North Pole (Icebarn/Magnets)
(Published on 31. December 2025, 17:26 by Nell Gwyn)
- Icebarn:
- Draw a single path between the two yellow cells protruding outside the grid. The path only moves orthogonally.
- On blue cells, the path cannot turn, but may cross itself. On non-blue cells, the path may turn, but cannot cross itself.
- Each orthogonally-connected group of blue cells (or "Ice barn") must be visited at least once.
- Magnets:
- All non-Icebarn cells (including the start and endpoint) are divided into dominoes. Whenever the path visits both cells in the same domino consecutively (i.e. whenever the path crosses the middle line of a domino), that domino becomes Magnetized, becoming a Magnet.
- A magnet has exactly one positive (+) and one negative (-) pole. Two poles of the same type (two +'s or two -'s) cannot be orthogonally adjacent.
- Clues outside the grid show the number of + and - poles in the indicated row or column (including the start and endpoint, in their respective row and column).
- The path always travels in the same direction along each magnet (in other words, if the path starts on a negative pole, then with every Magnet it visits, it must touch the negative pole before the positive pole).
Solution code: For each column (that contains more than one cell) from left to right, give the number of cells in that column that are not visited by the path (in the example puzzle, this would be 3211012).
Solved by mellowrobinson, Mark Sweep, 85392, puzzler05, KNT, Christounet, Jesper, Mr_tn
Comments
on 4. January 2026, 22:56 by Christounet
Excellent! Enjoyed it a lot! Thanks :)
on 3. January 2026, 21:43 by KNT
cool (no pun intended) and approachable!
on 1. January 2026, 12:44 by Mark Sweep
Very original solving experience!
on 31. December 2025, 19:46 by mellowrobinson
very cool!
