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#1: Adichi Bell (adichi) on Apr 14, 2017

Yes I am. Pure guessing but happiness at the end :-)

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Found to require some guessing by gator.

And I thought I was the only one who had to guess my way through this. But, it is a nice cute image.

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Valerie, deep lookahead is reserved for a solve that is beyond a couple steps (moderate lookahead), but still can be kept in your head. The goal is to never mark anything on the puzzle without knowing that it is absolutely correct.

So a deep lookahead determination should be accompanied by the procedure used to get past the difficulty that needed such measures.

If such a list is not made (or cannot reasonably be kept in one's head before marking something for certain) then the puzzle is considered "some guessing" for this site's conventions.

There has been a debate about this over the years, with some saying that anything that is not multiple solutions is "logically solvable", but that is missing the point.

While technically correct, it is not helpful. The purpose of our ratings is to give an indication to the solver as to how *difficult* the puzzle is. In general terms, the difficulty goes along the lines of trivial -- line/color logic -- moderate lookahead -- deep lookahead -- some guessing (with a unique solution)

(Note that there is a lot of overlap in this line even to the extent that some line logic solves are harder than some deep lookaheads. However, in general this line holds true)

Lumping all of the "some guessing/unique solution" puzzles, where there is no obvious way forward without guessing and then backtracking, into the same category as "deep lookahead" puzzles where the way forward has been given is a disservice to the player choosing a puzzle

That makes sense. To me it seems logical that if I can solve it by trying a wrong answer and finding that it leads to an error, then there exists a chain of deep lookahead that could have figured it out more elegantly. I was thinking that a puzzle that needs guessing is one where even trial and error doesn't get you to a solution -- but that would have to be a puzzle with multiple solutions. So what you say makes sense.

Also, Joe, I e-mailed you about blue square colors over the summer and again more recently, but didn't hear back, so I am not sure that e-mail is working.

I will check my spam. Google has been throwing a lot in there -- including from my state's insurance marketplace site ... lovely

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Found to be solvable with deep lookahead by dbouldin.

Found to be solvable with moderate lookahead by gator.

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Good job

Thanks guys!

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