Puzzle Description:

OK-- I hate patterns. I hate puzzles without unique solutions... But I keep reading that if there is a unique solution and the clues are symmetrical, you can assume the solution is symmetrical. So here's a puzzle with symmetrical clues and multiple solutions. Mostly because I wanted to see what it looked like. Sorry for the WOT! ;)

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

I don't blame you; I feel the same way (about patterns, etc). But this was actually fun (in a weird way). I only persisted because of the title you gave it; I had read Jan's comments a million times as well, and figured you were going after this exact thought.

After solving all that I could logically, I started by placing the black 4 in the top left corner (of the available space inside), and it luckily worked, so I kept solving until I had all the inner parts placed. Then it's a 50-50 shot on which corners to place the 2x2s. Very interesting puzzle. Thanks!

If there is no guessing and the clues are symmetrical, then the solution WILL be symmetrical. Interesting puzzle though, I had to flip my first image to find the correct solution.

adam your back on ?????

problem result or not????

I've been meaning to add an example of an asymmetrical puzzle with symmetrical clues to the "Advanced Puzzle Solving Techniques" page, but I was thinking of doing a simpler example. Maybe like this:

   X .
   . X

That has symmetrical clues but no solution is horizontally or vertically symmetrical. But it has solutions that are diagonally symmetrical, so maybe I should prefer this:

  X X . .
  . . X X

But that has rotationally symmetrical solutions. I guess I'm going to need to do a little more thinking to come up with one that has no solutions with any symmetry.

What's WOT?

Waste of Time. It's come up as a comment on a few of the, er, less popular puzzles. I was preemptively marking my puzzle as being a waste of time.

I suppose I could do this:
<pre>
X X . .
. . X X
. . . .
. X X .
</pre>
That's got no symmetry, but the clues are symmetrical around a vertical line

Jan, while that puzzle as a whole is asymmetrical, after you reduce it to what is actually non-unique (the bottom row has only one possible location), it is symmetrical.
Perhaps a better example would be the following:
111
1x..
2.xx
In this case there is one set of symmetrical clues and all solutions have no symmetry.

I don't think that it is possible to have both the vertical and horizontal clues be symmetrical and have no possible solution which does have symmetry, though.

Goto next topic

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