More paper puzzles!
Hi! That’s right! I spent some more time pondering on paper puzzle types, and vaguely recalled a puzzle type I had seen on puzz.link, and tested a variant of that. After some discussion the type I recalled turned out to be called
geradeweg (thanks chaotic_iak!), and my recollection had been wrong on several accounts. Happily for my petty “I wanna make my OWN thing!!” desire, this meant that I could take my mistaken recollection and use that as a new puzzle type as well. I named the variant I made based on the faulty recollection “Sentinels“, and then created a bunch of more-or-less working alterations based on that.
The basic idea of these Sentinel puzzles is that you have number clues, and the clues tell you the total amount of cells with a line segment in them (or shaded cells, in variants that use those instead) in all four cardinal directions from the clue up to either the next clue or the edge of the puzzle. In all but one of these you also need to draw a “loop”, i.e. a non-branching closed formation that may take turns but can’t have loose ends (and, as a special requirement, can’t turn in the same direction on two consecutive cells, i.e. can’t take sharp U-turns.) Also the line/shaded cells may not go over the clues.
Sentinels
Draw a line from cell to cell (i.e. from the center of a cell to the center of another cell) until you have a single closed loop that fulfills the requirements of the number clues. The clues tell you the total amount of cells with a line segment in them (or shaded cells, in variants that use those instead) in all four cardinal directions from the clue up to either the next clue or the edge of the puzzle (repeating this here just in case!)
Sentinal View
Basically a combo of Sentinels and Canal View. Otherwise the same as Sentinels except the clues only count a line of cells with line segments that connects to the clue cell. Again, the line may not go over the clues.
Celltinels
Sentinels but with shaded cells instead of a line. In order to be able to draw a “loop” of shaded cells, the rules now include that it’s forbidden to create a fully-shaded 2×2 formation or for the loop to touch itself, even diagonally (ok, that last one isn’t necessarily required but the Snake puzzle type used it and I thought it might make sense to include it here, too.)
Snakcelltinels
Oh yes, what a great name!! Anyway, same as Celltinels except with the Snake element of there being marked starting and ending points; so instead of drawing a loop, you need to draw a non-branching snake that starts & terminates on the circles shown on the puzzle. Again, no shading over the clues. Also note that the starting/ending points must be shaded as well and count towards the clues.
Welp, that was a pretty long post! Apologies. I hope some of you have fun with these. They should work & be unique.
Hi! I’m really liking your puzzles so far, they feel different to what I’m used to.
However, it seems to me that the 10,10 sentinells and the 7,7 sentinel view have two possible solutions.
I may be wrong, but I can’t seem to find the error in my logic, so I thought you’d like to know about it if they really have two solutions.
10,10 sentinels:
https://imgur.com/ieAkehg
https://imgur.com/4no95OB
7,7 sentinel view:
https://imgur.com/OkPG0GK
https://imgur.com/QH3wWWJ
I was able to solve the Sentinal View ones, but I found the other ones too hard, I feel like similarly to the symmetry game Galaxy you can’t really go step by step and must see the puzzle in whole at once and trust your instincts. But about the Sentinal View 2 (the 9,7), did you really update it ? It does seem that this https://i.imgur.com/oJ5drxX.png is the solution but it has 4 possible solutions and 2 or 3 U-turns.
Hmm, I might be looking at the wrong thing, but keep in mind that you can’t do sharp U-turns; the image you linked showcases 2 potentials for those.
In fact the tutorial can be solved if you draw the loop another way, but then there is multiple solutions, which is fine for me if it is announced, it allows different strategies and avoid an easy way to progress in some cases just because you know there is only a single solution, often happens in Light Up/Akari in corners. But here I guess it was intended to have only 1 solution.
Sorry I didn’t recheck my mails and checked comments only, thank you for the quick answer.
The tutorial for Sentinels seems wrong, in top right corner it should be a 4, I took me minutes to understand the rules because of that mistake. Also please don’t ignore my comment/mail about your previous post and show the solutions, because, no offense, but since you are clearly a beginner at making puzzles (most people with blogs about that do it since more than 10 years) it’s very likely that you make mistakes and thus the solution allows to be sure about that.