Wednesday, 28 May 2025

jovi_al

Today's genre is a Battenberg Painting, a genre with a negative constraint, so make sure you read the rules carefully! I don't have much more to say other than you may notice a similarity in both name and appearance to a semi-popular Sudoku variant, though curiously that one is spelled slightly differently.

We've covered this genre once before:
5/01/2024 by Lavaloid: Archive: Friday, 5 January 2024

Rules: Shade some cells. The numbers outside the grid indicate the number of shaded cells in that row or column. A checkerboard symbol marks a grid vertex surrounded by a 2x2 checkerboard pattern. All such checkerboard symbols are given.

Example (from pzprxs): https://tinyurl.com/mpy436ny

The GAPP team tell me it's a good idea to include a GAPP 101 with this one: Since a given checkerboard clue indicates a checkerboard pattern, its 2x2 can only have two shadeds in it: one on top, one on bottom, one on the left, and one on the right. You can use this to heavily restrict how some clues must be fulfilled!

To earn a Speedy Sloth 🦥, finish the puzzle in 3:00 or less!
To earn a Quick Crab 🦀, finish the puzzle in 6:45 or less!
All other solvers are well-deserving of a Damier Damara Tern 🐦!

Today's puzzle (pzprxs): https://tinyurl.com/ns9shb66