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Thanks, Bram and I actually got into a race for this (my first version of this puzzle unfortunately had duplicate solutions, the result of me erasing previous circles (and not all lines) on the same grid. I ended up beating him by a matter of hours; it was quite tricky to make!

For those who are at least looking for some form of update on this (as the wpc2008 web site isn't updated often), Thomas Snyder's blog (http://motris.livejournal.com) has an update with his perspective of the first couple of days. It's better than nothing at least

With me looking at the solution, I think the number is correct. Assuming I do this right, you can highlight the below text to see the 7 locations I see in the solution (I'm using white text so as not to spoil for others).

2 diagonally up-right
1 straight up
2 diagonally up-left
2 diagonally down-left
which means the one directly under the 7 should have a height of 2, otherwise the 7 would be an 8.

If you don't see the logic to get there, feel free to reply and I can explain that too.

zulio wrote:

Could be more difficult.

The reasoning to follow is this: the snake(s) has to be 1x25 or 5x5 or 25x1. After a few tries you can easily exclude the 1x25 and 25x1 options, leaving 5x5 the only possible option.

Can anyone build a more difficult puzzle on the same idea?

Of course, when you sum 11+11+3 to get 23, you get very confused very quickly when a single snake does not fit in the board.