This is a Slitherlink puzzle, with a twist. 20 of the clues in this puzzle have been taken out of the grid as a set of 10 dominoes (listed below the image). The original positions of these clues are marked as shaded squares. Find out where each domino goes and solve the resulting Slitherlink puzzle. Each type of domino is used exactly once. The exact positions of each domino may not be uniquely determined, but the clue number in each space will be.
Puzzle 263
Domino list: 00, 01, 02, 03, 11, 12, 13, 22, 23, 33
Slitherlink is amazing. It’s so easy to come up with all kinds of wacky variations that work. I don’t think any other type is as accommodating.
Melon's Puzzles 
October 21, 2010 at 2:31 pm |
Hard, but fair. I loved this.
October 21, 2010 at 3:41 pm |
Still chipping away at it, but awesome puzzle so far!
October 21, 2010 at 6:02 pm |
I haven’t started to solve this yet, but I wanted to say one thing.
You should create your own puzzle test a la Thomas Snyder’s 20/10 Decathlon. If you made such a thing, it would not fail to kick ass.
October 21, 2010 at 6:05 pm |
I beat you to that idea. Though serious work will have to wait until after I’m back from Poland. Not certain it will happen, but we’ll see.
October 21, 2010 at 6:44 pm
If you wanted to do your test with the folks over at LMI (or Grant, if you wanted to as well) I’m sure they’d be happy to have you. Definitely send them an e-mail or a message on the forums there.
October 21, 2010 at 7:33 pm |
Oh jeez. I’m usually terrible at Melon’s puzzles (this one still took a lot of effort), and I can’t imagine what a whole competition’s worth of puzzles would do to my self-esteem.
October 21, 2010 at 10:22 pm |
It started off fairly, well, not easy but *manageable* but when all I had left were the domino portions, things got difficult real fast. I was sure there were just too many possibilities to have a unique solution, but sure enough, I was proven wrong, and once I found the domino breakthrough, it was a clear path to the end. Nice, nice job.
I would like to see one of these puzzles where there is more back-and-forth between the Slitherlink and Domino aspects instead of saving all the domino fun for the end.
October 21, 2010 at 10:29 pm |
Based on a solution sent to me, it seems like more progress on the Slitherlink portions was possible without having any dominoes than I realized before, so I think this perceived pushing of the domino stuff to the end is my failure to see and eliminate a sequence break.
Still, even in my intended path a substantial amount of the given clues are resolved before any domino logic starts. This is because I didn’t see anyway to get the dominoes started without process of elimination logic, and such a step requires a lot of set up.
As it is now, this puzzle was one of the hardest to construct of all of them that I’ve posted, with a ton of restarting and waffling on the configuration of shaded squares.
October 22, 2010 at 2:50 pm |
Great friggin puzzle. Had a great time solving it. It played out just fine in my book because if the dominos fall too early then the remaining dominoes will be obvious and drive the slitherlink too strongly. Loved it. Thanks.
As Ms. Braun said to Mr. Hitler in August 1939, “Good luck with that Poland thing.”
April 3, 2015 at 1:13 am |
[…] Slitherlink with 20 clues taken out as dominoes and their original positions shaded. For more lucid rules please visit MellowMelon’s puzzle 263. […]