Cave Battle (15x15)
(Published on 20. March 2023, 16:00 by Jesper)
Rules
Place 2 stars in every row, column and region, so that no stars touch, not even diagonally.
Shade some remaining cells to leave behind a single connected group - the cave - with no enclosed shaded cells. In other words, all shaded cells must be connected by other shaded cells to an edge of the grid.
Stars are not part of the cave, but must be orthogonally adjacent to it. Cave cells cannot connect to each other through a star.
Clued cells cannot be shaded and are not stars. The number indicates how many unshaded cells (including stars) can be seen horizontally and vertically from the clue cell, given that shaded cells obstruct the view. The clue cell itself is included in the count.
Example: Cave Battle (10x10)
The puzzle follows:
Penpa+: Cave Battle (15x15)
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Solution code: For each row, from top to bottom, the number of shaded cells between the two stars.
Comments
on 19. February 2024, 15:34 by StephenR
Wow, another epic puzzle from Jesper and another epic solve for me. I found this very difficult at times, at other times it flowed much more smoothly.
on 15. January 2024, 05:05 by Tacosian
Extremely fun puzzle! Thank you.
on 8. May 2023, 22:41 by Myxo
Very nice!
on 28. April 2023, 11:42 by marcmees
very nice. thanks.
on 24. March 2023, 18:15 by Christounet
My very first star battle :)
Took me some thinking to understand the logic behind the star battle, but is was all worth it ! Another great hybrid ! Thanks !
on 24. March 2023, 16:53 by ONeill
Not usually a huge fan of star battle, but this puzzle is awesome! Thank you :)
on 23. March 2023, 20:15 by abed hawila
Fabulous puzzle!
on 21. March 2023, 22:33 by Piatato
Very cool puzzle, the rulesets interact in such a nice way! For me personally it was quite hard, and I already had quite a battle with the example puzzle last night. I think that really helped me today, though, and I enjoyed the puzzle a lot!
on 21. March 2023, 18:39 by Mark Sweep
That was just lovely! Quite approachable as well.
on 21. March 2023, 13:19 by Agent
Very cool puzzle! The stars make you really think about cave cells connectivity.
on 21. March 2023, 09:38 by kjholt
Confused about the rules when looking at the example puzzle: isn't the star at r7c2 supposed to be adjacent to a cave cell (or the wall)? If not, can you clarify that rule for me?
EDIT @kjholt: Thanks for solving. The green cells are the cave cells. A star must be adjacent to a green cell, but may or may not be adjacent to a wall cell (i.e. a shaded cell).
on 21. March 2023, 02:23 by RJBlarmo
Very interesting connectivity based deductions, great puzzle!
on 20. March 2023, 21:51 by polar
Awesome hybrid, thanks!
on 20. March 2023, 20:42 by Niverio
Very fun ruleset to explore!
on 20. March 2023, 18:55 by KNT
A wonderful puzzle! I greatly enjoyed testing this- nothing too hard, but consistently engaging with a variety of logic from both rulesets until the very end.
