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Number: Puzzle #1727
Genre: Neighbours
Author: Maarten
Appeared at: August 17, 2010

Cool design! The layout with the solid lines through the middle help make this one less intimidating and more fun to solve (than some other 4*s).

Number: Puzzle #1719
Genre: Kakuro
Author: Bram
Appeared at: August 5, 2010

Nice one! The solution develops naturally in an interesting way without being too easy.

achan1058 wrote:

It would be interesting, if someone designs a puzzle that uses unique solution as the main key for solving it. Can it be done, I wonder?

I realize these posts were from two years ago, but I've been thinking about this a bit recently.

Generally I dislike assuming uniqueness as a clue, but I'll use it if it comes up. I consider it to be just a weakness in the puzzle, especially if such opportunities arise frequently. It seems to me that in some genres the situation arises rarely and barely helps when it does (Nikoli Fillomino puzzles come to mind), but in others, it's all over the place.

There is a genre on this site now (it wasn't on the site two years ago) that is extremely vulnerable to using uniqueness as a clue for solving. Every puzzle in the genre becomes easier to solve and some even become trivial (unfortunately). Tweaking the rules a little bit could solve that weakness, but it would probably create other issues. If you've done enough puzzles from the genre, you probably know which one I'm referring to, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone.

Yeah, that was it. Thanks! It was just a bit hard to see those lines, so I just put the numbers in. I figured I wasn't solving the puzzle after all, but it makes sense now.

Hello. I'm trying to create a Fences puzzle in the studio, and I can draw the puzzle fine, but when it gets to the point where it asks me to solve it, I can't do anything, other than click the Update button or continue (i.e. I can't draw the solution!). It looks like I get the black pen and all the colored pens in the puzzle design stage, and then no pens in the solving stage, if that makes it any more clear. By the way, I've tried both Firefox and IE. Any ideas?