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#1: Norma Dee (norm0908) on Jun 23, 2013

What a nice way to think of it. A plant hospice worker. I now know my calling. :) So nice to see a puzzle from you, Teresa.

Thanks. I enjoy making puzzles but i'm a little short on inspiration.

me likes a lot, Teresa

After the color/line logic, you will be left with a few black cells to place in the top right.

I just don't see a good way to finish this with only 2 move lookahead though. I'm marking as deep lookahead for now.

Found to be solvable with deep lookahead by gator.

I thought so too Gator, but waited for your decision

Hey, Gator, there's one place where I'm kind of vague on the two-step thing. If you can establish a "truth" before hypothesizing pixels, should we consider it a step? For example:

We can establish the truth that both c15r3 &7 cannot be white at the same time. (If they were then there would be a conflict in c11.)

Now when we hypothetically place the 3 in c16 in r5-7, it produces this lookahead:
1: c15r5-7 must be white due to crossing clues
2: There is now only one way to place the three 1s in c15, and it would make c15r3 white.

Since we know that both r3 and r7 in c15 can't be white, the 3 cannot be in that position so c16r7 must be dotted. Then LL to finish.

What do you think?

I try to keep it as simple 2 move ahead as much as possible. The scenario you outlined is still a lot to keep in one's head at a time. In the past, I would have likely ruled this as solvable (what we now call moderate lookahead), but since we now have the distinction between moderate and deep lookahead, I would err on the side of deep lookahead for this one.

We could just as easily say that both R2C14 and R2C19 cannot be black. Then we could consider that the two 4 clues in row 3 are all the way to the left. Looking one move ahead we would see that R4C11 and R4C16 are black and R3C14 and R3C19 are dots. Two moves ahead makes R4C14 and R4C19 dots thus making R2C14 and R2C19 black. But it really is looking 3 moves ahead like your example.

Nice solve! Great inspiration!

OK, I shall be more conservative.

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