Puzzle Description:

It's elemetary.

#1: Giovanna Stäger (JMC) on Jan 22, 2011

Sherlock Holmes?

I believe this solves with 'looking ahead" at the top of the hat.

it must be holmes hat due to the pipe and the title but the har itself looks like a fur trappers hat or something
haha
not sure how to solve the rest of the hat logically

i agree with Jota

The pipe and partial hat told me it was Sherlock's hat. It seemed logical that the brim would point down facing the smoking pipe. I tried that bottom right pixel of the hat and it worked fine. :o)

After finishing the pipe and smoke, and getting a 4|8|4 "UFO" in the upper left, I don't see any way forward short of assuming symmetry. Each look-ahead I tried was able to continue far beyond a few steps.

I agree with Joe...

I agree with JoDeen...

I found a rather complicated 2 move look-ahead. What are your thoughts on this?

Imagine in column 9 that R3C9-R5C9 are all dots. This forces R7C9-R9C9 to be black, and it makes R3C10-R5C12 dots (9 cells total). For the second look-ahead, R7C10-R9C10 and R8C11 are black. This makes row 8 invalid, so at least one cell in R3C9-R5C9 is black. Knowing this, we can mark R5C9 as black and R9C9 as a dot.

We can use the same logic with column 4 to make R5C4 black and R9C4 a dot.

If you keep looking at columns 4 and 9 in this fashion, you will be able to make R4C4 and R4C9 black and R8C4 and R8C9 dots. The rest will solve with logic.

It technically fits the 2 move look-ahead criteria, but we usually do not make things dots to try to find contradictions. So I found this one more difficult than a typical 2 move look-ahead. Thoughts?

i did something similar but i felt it was guessing
however you are the authority on this issue so if you feel that it counts as logical then i am with you

i believe its guessing, but your the man Gator

That's what I did Gator, our brains should be able to do some looking ahead ...

Surely Sherlock puzzles should use some assumptions.

Say that three times fast.

That, that, that.

Found to be logically solvable by Gator.

OK, I'm off the fence now. Great puzzle Brian.

I'm glad there was not a "?" on this puzzle, or I would not have attempted it. I found it tough but solvable on the hat. I was able to whittle it away without guessing, and it was quite fun. Well done!

Oh yes, this was one of my tougher hat puzzles. I'm glad you liked it.

It's a death frisbee!

Strictly following Gator's instructions leaves a gap. R8c11 cannot be blackened until you also make r11c3 or c4 a dot. These are definitely dots due to the 4 & 6 in those rows, but it adds yet another bit of lookahead.

I feel comfortable re-rating this as deep-lookahead - a category we didn't have at the time this was first rated.

Found to be solvable with deep lookahead by infrapinklizzard.

Joe - I thought this "and it makes R3C10-R5C12 dots (9 cells total)" covered that.

And I agree this should be deep lookahead.

Sorry, Gator. I guess I missed that.

With all that, how did this puzzle get rated easy?

I was wondering the same thing. This puzzle is definitely not elemeNtary.

Great solve! I found it wasn't a deep lookahead.

Goto next topic

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