or vertically from that cell, including the numbered cell itself (line of sight is blocked by region boundaries). All numbers that are maximal within their region are given, and no other numbers are given.

A little GAPP 101 for some immediate but maybe not completely obvious consequences of the negative constraint: Each region contains at least one clue. All clues within a region have the same value. All unclued cells within a region see fewer cells than the region's clues do.

Score a Speedy Sloth 🦥 by solving the puzzle in 4:00 or less!
Collect a Quick Crab 🦀 by completing the puzzle in 8:00 or less!
Finish the puzzle in your own time to become the proud owner of a Watchful Wattle-Eye 🐦!

Example (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/27p2rg4b
Puzzle (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/23qehnmj