Tuesday, June 25, 2024

#20: CtC Secret Santa 2024: CHR (Part 1)

My Santee for this year's installment of CtC Discord Secret Santa happened to be Rook, who I knew as a very good fellow pencil puzzle setter, as well as someone whose tastes aligned very well with my own. This lucky assignment gave me the inspiration to put my genre-bending hat on and go on a little mission. Let me just say that none of the three alotted weeks went to waste while preparing this gift.☺This was my first "real puzzle project", and the proudest one so far.

I'm going to post the resulting nine puzzles (alliterating CHRISTMAS) in three installments of three. The difficulty should be more or less consistent across the board, with some intended outliers on the harder side.

Huge thanks to Stef Liew and Prasanna Seshardi for immense help with testing and feedback!

Circles & Candy Canes

Rules

Shade some cells in the grid. Black circles must be shaded and white circles must not be shaded.
Shaded cells can not form a 2x2 square.
All shaded cells must be orthogonally connected.
Each unshaded region must be a "candy cane": a one-cell-wide path that makes exactly two turns in the same direction. 
The first and last segment of a candy cane must not touch and must have different lengths.

Example


Main puzzle

Difficulty: [★★★⯪☆]


Heyarrowake

Rules

Standard Heyawake+Guide Arrow rules:
  • Shade some cells in the grid. Shaded cells may not be orthogonally adjacent.
  • Unshaded cells must form an orthogonally connected region without loops (including 2x2 squares).
  • Cells with a star or an arrow may not be shaded, and arrows indicate the only direction to reach a star without backtracking or visiting a shaded cell.
  • Number clues indicate the number of shaded cells in their regions.
  • A vertical/horizontal run of consecutive unshaded cells may not cross two or more region borders.

Example

Main puzzle

Difficulty: [★★★☆☆]


Ring Ring Ring

Rules

Standard Ring Ring rules:
  • Draw lines through orthogonally adjacent cells to form several rectangular loops. Each cell must be covered by at least one loop.
  • Loops may cross, but must travel straight through each intersection, and may not otherwise overlap or share corners.
Additionally, loops must form a connected network, and each loop must intersect exactly two other loops.

Example

Main puzzle

Difficulty: [★★★☆☆]

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#22: CtC Secret Santa 2024: MAS (part 3)

 The final three puzzles, relatively on the easier side.