Saturday, 19 September 2026

bakpao

With WSPC and all the preparation and extra travel that comes with it around the corner, I'm faced with the daunting task of getting my GAPP backlog up to 8 puzzles in the next two weeks, including today's puzzle. Naturally, the first thing I looked at was Tapa variants. To my surprise we've never featured today's variant, despite it being a pretty common one!

Today's GAPP is a Tapa (Islands)!

Rules: Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area and no 2x2 region is entirely shaded. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the lengths of the blocks of consecutive shaded cells in the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue. Regions of unshaded cells may contain at most one clue, and the number of cells in an unshaded region with a clue must be equal to one of the numbers in the clue.

Acquire a Speedy Sloth 🦥 by solving in 2:00 or less!
Obtain a Quick Crab 🦀 by solving in 4:00 or less!
All solvers who complete the puzzle will be rewarded with a Heroic Harrier 🐦!

Example (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/3thwh2pz
Main (Penpa+): https://tinyurl.com/kfrceed4