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#1: Joe (infrapinklizzard) on Mar 24, 2013 [HINT]

This needs a lot of edge logic, and line logic not found by the purple arrow.

For instance, the center has a stripe of black 2 pixels wide from line logic. Notice that a lot of the crossing rows have only clues that are no larger than 2. In those rows, you can put a dot on either side of the stripe, even if you don't know *which* 2 it is. (Just don't go overboard and mark it on a row like r22 where there's a 4|2|4 -- you can't be sure it's the 2.)

However, looking at r22 again... See how it is a unknown space of one in columns 9 & 12. And notice that there are only clues > 1 left in those columns. So r22c9&12 should be dotted (in this case).

Now for some edge logic. The 3 on the bottom gives us a dot in c1 and in c16. The dot in c1 only gives another dot with line logic, but the one in 16 gives quite a bit more.

With no other obvious choices for edge logic, look inside for a big number near a lot of dots. Like the 10 in r15. Try putting it all the way left. It would cross the bottom 2 in c3, the 2 in c4, the 4 in c5, and a 2 in c6 -- oops, there can be only 2 in a row in r14! So r15c3 and 4 are dotted. A little line logic, but not much.

Now do the same on the other side - again it would make a block of 4 in r14, so the last two must be dotted.

Now if you've been paying attention to your non-purple-arrow line logic, you will see that r14c1-4 and c17-20 must be dotted as they can't fit the vertical clues. More LL.

Now do edge logic on the 6 in r17. You can see that if it were to go either all the way left or all the way right you'd end up with a block of two one row down on that side. With only 1s left in r18, we know that r17c7 & r17c14 must be dots.

Lotsa line logic.

Now some pseudo-edge-logic. ("Pseudo" because we're not really using an edge, but the logic is the same: place and rule out pixels). Extend the 16 in r7 all the way left. Note the 2s in c1-3 means that r9 cannot be black in those columns. However, that would only leave a block of one open in that row for the left 2 clue. Not even dieting will help that. So the 16 can't go all the way left and r7c1 must be dotted.

LL and then some smile logic to finish. (Or edge logic on the 18 - smile logic is just a specialized case of edge logic.)

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Groovy (I was gonna say "cool" but Kurt said it first). I was always sad that I couldn't think of anything cool to do with KEV, or KVC after I was married. Albrecht Durer also had a nice initial block, and my brother (initials MCV) signed his name "1105" for a while.

Very nice. I have to confess. Rather than go thru all the edge logic, etc. I just took a good hard look and filled in some squares that looked right and I was lucky and got it right.

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I never tried to make anything with my initials. C'mon. NRD ? Look at all the fun others could have at my expense.

I just wanted to have something cool to use to sign my paintings, or initial documents. :)
I could always do a small K & V inside a large C, but that's kind of meh.

my sis always signed her inits as K^3....(K-cubed). doubt "KKK" woulda went over so well...

I would tend to agree with you, there.

Awesome solve!

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Found to be solvable with moderate lookahead by infrapinklizzard.

Great puzzle Joe.

Thanks, Gator.

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