Puzzle Description:

Sunhat and sunglasses

#1: Kristen Vognild (kristen) on Feb 15, 2019

Terrific!

Great glasses for the space. Sadly I never lived near a beach and only visited a very short time.

Very much needed right now!

Any hints? I've got about half of it solved with LL and easy EL, but now I'm rather stuck.

Ginkgo....idk what you'd call this, but I suppose it's a type of deep el. There can be no more than a string of 8 in the first r..but if the 8 started all the way over in c1, the cross clues would give you no less than 13. ie, you can dot r1 c1-5. with the "simple" el that you already have in the top right, you can put black in r1c9-13. That gets you started..

I'm still not done, but got a few more steps sorted.

Either r7c19 and 20 has to be white, so the last 2 in r9 cant extend into c20, so dot r9c20. you can do the same sort of thing to dot r1c6.

Got a few more complicated steps, though I'm not sure if it's needed yet, so I'll hold off on explaining. Got a few more sure dots and blacks....but nothing to break it open yet. I can "see" where its going, but can't prove it yet. Make one educated guess, and it'll prob solve simply. It's late, maybe I'm just missing something and need to see it with fresh eyes.

One thing that's obvious is the bottom 2 r's have to stagger their clues, and certain clues can't pass through certain c's. Bug used to say he placed "imaginary" dots. idk, I'm gonna save and hit this up tomorrow

After line logic,

EL 8 r1 = c17-20 white
Deep EL 8 r1 (vs r9) = c1-5 w
LL

EL 2 c20 = r6 w
LL

two-way logic 1 c14 = c6r2 black
LL

two-way logic 1 r7: because of the 2 in r9, no matter where you put the 1 in r7, r9c19 must be black.
LL

And here I'm stuck.
I looked at the bottom two rows and found several ways to place the clues without immediate conflict.

I gave up and started guessing. Cool image, Annalivia.

Thank you, Kurt and Joe. I feel pretty good knowing I got as far as you, Kurt. Unfortunately, I couldn't take anything else away from that except that we are on the same page. Joe, you gave me one little extra step that I hadn't seen yet: your second two-way logic hint. Thank you both, and now we're all stuck together. I might wait a little longer to see what else you've got, or I might just start guessing. I'll see what I feel like later.

I guess I found a good spot for zig-zag logic, with all those 2 clues. I probably saved then tried it out, ergo I cheated a bit.

Thanks Annalivia. I have many fond memories of time spent on the beach. Sadly hurricanes and natural erosion have all but destroyed our nearby beaches. The roads have been wiped out and are not being rebuilt.

Down on the south Texas coast, when i was growing up there were sand dunes taller than 2 story buildings. One of the parks had built an observation tower you could climb up to look out over them. All gone now...

I will give you guys a hint: only one corner of the puzzle is filled...

A very tough puzzle! I don't think I found any moderate lookahead, though I tried. I picked off the upper right and left and then focused on the 4's on the bottom. I got a dot on the bottom row and then C14-19 may or may not have had a 4 ... I was able to show a contradiction if both 4's were to the left of a dot in C13. But I forget all the steps.

Goto next topic

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