Puzzle Description:

that's a magnificent smiley face that good old Claude's got going so far....;)

#1: Kurt Kowalczyk (bahabro) on Feb 5, 2013 [HINT]

you can use el to determine the 11 in r15 cannot pass on both sides of the 1 in c9..... so the 11 in r14 must be beyond that. line logic will get you the rest of the way....

Fun puzzle, Kurt. First rater gave you a pair of deuces...

thanks Tom!

yeah, I saw. started with a 3/2, then I guess s/he changed their mind to double deuces....lol not a great image, but it's kinda funny and a good solve(I thought). glad you liked it! :)

Clever. Is that your portrait we see?

you know it! ;)

Luv the chapeau Kurt.:)

thanks Al!

Then they actually started with a 1/2...

Kurt - you missed something. The 11 in r15 could be in columns 9-19 if the 2 in r15 is in c5-6. There are many steps to the first error from there.

Here's how I did it:

Simple edge logic on the 11 in r15 can only limit it to c8+ on the left side. That makes c15-18 black. Then deeper edge logic on the right limits the 11 to c22 and left. (If the 11 reached c23, there would be a block of 4 in r13 which wouldn't leave room for the 3 to its right.) So r15c23-25 are white. Then Line logic.

There's edge logic that can be done elsewhere, but eventually you'll have to do less obvious deep edge logic on the 11 in r15:
If it were to go in c8-18, then look at how it intersects r12. The 3s in c8 and c11 would block off a two pixel space between them and the 6 in c9 means that there would have to be black in there. However, all the clues in r12 are greater than two. So the 11 cannot be in c8. That extends the 11 right so r15c19 is black. Then LL to finish.

Found to be solvable with moderate lookahead by infrapinklizzard.

I found a slightly different variant of logic to get past the initial lack of line logic. After the initial line logic, I used edge logic on the 11 in r15 to turn c15-18 black, like Joe. Then I noticed that both r14 and r15 have an 11 as their right-most clue. Looking at c24 and c25, the bottom-most clue on both rows is a one. That means at least one of the two 11 in r14-15 is "pushed" left two squares, into c13-14. Logically, either the 11 in r14, the 11 in r15, or both 11 clues must extend into c13. If r15 is pushed left, the 5 clue in c13 and the 4 clue in c14 force r14 to also be pushed left. Thus, in all 3 cases r14 must extend to c13. Then a little more line logic is available.

That was difficult to explain in words, but seeing the clues on the puzzle, that was a much easier logic leap for me than Joe's edge logic on c23.

However, I was still stuck, and I didn't see any obvious edge logic left. What I did notice was the 10 clue in r3, and the 2 clue in c19. At this point the 10 clue only has a single black square in r3c16. However, if the 10 clue extends right as far as the single 2 clue in c19, that forces both 11s in r14-15 all the way left to c8, which creates an edge logic failure for the 1 clue in c10. Thus, the 10 clue in r3 does not extend into c19, and c19-25 can all be dots. From this point, line logic works for the rest of the puzzle.

Overall, the interesting construction of the 2 11s in r14-15 was what I focused on to get started.

nice! good to see a solver out there! there are quite a fe w good ones out there, but Infrapink and Gator are pretty damn good. Hope to see you around!

Thanks Kurt!

I only recently found this site. I used to think I knew how to solve paint by numbers. The puzzles here showed me I was only starting down the amazing path of logic available.

I do plan to stick around, or at least come back to visit. The puzzles are too delightful to stay away.

Welcome, Eric. This is an amazing site (program wise) and fantastic people play here. I'm glad you found us.

This is a neat image and puzzle. After fiddling around with R14/R15 I noticed the 1 in C10 could be useful.

I focused on the 2 in C19. If it does not touch R14 or R15, then the 11's both must pass through C9-11. Which is a contradiction. So C19R1-12 are dots. The 6 in C9 has a black dot at R3 and then off we go. The helper takes care of the rest.

Goto next topic

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