UPDATE: I suppose I should add fair warning. I tested this puzzle after 5 pints of Guinness last night, and I was very pleased with the logic that I thought made this solve uniquely. I'm not so confident that this has a unique solution now, but I have no time to re solve it at this moment in time as apparently I'm wanted on television. Given the issues I had with uniqueness making the bloody thing I'll not be surprised if someone finds a second solution here...
Rules: (as taken from the WPC instructions)
Place some tiles (of size 1x2 squares) in the grid, with numbers 1 and 2 each. Tiles can be rotated but they cannot touch each other, not even diagonally. Numbers outside the grid indicate the sum of all the numbers in the corresponding row/column.
Enjoy!
#214 2-1 Tiles – rated hardAll puzzles © Tom Collyer 2009-12.
I believe it's unique. Nice work. Had some nice packing deductions along with the usual radar/clouds quirk of looking at row clues and column clues separately.
ReplyDeleteOk - that's a relief. I suppose I was aware enough on Friday to consider the possibility that I'd skipped over something with my logic. I've actually had really quick solves under the influence before, but looking back on those occasions it's usually because I got lucky with an unjistified "deduction" which took a hard puzzle into an easier one. Alas as a construction I can't be happy with a solution, I need the solution.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there's much more to be done with this type, although I think it's certainly more suited to grids of odd dimensions (assuming you don't artificially manufacture them by having 0 rows/columns - as with the WPC puzzle). I think you might be able to have some fun with a pentominoes variation along a similar theme. And I suppose it isn't so unrelated from a sum battleships type I'm sure I've seen somewhere before...
Nice puzzle, on the hard side as you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteWould have been handy last month ;)
Before the WPC I'd thought through this puzzle type, and made a practise one and written logic down (I was 20000 feet over Uzbekistan at the time and the movies weren't interesting). So I was on the confident side that this one was in the bag.
After a messy Round 1, I did this early in Round 2 to get myself going again. But I fell for the puzzle's tricks, and kept changing pens until I was hacking it with my thickest darkest marker. It wasn't even supposed to be that hard. So it was during this puzzle that I decided to make Croatia my first and last WPC. (although I enjoyed Day 2 better, so never say never!)