Today on Pencils week : the silly puzzle ! This one revolving around my favourite number : 2. The construction is not the most mind-boggling you'll ever see, but you can make so much with only one clue type. Only arrows is much more complicated but arrows take 2 spaces at a time (the one it's in and the cell behind it, belonging to the "body" of the pencil), so they can restrain a lot more of the grid.
Check the oldest post for the rules.
This is the 4th entry from the Pencils puzzle week. The next puzzles will get bigger (and maybe harder ?), but for this one you should not have any surprises after solving the last 3.
Have you noticed ? For a pencil of size N, you have 2N+1 squares occupied by that pencil. You can decompose the number of white cells into sums of odd digits (1 is impossible) : If you have 7 leftover squares, you must have a length 3 pencil; is you have 10 squares, it's either a 1 and a 3, or two 2s. You don't need this tip for now.
Check the oldest post for the rules.
I tried again to do symmetry and failed. But this time I had some good idead for future puzzles while testing different clue interactions. The friday and saturday puzzles will contain a gimmick/theme, and the sunday post will contain multiples puzzles (usually the ones that are not selected for these posts, or failed themes).
Check the oldest post for the rules.
We're back for a second Pencils puzzle ! I tried for longer than i'd admit to build a proper symmetric grid using only numbers. I'll try to make that work eventually.
For now enjoy a very easy puzzle, with a two-side theme which emphasizes on the logic with each type of clue. I find the grids you can make with this puzzle type quite charming.
Go back to my oldest post for a refresher of the rules.
This week I will start a short series of 7 posts, each day (the time may vary), focusing on one puzzle type ! I decided to go with Pencils, since it's a pretty puzzle type which i'm not familiar with. The puzzles will get bigger and better constructed along the posts, since i'm still discovering new logic.
Here are the rules :
Place pencils and lines into every cell of the grid.
- A pencil consists of a rectangle of width 1. One of the short ends is attached to the pencil tip, from which start a line of length equal to the pencil "body".
- Each line connects to one pencil.
- Lines cannot branch or cross, and cannot touch each other. Lines cannot go through pencils.
- Numbers must be placed inside pencils, and indicate the length of the pencil. A pencil can have multiple identical numbers, or none at all.
Rules taken from pzpr ; https://puzz.link/rules.html?pencils <- check the link for a solved example.
The first puzzle I made was during a lunch break and is probably not very interesting, but I recommend diving into puzz.link's database if you like the genre.
Ant Mill is a shading AND a loop puzzle type. Here are the rules :
Shade some 1x2 dominos on the board.
- Shaded dominos must be diagonally adjacent to 2 other dominos. They cannot be orthogonally adjacent.
- All shaded dominos form one diagonally connected area.
- A square must overlap two cells of the same color. A cross must overlap two differently colored cells.
Rules taken from https://puzz.link/rules.html?antmill <- Check the link to see a solved example puzzle.
This puzzle types makes for great minimalist puzzles, but I prefer to do silly constructions/themes. While the genre seems quite restricted, it also makes deep logic since a few clues can force a lot of coloring. The rules do not explicitly says you must form one loop, but it's always the case with the 2-touching and one group rules.
