Silk Road (Aquarium Country Road Fillomino)
(Published on 7. February 2023, 09:00 by Agent)
Seeing the increasing popularity of Aquarium puzzles on the portal lately, I wanted to give it a try. I initially thought of combining Aquarium and Country Road, then Fillomino blended in really well - because the interactions of Country Road and Aquarium are so strong, only very little information about the regions was needed. It's a fairly challenging puzzle, most likely 5 stars if these puzzle genres are new for you, but I think it could be as low as 3 stars if you understand them really well. Have fun solving!
Rules
Fillomino:
- Divide the grid into orthogonally connected regions such that no two regions of the same size share an edge, and enter a number into each cell equal to the size of its region.
- In each region, cells in a given row are either all water or all air, and air cells are never below water cells in the same region.
- Clues outside the grid indicate the number of water cells in the respective row or column.
- Draw a single non-intersecting closed loop that travels orthogonally through the centers of cells.
- The loop must visit all water cells in the grid, but cannot visit any air cells.
- If two cells are separated by a region border, at least one of the cells must be water.
- The loop must visit each region exactly once, i.e. each region must contain one or more water cells, and the loop must traverse all water cells in the region sequentially.
Main Puzzle: Silk Road (10x10)
Solution code: Row 5 (from left to right) then column 5 (from top to bottom)
Comments
on 10. March 2023, 18:20 by Oripy
Loved this puzzle, like always with Agent: Smooth, hard and beautifully clever!
-- Thanks Oripy for the kind comment! Indeed those are some qualities that I aim to achieve in most of my puzzles :)
on 10. March 2023, 17:05 by Christounet
Wow ! Beautifully minimalist ! And extremely satisfying to solve with all the country road connectivity logic here. The example puzzle was nice too, and useful to understand some basic principle. At some pointw I forgot about the region border rule and got a little stuck until I re-read the rules and it all became clear :) Thanks !
-- Thanks Christounet, I'm glad you enjoyed the minimalism and interactions of rules!
on 8. February 2023, 19:04 by SudokuExplorer
Splendid combo! Fairly minimalistic with plenty of interesting moments throughout.
-- Thanks SudokuExplorer!
on 8. February 2023, 07:52 by Jesper
Great puzzle that combines the genres beautifully! I did feel that my prior experience with Country Road Fillomino was quite helpful here :)
-- Thanks Jesper! It helped a lot to come up with the idea as well :)
on 8. February 2023, 07:22 by RJBlarmo
Fantastic ending to an already extremely clever puzzle!
-- Thanks RJBlarmo!
on 8. February 2023, 00:07 by Phistomefel
Wow, what a puzzle! I am very glad I tried the example first to learn a few basic implications. During the solve I constantly wondered how on earth there was enough information (especially near the end), but there always was a cleverly placed clue that helped. Thank you so much for creating this great puzzle, Agent!
-- Thanks Phistomefel! These wonderful comments from great setters such as yourself really motivate me to keep making puzzles :)
on 7. February 2023, 20:36 by ONeill
A great variety of logic, truly incredible!
-- Thanks ONeill!
on 7. February 2023, 19:43 by KNT
That end is really something special, thanks for this one Agent
-- Thanks KNT!
on 7. February 2023, 17:17 by MagnusJosefsson
Very nice puzzle with some cool quite unusual logic. Great finish!
-- Thanks Magnus!
