Puzzle Description:

(passes joint while holding breath) 'ere!

#1: Car Geis (cgeisler) on May 2, 2022

groan ;)

TRUE!!

ear?

Yep. (homophone)

Fun, interesting puzzle!

I used edge log on the bottom and top rows.

c14 r11 must be a dot ... 2 way logic?

I did some logic to notice C17R2 must be a dot.

I picked off some edge logic and eventually stuff at the top (and in C3) started to fall. There were only so many places the pairs of twos could appear.

I didn't have anything conclusive with the 5 on the right edge, though I found there were places it couldn't start. I also found the 5 in the 2-5-2 was restricted as to where it could go due to 2 way logic.

I probably did more than moderate lookahead at a point or two, but maybe others did better.

I was good up until "I did some logic to notice C17R2 must be a dot"...C17? I'm currently at this point in my solve, so everything after that is lost on me also :) still chugging away :)

I thought it was the joint. But not just any joint! A truly hip joint.

I didn't think the software would choose a puzzle for Featured Puzzles when its Solvability isn't set. But there this puzzle is! I'll check the code on that.

I looked it up: The software only chooses featured puzzles with one solution, not multiple solutions. The Solvability can be line-and-color logic, moderate lookahead, or deep lookahead -- but not trivially solvable, some guessing, or lots of guessing. If nobody has set the puzzle's solvability to Definitely, then the software uses the consensus of the users. Interesting!

Initial LL completes 13%, all whitespace.

R1: EL marks C7-9 black. LL.
R20: EL marks C5-6 black. LL.
C14: EL marks R11 and R18-19 white.
C13: EL marks R18-19 white.

C3: If the 4 starts in R2, it makes either C2 or C4 invalid, so R2C3 is white.

C14: The 5 has 4 valid positions. No matter which one it uses, R17C13 is white.

R18: If either C5 or C6 is black, it makes R20 invalid in 3 steps, so these squares must be white.

Deep lookahead R19: If C2-4 is white, C7-8 and C11 are black. This starts the 2nd 2 in R18, and the 1st one will need to place black in R18C3. This places black in R17C3 as well, which makes either C2 or C4 invalid. Therefore there must be black in R19C3.

I'm struggling to find another move forward from here. I can see what Andrew means by 2-way logic narrowing down where the 5 in C11 can go, but it's not narrowed down enough for me to use that right now.

Goto next topic

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