Hybrid Star Battle Series (005) - Pentopia
(Published on 5. February 2023, 15:14 by BenceJoful)
Intro
For this Hybrid Star Battle Series I will be sharing a new puzzle each week combining Star Battle with another puzzle genre. This week's genre is Pentopia. I struggled at first to find the right way to combine these rulesets, though (like many puzzle-solving deductions) it seems obvious in retrospect.
Rules
Standard Pentopia and Star Battle rules apply, where stars must be shaded.
- Pentopia: Shade some pentominoes of cells so that no pentominoes touch one another, not even diagonally. No two shaded pentominoes may be the same shape, counting rotations and reflections as the same. Clued cells cannot be shaded, and contain arrows indicating all of the orthogonal directions in which a shaded cell appears closest to the clued cell. At least one shaded cell must appear in the direction of an arrow.
- Star Battle: Place stars into some shaded cells such that each row and column contains exactly 2 stars (1 star in the example). Stars may not touch one another, not even diagonally.
Links
1-star Example (Penpa+ link):
Solution code: For each star (left-to-right, top-to-bottom), give the letter of the shape. In the example, the code is PPLVUV.
Comments
on 3. March 2023, 13:20 by CHalb
I should have mentioned it before: I really enjoy this series! It's always fascinating for me, if a good author dedicates themself to the exploration of colourful variants of a certain puzzle type I like anyway. So thanks a lot :-) .
on 6. February 2023, 20:54 by BenceJoful
@szabog You're welcome, and thank you for the kind words!
I find doing a small version helps me get started in setting as well. There's never a guarantee that the example is a good puzzle, but I'm glad it's useful :)
on 6. February 2023, 19:30 by szabog
Thanks for the next episode :)
I want to add, I love that every time you make a small but solvable version, too, which is extremely helpful to get to know the rules better. And we get two puzzles for the price of one :)
on 5. February 2023, 17:46 by Jesper
Fun puzzle, smooth and very approachable.
on 5. February 2023, 15:55 by Ambrose
Very fun solve!
