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Comments on Puzzle #3964: Canine spy
By Jake Griffin (jako7286)

peek at solution       solve puzzle
  quality:   difficulty:   solvability: some guessing  

Puzzle Description:

A bit of a play on words. It's Snoopy!

#1: Adam Nielson (monkeyboy) on Nov 5, 2008 [HINT] [SPOILER]

A somewhat decent image ruined by massive guessing required.
yes, it is fairly easy to "assume" where the black should go, but logically impossible to solve.

As a hint to help your puzzles be better, connect your corners better when you are making diagonal lines. The outline of his head, where blacks touch only diagonally make it impossible to solve logically. Some places have the thicker corners (where touching columns overlap by using a row of at least 2 blacks) and that worked really well.
#2: Jake Griffin (jako7286) on Nov 6, 2008 [HINT]
monkeyboy, I intentionally made this more difficult. And it IS possible to solve without guessing, and with logic alone, you just have to think ahead a few steps. It's atypical logic for most puzzles, but it's still logic.
#3: Heike Oehlmann (hoe) on Nov 6, 2008
Sorry Jake, I think, Adam is right. I knew from the beginning, what I'm looking for. But only try and error helps to solve the puzzle. With logic I couldn't make it. Nevertheless a good result!
#4: Jane Doe (telly) on Nov 6, 2008
I agree with #1&3...nice image but what you're talking about is what I consider trial and error or guessing based on what it should and probably does look like instead of line, edge, or other logic.
#5: Jan Wolter (jan) on Nov 8, 2008
Given that a puzzle has a unique solution, you can always solve it by trying every possible arrangements of black and white, and keeping only the solution that works. That's a "logical" procedure, but not a viable one for human beings to use. So when we talk about a puzzle being "logically solvable" we have a more restrictive meaning in mind that the dictionary definition.

My way of thinking of it is that if this puzzle were on paper, I could solve it with an ink pen. Before filling in any square, I can make an argument for why that square MUST be the color I am filling it in, and that explanation is simple enough to work out in my head. Maybe the term I really want is something like "stepwise logical".

The FAQ on this site includes a link to a page called "Advanced Puzzle Solving Techniques". Any puzzle that is solvable using the techniques on that page is certainly logically solvable under the definition used on this site. It's certainly possible that some puzzles might require techniques different from those listed there, but that's actually pretty rare. If you can describe other solving techniques, I'd be interested in adding them to that page.

I was unable to find any logical way to solve this puzzle under the definition we use here.

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