Perplexible

It’s my 18th birthday! \o/

Today’s puzzle took some wrangling. I started with the regions spelling out ’18’ and spent a day trying to develop various puzzles around them (I tried to make another Tents & Trees, for example), but I didn’t really get anything done. The next day,  frustrated,  I was looking for puzzles to solve and stumbled upon Erich Friedmann’s Gap puzzles. They only added to my frustration, really, but I realized to try and make a puzzle using gap clues, and this came out in a few hours. I think I’ve seen Gap puzzles elsewhere, but can’t remember what they were called. Something something satellite something, or something.

Rules: A hybrid of Star Battle and Gap. Two stars in each row and column such that no two stars touch even by corners, two stars in each shaded region (the 1, the 8 and the two boxes inside the 8). Additionally, the clues outside the grid tell the gap between the two stars on that row/column. The crossed out cell is blank.

I’m not happy at all having to cross out a cell, but the rest of the puzzle turned out so nice that I let it pass. That, and desperation to get at least a puzzle done in time. It’s pretty easy, but I really like it.

In other news, I’ll be ordering this book as a gift to myself. Hopefully it’ll help improve the quality of my puzzles.

Posted in Puzzle by ArDeeJ, 06/18/13 9:00 AM
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