Sunday, 24 May 2026

Freddie Hand

Hello! This Yokeimoji Cross may look a bit intimidating, but I guarantee you don't need any Japanese knowledge to solve it. In fact it might be actively unhelpful, I have no idea what these "words" spell out.

Rules: Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Every run of 2 or more consecutive unshaded cells forms a word (left-to-right or top-to-bottom). Each word can appear no more than once in the grid. Words cannot start with "ン" or "ー". The sequences "ーー", "ンン" or "ンー" cannot appear in a word.

Here's a little GAPP 101 to help you get started: You cannot shade a cell to the left of "ー" or "ン" in the top row, since that would force a word to start with "ー" or "ン". Similarly, you cannot shade a cell above "ー" or "ン" in the leftmost column.

Acquire a Speedy Sloth 🦥 by solving the puzzle in 4:00 or less!
Obtain a Quick Crab 🦀 by solving the puzzle in 7:00 or less!
And all solvers who complete the puzzle will be rewarded with a Katakana Katanga Masked Weaver 🐦

Example (pzprxs): https://tinyurl.com/4m54jd46
Puzzle (pzprxs): https://tinyurl.com/5rgol22i