Puzzle Description:

Norwegian Curling Pants

#1: marjorie rex (mamo) on Mar 1, 2018

hahaha!

I Googles Norwegian Curling Pants and discovered they really like their outfits loud and colorful.

:D

stylish!
The title made me think perhaps you enlisted and this would be your last puzzle for 4 years, then once the image started taking shape, I was thinking that I don't know where you're from, but your army sure has weird pants.

I was crestfallen, at first. I knew they were Norwegian Curling pants after 2 or 3 zig-zags. :)

No, you can't get rid of me that easily.
This is my last curling puzzle until our next Winter Olympics.

Ah, that is a relief. I half expected some kind of military image, and that you were going someplace dangerous for 4 years. I like your puzzles!

BTW, my army really does have some weird pants.

Bummer, I will miss them.

Found to be solvable with deep lookahead by infrapinklizzard.

after color logic,
some extended line logic - if the blue 1 in r25 were in c13 then it would make c13r23 white, making c14 next to it also white. That would force the 2 in c14 down, conflicting with our assumption. So r25c13 can't be blue and must be white.

(Another way to do the same thing is to see the two 2s in c13 &c14 and compare that to the 1 in r25. So at least one of them must go up. If either goes up, c13r23 must be blue.)

Both of these are in the grey area between moderate and deep lookahead, but they're common and easy(ish) so they're considered moderate on this site.

Line logic / cl

Repeat process with red 1 in r22

ll/cl

Repeat process with blue 1 in r19

ll/cl

Repeat process with red 1 in r16

ll/cl

Repeat process with blue 1 in r13

ll/cl

Repeat process with red 1 in r10

ll/cl

It's easy to guess the solution from here (and even earlier), but at this point it's difficult to move forward logically. The red 2 in c8 can go in any of 5 places without immediate conflict. The 1s in r5 and r25 can each start a zigzag in three places.

So here's where it turns into definite deep-lookahead territory.
The 1 in r5 can go in any of three places, but in each of those places it would start a zigzag. Let's try each in turn and see what happens.
> If it were in c3, the zigzag would go down and to the right. It would then end in r10c12 without a conflict. Since we started with an assumption and ran into no conflict we gained no new knowledge. We must leave r5c3 as unknown.
> If r5c4 were red, then it could start a zigzag in either direction. So, >> if it went down and left, it would end with a conflict in r7c4; >> if it went down and right, it would end in r10c8 without a conflict. Again, we started with an assumption and found at least one way it could go, but we cannot say that it's the right way (after all, the previous step also had a placement without conflict). So we must leave r5c4 as unknown as well.
>if r5c5 were red, it also could zigzag in either direction. So, >> if it went down and left, it would end with a conflict in r9c3; >> if it went down and right, it would end with a conflict in r9c7. Since those are the only two ways to go and they're both bad, r5c5 cannot be red and must be white.

Then immediately we do two-way logic on the 1 in r5 - no matter where it goes r6c4 must be red.

ll

more deep lookahead with the 1 in r5:
It will start a zigzag in either position, and either zigzag must go down and right. Both zigzags make r6c4 red (as it is already) but another two steps along each zigzag will also make r7c5 red.
And then another two steps along each zigzag will make r8c6 red... And then r9c7 red... and then r10c8 red.

ll/cl

if the 1 in r8 were in c5, the zigzag it starts would end in a conflict in r10c3. So r8c5 must be white.

ll/cl

if the red 2 in r23 were in c4-5 there would be no room for the 1 in r25. So r23c5 must be white.

ll

repeat for the 2 in r20.

ll

repeat for the 2 in r17.

ll

for r14 it's the same idea, but a little more complicated. The blue 2 can be in the range [c2-c5]. If it were in c4-5, then there would be no room for the 1 in r16. So the range of the 2 must only be [c2-4]. So r14c3 must be blue. (Note we can't mark r14c5 white because it still could be red.)

ll/cl leaving only red

same idea again - if the 2 in r12 were in c5-6 there's be no room for the 1 in r10 so r12c6 must be white

ll to finish.

Hm. That last step could've been done earlier (but not before the deep lookahead).

First of all, I panicked until I saw other newer puzzles by you. (Whew!)

Then I had a great deal of fun with the color logic, hoping that would get me through. Nope. I was frustrated because I could see what to do visually, but couldn't get the deep look ahead. But it was still great fun, especially finding out what it really was. Haha!

I think the hardest part of this puzzle was locating the place to start each zig-zag, then figuring out which way it zigged.

Very tricky and fun. Thanks

Goto next topic

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