Shading Shake #2

     Another Shading puzzle pack for you. I tried to reach for lesser known genres, and kept the difficulty to a maximum of "medium" (as opposed to the first post lmao). Smullyanic Dynasty was found on Zotmeister's blog, and I will assume he is the creator of the genre (meaning the first puzzle with these rules). Since Tetrochain CBT was already shown here, I won't cover the rules again, but Smullyanic Dynasty deserves a quick explanation (the rules witten on Zotmeister's blog are way too long, so I reworded them to get straight to the point.) Hope you find these puzzles enjoyable.

    Smullyanic Dynasty rules :

Shade some cells in the grid.

- Shaded cells may never share an edge.

- Unshaded numbers indicate the amount of shaded cells in all 8 surrounding cells.

- Shaded cells must indicate a different number from the amount of shaded cells on the 9 cell-square centered on itself. See shaded numbers as liars in regards of the counting shaded cells rules, but counting itself.

- All unshaded cells must from a single orthogonally connected group.

Cocktail Lamp (easy)

Door Hinge (easy)

Smullyanic Dynasty (easy to medium)

Tetrochain CBT (medium)

Dominion (medium)

 

Loop Lunch #1

    Following the Shading Shake post, here is a bundle of Loop type puzzles. To make it more interesting, I will start the bundles with easier puzzles (except Yajilin, I hate Yajilin I hate Yajilin Ī̷̪ ̴̟̑ẖ̵͝a̷͕̋t̸̯̎é̶̫ ̶̝̂Y̸͖͐a̵̺͆j̶̧̓i̸̢̾ḻ̴̒i̶̞̾n̴͈̅ I̷̙͌͒ ̵̦̩̜͓̀́͆h̷̢̞̪͔͊̀ȃ̴̛̞̜̹̺́͝t̵͖̝̫̥̑͋̄͊e̷͔͙͗͘ ̴̙̜͋̇Y̴͍͙̩̱̓̃͊̽a̵͈͚̖͓̐̊͊͝j̸̎̑̐ͅỉ̴̠̭l̷͈̤̫̬̈̋͠i̵͙̱̫͋̾̊̄ͅn̶̫̖̘̔) and I will share harder ones later. For the ones starting with hard puzzles, easier ones will come later. This is a way to explore the loop genre, featuring Masyu (already done in this post), Barns, Injekushon (I will put it as "injection" here), Geradeweg and Yajilin (featured here). Like before, I won't go over the rules here, but the puzz.link "rules" tab (Help section) will provide you with good explanations. Yes, the last puzzle is kind of a joke, but it is also a way to please the hardcore Yajilin experts (who are definetly not my target audience lmao).

    The rules for Injection can be found here.

Masyu (easy)

Barns (easy)

Injection (easy to medium)

Geradeweg (medium to hard)

Yajilin (very hard)

🇫🇷 Dominion 🅰️⬛⬛🅱️

     Dominion est un puzzle combinant coloriage et partitionnement inventé par Naoki Inaba. C'est un puzzle sans nombre (même si on peut remplacer les lettres) et qui peut s'avérer assez difficile tout en gardant un même niveau de complexité. Voici les règles :

Colorier des cases de la grille pour diviser les cases blanches en régions.

1. Chaque case noire a exactement 1 autre case noire qui partage un côté (dominos).

2. Les cases contenant des lettres ne peuvent pas être noircies.

3. Toute instance d'une même lettre doit figurer dans la même région. Les régions doivent contenir au moins une lettre.

4. 2 lettres distinctes doivent figurer dans 2 régions séparées.

5. Les ? peuvent représenter n'importe quelle lettre déjà présente dans la grille. Cette règle est spécifique à puzz.link.

 Règles prises et traduites sur puzz.link -> Cliquez ici pour un exemple résolu.

    Voici 3 grilles de tailles et de difficulté croissantes, qui sont toutes accessibles. Le genre permet des grilles ardues mais surtout des grilles fastidieuses par leur taille (ce qui n'est pas le plus intéressant).

Puzzle 1

Puzzle 2

Puzzle 3

 

Yajilin ➡️⬛

     ...

    It's time I cover the genre... I can't postpone it much longer...

 

    Yajilin is a mixed loop/shading type puzzle. Being one of the most popular genres out there, it is packed with extensive logic about loops. Here are the rules :

Shade some cells on the board, and draw a single loop that goes through all remaining cells.

1. The loop cannot branch off or cross itself.

2. Shaded cells cannot be orthogonally adjacent.

3. Cells with numbers or question marks cannot be shaded, and are not part of the loop.

4. A number indicates the amount of shaded cells in the given direction.

Rules taken from puzz.link -> Click here for a solved example.

    Be careful that a clue is not considered a shaded cell (seems obvious but I saw someone missinterpretating this rule once), and keep in mind you are going through all remaining cells with a unique loop.

    Why am I complaining about doing this post ? Simply put, I am awful at Yajilin. So bad, I can't process grids higher than "easy" difficulty without taking at least half an hour to solve them. Sometimes I get a illumination in contests, but usually my brain turns to mush trying a bajillion possibilities, because the genre seems too subtle for me. This post took some time to prepare, as creating puzzles with adequate toughness was really tricky to find, so I got help from a software to make them unique, and tested them to make sure it's still doable So yes, the indicated difficulty is very much experimental. Of course, I trained a lot on the puzz.link database (which is drowning in Yajilin puzzles) to be able to create and solve the ones for today. The 3 puzzles offer a nice range of difficulties and logic, but don't worry if you only manage to do the first one.

Puzzle 1 (easy)

Puzzle 2 (medium)

Puzzle 3 (hard)

Masyu ⚪⚫

     Masyu is a neat loop genre puzzle type with rules that while look simple enough, must be thouroughly understood to be able to solve them. They make for quite appealing puzzles, although I am not a specialist when it comes to loop genres. Here are the rules :

Draw lines through orthogonally adjacent cells to form a loop that goes through every circle.

1. The loop cannot branch off or cross itself.

2. The loop must turn on black circles and travel straight through the cells before and after the circle.

3. The loop must go straight through white circles, and turn in at least one of the cells on either side.

Rules taken from puzz.link -> Click here for a solved example. Here, don't hesitate to go see the examples of wrong answers on this page to better understand the properties of each pearl/circle.

    The puzzles today are entry-level (except the 3rd one which is a bit tougher), and should not take you long to finish. The genre itself can make quite fiendish puzzles, beware of what you may find on databases or past championships !

Puzzle 1

Puzzle 2

Puzzle 3