Puzzle Description:

Keep an ear to the ground

#1: CB Paul (cbpaul) on Sep 12, 2021 [SPOILER]

Wow, I was kinda close with "Corn off the cob." Corn on the ground...
You're having some fun with these! And so are we.

Fantastic!

groan. Nice image, though :)

I *guess* this is deep lookahead...

Hm. I could not find a place to grab onto this -- not an edge to use edge logic on, or a crescent for smile logic. I spent a while saving my progress, then marking a square as green, using the helper until it got a contradiction, then reverting to what I had saved, adding a dot where the square had been, and saving again. But even that didn't get it solved for me.

But I peeked at the solution and it was cute!

I had trouble solving my own creation. I think I did a guess and check to get into solving it.

I'm not sure if I will get to a solution or not with this, but here goes:

Line/color logic will place all of the black and some of the green.

Either R17C11 or R17C13 is green. Looking at R16, we can then see that R16C8-10 have to be dots.

Looking at C7, with EL and looking 2 moves ahead, then R15C7 will have to be a dot. Again looking 2 moves ahead in C7, R14C7 will also have to be a dot. LL.

If a 2 clue is placed at R10C14-15, then this will make R9 invalid (as R14C11-12,14-15 would be force green). So R10C15 must be a dot. R10C14 is also a dot with LL.

That is all I can get for now. I'll look at it again later.

I'm worried I left a step out here. I tend to use brute force. My method seems to be deep lookahead.

As Gator mentions above, all the black dots are placed by line logic. Also note the bit about R16 C8-10 being dots.

R15 through C10 must be dots after the initial line logic. That places dots at R12 to the right of C12. If the 2-3-4 in C15 are above the line we get a contradiction in column 16 pretty quickly. R17C16 as green then gives a contradiction with deep lookahead.

C9R8 being green creates a contradiction with medium lookahead. Line logic from there.

I feel like the state of our puzzles look very different as the R8C9 does nothing for mine. I wish there was an easy way to post pictures here.

I enjoyed this puzzle. I could see that the patterns of numbers would lead to some strings, but wasn’t sure where to start. I eventually saw that the column of 19 pixels couldn’t be a single pixel wide and was able to move ahead from there. Thank you

After Gator's hints:

R12: If the 3 goes to C7, R13C9 is green. If the 3 goes to C10, R13C10 is green. Either way, R13C13 is white.

C15: If the 4 goes into R13, R13-15 C16 are white, and R14-15 C14 are green. This makes R14 invalid, so R17C15 is green instead. LL.

R15: Whether C14 or C16 is green, it places the 1 in R14, so R14C18 is white. Minimal LL.

R14: If the 4 goes to C14, both R13 C14 and C16 would need to be green, which is invalid. R14C10 is green instead. LL.

C7-8: One of these columns goes to R5 and the other goes to R7. Either way it places the green 1 in R7, and R7C7 is white.

LL to finish.

Found to be solvable with moderate lookahead by wombatilim.

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