Puzzle Description Suppressed:Click below to view spoilers

#1: Aurelian Ginkgo (AurelianGinkgo) on Apr 2, 2018

Cool image. I had to peek. I'll sit back now and let the more experienced solvers figure out whether guessing is needed or not. I did not mark it either way.

It's actually quite easy to make these crop circles using stakes and ropes.

Apparently, nobody thought to take a photograph. I could only find a diagram of that first crop circle. https://www.cropcirclecenter.com/ccdata/2006/06/11/UK20060611_A.html

I was amazed that such simple forms would require so much work to resolve. Often adding on pixel to a horizontal would lead to one pixel on a horizontal. Which would in turn give you one more pixel of info on another line. I ended up working all over the puzzle at once. I did have to look ahead in two places. I don’t know if it is brain busting, but certainly a time consuming puzzle to solve logically. I did enjoy it.

Logically solvable, no guessing required.

I agree with #4 and #5. This was a tedious puzzle to solve. It can mostly be tackled by patient line logic, but there are some spots at the sides where it needs some edge logic to apply.

Finding the right places where edge logic is efficiently applicable (so that it helps continuing with longer LL parts) is not easy, because in this puzzle the clues are almost constantly increasing or decreasing from the corners to the center vice-versa. c12r14 was the key for me besides the two outmost columns, which were more evident to search for EL.

Here are the mod-lookahead steps of my shortened solution assisted by the helper, after I have solved it for the first time. Assume line logic (hint buttons) between the steps.

- EL 6 in c1: observe how it affects c12. At least one black cell have to be in the range c1r22-33, otherwise the 19 clues in c12 wouldn't be separated.
-> c1r1-16,39-40 are dots.

- EL 16 in c2: c2r14-16 cannot all be black, otherwise there would be a contradiction on clue 15 in c15, as c15r14 and c15r16 would be dots.
-> c2r1-14 are also dots.

- EL 10 in c55: note that if c55r23-30 would all be dots, then it would corrupt c44 as 18 is the biggest clue in that column. So at least one black cell have to be in c55r23-30.
-> Either one is black, c55r30 has to be black.

The helper/hints can now solve the most of the puzzle, only a little dot is what it can't find:
- LL 2 in r30 -> r30C36 is a dot. LL to finish.

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