I was originally going to stick this hitori puzzle in yesterday – it is a much superior puzzle to Friday’s – but I felt it wouldn’t be doing this puzzle justice. I want to talk about this a little bit and that seemed out of place with yesterday’s nostalgic waffle. Suffice to say, some of the logic is quite involved in this puzzle, but what really interested me whilst constructing this puzzle was the whole idea of having so-called “minimal hitori”. The thinking here is that if the numbers in the grid which at no stage feature in any meaningful deduction weren’t even printed in then it might make for a puzzle with a nicer solving flow.
Being the sadistic contrarian that I am, I’ve decided to take a different approach. Most nikoli.com hitori usually feature an “ascending solve” – that is the first deduction will usually be with 1’s, then 2’s and so on. This is true of this puzzle – however what I’ve tried to do with superfluous clues is to disguise them (albeit on a fairly superficial level) amongst what you should really be looking for. Let me reiterate again, this is a tough solve.
Instead of writing “Sorry, Thomas”, I’ll instead go with “Sorry Thomas”. Or perhaps that should simply be: “Enjoy!” :)
#056 Hitori – rated hardAll puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-10
Hmmm – well I’m glad you enjoyed this! l I thought it was certainly tougher than a lot of nikoli 12×12 Hitori I’ve seen, bearing in mind there’s a bit more global – rather than localised – thinking to be doing than usual.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly looked more obscure on paper, but perhaps that says something about my laziness in using rulers… :)
It took me about 7 minutes to complete this one in MS Paint. A little rougher than Nikoli’s roughest 12×12 Hitori, but not as rough as their roughest 17×17 Hitori, and very very elegant. Devious, but also elegant.
ReplyDeleteAbout 3:49. I liked the start (and only missed one signal square I needed) and then just went into a “try to connect as much as possible” mode which worked out. The left/right and top/bottom connections were still nicely executed, but nothing you do is going to prevent the feeling of swimming in extra numbers from coming up when I do a Hitori.
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