Puzzle Description:

Podiatrist

#1: Joe (infrapinklizzard) on May 28, 2021 [HINT]

After LL/CL leaves only a block of unknown greens in the upper right,

Internal EL on the 3 in r11: if it were to go all the way right to c24, then it would cause a conflict in either r10 or r12. Therefore r11c24 must be white.

LL to finish

"I shot an arrow into the air
It fell to earth I know not where"

So how does podiatrist connect with this?
That's Longfellow, btw. And nice image, too.

Found to be solvable with moderate lookahead by infrapinklizzard.

I've got the same question, CB.

Oh wait. Does this have something to do with being an archer?

Now that could be it! (She said, given that her arches are annoying her again lately.)

This was more straightforward than some of the comments would lead me to believe. That green bit in the upper right solves with "stairstep logic" where you have a line of numbers left like 2-1-2-2-1-2, and the 'ones' are are the middle of threes, while adjacent twos are stair steppy twos.

Yeah, BT, "stairstep logic" is a good name for it. It's become one of the things I look for, too.

BT & CB: Unfortunately that is not Purist Approved[TM]. The purist way to do a puzzle is to make sure that every step is provable. Going with a stair-step pattern is progressing by assumption, which is guessing.

The only way that progression by assumption is purist approved is when the assumption comes to a conflict. Then you can prove that the assumption is wrong.

Even if your assumption leads you to a solution, you haven't proven that it is *THE* solution, but only that it is *A* solution.

If there are multiple solutions, how can a proof make a difference? It's still only a proof that this is *A* solution.

Or maybe a good deterministic proof is ALSO a proof that there is only one solution. But is that really part of what must be proved to solve a puzzle in the Purist Approved[TM] fashion?

Purist Approved[TM] solving is when every pixel you place is known to be 100% correct. If you know (through logic) that every pixel you place is 100% accurate, then there can be no other solution.

Vice-versa, if there is more than one solution then you cannot reach any solution without having guessed at some point. Which also implies that if you reach a solution after having guessed, there is no way of knowing whether it is only one of several solutions.

I thought Purist Approved[TM] solving was when you did it in pen.

(Great solve, fun image, and my "archer" definitely has to help me with things that fall to earth.)

I gave up doing them in pen because it was getting so hard to see what was on my monitor. Actually, being 100% sure that every pixel you're marking is correct is the same in principle as doing it in pen. (Just less monitor washing)

Great puzzle! Enjoyed the solve and Thanks!

Lol, Joe. so...connect the dots for us slowpokes...archer is to podiatrist as ___ is to ___?

A podiatrist works on arches. So they're an arch-er.

Aha! It took me a while to get arch from archer. Maybe it's a tad earlier than when I solved the puzzle. Very clever!

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