[TSL][S1T5] Justified Means
(Published on 7. June 2025, 19:00 by mormagli)
This is a revised version of my puzzle for Turn 5 of The Skunkworks League, hosted by damasosos92.
You can find a few introductory Recoil puzzles here and some other entries from the round here.
Recoil:
Starting from the diamond, draw a path that moves orthogonally through some cells without branching or intersecting itself.
Each time the path moves to a new cell, an obstacle is placed in the first available cell in the opposite direction. This cell may skip over gaps in the grid, other obstacles, or cells previously visited by the path. The path cannot move to a cell if there is no valid available cell for a corresponding obstacle.
All cells must either be used by the path or an obstacle.
You can find a few introductory Recoil puzzles here and some other entries from the round here.
Recoil:
Starting from the diamond, draw a path that moves orthogonally through some cells without branching or intersecting itself.
Each time the path moves to a new cell, an obstacle is placed in the first available cell in the opposite direction. This cell may skip over gaps in the grid, other obstacles, or cells previously visited by the path. The path cannot move to a cell if there is no valid available cell for a corresponding obstacle.
All cells must either be used by the path or an obstacle.
Solution code: left to right for row 29 (the one that includes the solitary cell in the middle of the grid),
the length of each contiguous run of path or shaded recoil cells
(empty spaces are not recorded, but they do split up runs of path or shaded cells)
Solved by Fool on Hill
Comments
on 23. July 2025, 22:40 by Fool on Hill
This is a beautiful puzzle. It is easily the hardest to come out of the challenge for the Skunkworks league (and that is saying something, given the one I set). This puzzle has an elegant logic which has to be worked out and worked through. It will take time, and it is recommended to try some easier puzzles in the genre first - but it really is a puzzle for the connoisseur of difficult puzzles and deserves more recorded solves than just mine.
