Puzzle Description Suppressed:Click below to view spoilers

#1: Kristen Vognild (kristen) on Feb 21, 2019 [HINT]

That was, indeed, tough. I used symmetry to place the 2 in R20 (not entirely kosher, but it fit the clues).

After placing 4 on R11 and blanking all but the 4 squares in the middle of R20, I'm stuck. Even if I were to guess like Kristen, it would not take me anywhere.

I did the same, then made a "leap of faith" for C9 and C12, and lucked out with that guess.

Still workin it...

As Jota said, dot all but the 4 middle spots in r-20

Then used iel on the 7's in c's 2 and 19. You can narrow it down to a range, dotting c2 13-20 and placing red in c2 6-10....and dot c19 14-20 and put red in c19 7-11

After that, you can limit the 5 in c20 to a range, placing a red in c20 r9. The 4 in c1 can also be placed in a range of 8 pixels, but that will not gain you any red in c1. However, whether that 4 all the way up or down, you will invariably trigger the 7 clue in r11 from c3. This might be "deep", but it is logical. r11 c3-7 are red.

There is also a sneaky LL dot to find at c18r4...

A couple other poss "deep" steps:

whether the red you have at c18r7 is the 1 clue or part of the 3 clue in c18, the 5 in c20 has to dip into at least r10. (With the subsequent LL, there is also a sneaky LL dot to find at c18r14)

whether the red you have in c3r6 is the 1 clue or part of the 3 clue in c3, the 7 in c2 has to dip down into c11. (Also, the 4 in c1 will have to make it at least as far down as r9...so make c1r9 red)

If you assume symmetry, it's not all that diff... I'm still trying to get it without that assumption, but I'm hitting a wall. I'll come back to it later...

Very nice Brian. Great title too.

Bruce. I like your leap of faith idea. I always solve my own puzzles and pretend I don't know the solution. In this puzzle I place a lot of pixels in the wrong places along the top row until I found the ones that didn't lead to a contradiction. Since it was so difficult, I gave it that title.

I did it with symmetry and logic alone. You can look at the 2 columns in the right half that don't match up with their respective symmetrical columns in the left half and then look at the rows to see where those columns would have to intersect with those rows in order to work.
With that you can logically place the rest of the puzzle. (using symmetry to make each half its own micro puzzle that you just have to fill in identically twice < that's the part that makes me not so much enjoy symmetry puzzles, but it did make for some interesting, unusual logic here)

yeah, Emily..you can assume symmetry. But it takes 5 mins to solve once you do. I was trying the hard way...

Easier way to look at it once you do. any single clue has to straddle the middle, ie you can place the 2 in r20 straight-away. If there's an odd # of clues in a symmetrical puzz, then the middle clue straddles the mid-axis. From there, i'll let you make your own assumption on even # clues in a row. Once you know it's symmetrical, there are a whole host of constants you can draw upon. You're right though. Once you have an axis, you're basically splitting up the puzz into halves or sections. You do enough of em, you can visualize what the image looks like with a glance at the grid...before you even begin to solve. I did a cursory glance and knew there was a v-shape coming up from the middle and thought, "it's not quite a heart, but the bottom 3/4 has a heart-shape. It's not pointed at the top portion like one though, more rounded".

I was just doing a diff puzz of Brian's earlier today that dealt with amplitudes and wave-lengths. Somehow it got marked as "much-guessing", but it was completely logical, and almost color/line solvable. But it was broken into sections, or shoulda been. No guessing, and nothing even difficult. It was a well-made puzz.... (I hate when ppl rate as guessing just cuz they can't figure it or missed something. If you don't know, don't rate)

Good image, and small enough to make for an interesting go at it! Thanks for the puzz, Brian! I'm def getting my money's worth out of it :)

I like this image—did not see it when I had half.

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