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I solved it pretty fast as well, but I 'cheated' a bit because I went with a hunch that panned out. Going with straight lines allows for the most landmass without collisions, and this puzzle had a lot that.

Pretty impressive to make one of these with so little clues, and have a nice symmetry to them as well with the multiple 9-6 crosses.

Nice!

These puzzles are very fun to solve when hand-designed (and well-designed!) as opposed to the computer-generated ones found in other places.

Also: 5 puzzles today, just when I'm at home with the flue!

Number: Puzzle #2164
Genre: Calcudoku
Author: Bram
Appeared at: October 21, 2010

Another nice one! I really enjoy this type of puzzle.

I started around the edges and managed to do it without trial and error. (Or even uniqueness help this time

)

I liked the alternating plus/minus clues. I thought it was pretty tough as well.

I had a lot of trouble with it. I made a mistake somewhere, started over and made the same mistake again somehow because I ended up stuck in the same conflicted position.

Tried it again hours later, and got it, finally, but I can't figure out where I went wrong before. I hate when that happens.

This one was just beautiful!

The layout, the spread of the numbers, the way it all falls together once you find your way in. Excellent!

Number: Puzzle #2091
Genre: Sum Thing
Author: Eranus
Appeared at: October 13, 2010

Nice one.

I thought it was pretty tough though. Maybe I missed a clue or a leap of logic somewhere, but I couldn't solve it without looking at it after some point, and getting a feel for the possible routes the shape could take, and trying which one worked. Those different colored pencils sure come in handy sometimes.

Number: Puzzle #2185
Genre: Tapa
Author: Bram
Appeared at: October 11, 2010

Whoops, I can't believe I forgot to mention that part, because it does happen all the time, numbers not seeing enough. When that happens, there are some situations that occur regularly and have obvious ways to deal with them, and some less obvious ones that require a bit of logical creativity. The more hexes you've already managed to paint blue, the less options you have, and the easier it becomes obviously.

For example, for hexes close to one or more edges of the puzzle you can often figure out you need to clear a path of at least a certain number of hexes into one direction because all other directions combined can never add up to more than a certain number of visible hexes. The cascading effect caused by the maximum height difference of 1 often produces a lot of new clues, including hexes that suddenly see too much because something in their line of sight got reduced in level.

There are really too many possible situations and ways to deal with them to get into unless I'd want to produce a complete guide. The mechanism of only ever having to reduce heights gives many of these puzzles a nicely flowing solving process.

One last point: there is one puzzle (I can't remember which one) that defeats practically all of the typical situations my method runs into. That one had me thinking the way I was doing it had been anticipated.

By the way, I thought I'd let you know the method I thought up to solve them. I wonder if it's anything like how you 'intend' them to be solved, because it doesn't really match the way the example puzzle's logic comes across.

I don't think these should be considered spoilers but I'd rather err on the side of caution, so...

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I use 2 colors: blue for hexes with confirmed heights, red for hexes with as of yet uncertain heights.

I start out by painting every hex with the greatest height it could possibly have: a blue shoreline (always a certainty) bordered on the inside by a red ring one level above shore level, iteratively another level higher within that, until the whole island is basically one big (usually symmetrical) 'mountain'.

Then I start cutting the island down to size. Red hexes at higher altitudes often 'see too much' of the island, and because all hexes are at their highest possible level, that can only be fixed by reducing their altitude. A change like that cascades into surrounding hexes because every hex must remain within one level of height difference with its neighbors.

Whenever a situation arises where it becomes clear (through all kinds of logical considerations that are too numerous to go into here) that a hex cannot have a lower altitude than I currently have it at, I change its color to blue. The two most obvious reasons to paint them blue is for hexes to arrive at shore level or for hexes to be essential in blocking line of sight from hexes that are already blue.

Eventually the entire puzzle will be blue.

It works a bit like the notion that a sculpture is already there within a block of marble, you just have to chop away the right parts to release it.
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It's a pretty reliable method, though perhaps overcomplicated for easier puzzles. It helped me solve every last one on this site.

I managed to do it without any guesswork, but it took me quite a while longer than any of the other ones on this site so far. Probably because I never did one without given operators before.

I have to say I liked this more than the traditionals with operators, it adds some depth to the challenge. So I'll chime in with Eranus: nice puzzle!

This is nice!

I used to use the numbers you can put in Heterocut cells to indicate that cells with identical numbers belong to the same polyomino. This is much more intuitive, and doesn't require 'renumbering' after I find that two regions I assigned different numbers to actually belong to the same shape.

I sometimes use it to indicate there's a number there when I know there has to be a number, but I'm not yet sure which specific one it is. Don't know if that's the intended use.

Number: Puzzle #2011
Genre: Tapa
Author: anurag.sahay
Appeared at: August 13, 2010
Very nice puzzle. All the question marks make it look intimidating, but it solves very smoothly.