Disclaimer
This puzzle is heavily inspired by the great 'Hybrid Star Battle Series' by the amazing BenceJoful and by the 'Meidjuluk' ruleset of glum_hippo.
Rules
Meidjuluk:
Divide the grid into 16 regions, one each of the sizes 3 to 18. Black cells are to be ignored and are not part of any region.
A region may not contain repeated numbers, and it may only contain factors of its size (e.g. a region of size 6 may contain any combination of 1,2,3, and 6, including none of them).
Star Battle:
Place stars in some cells such that each row, column and area contains exactly two stars. Stars may not touch each other, even diagonally.
Solve in Penpa+
For the solution checker to work you must also draw the edges on black cells.
Solution code: For the first star in each row:
The last digit of the size of the region, that contains that star.
So: size 8 -> digit 8; size 17 -> digit 7.
on 22. September 2024, 17:16 by Snookerfan
Beautiful and brutal! Thank you
on 10. March 2024, 08:51 by Tacosian
Very cool. Thanks!
on 1. September 2023, 16:27 by Lizzy01
Very nice! Not super hard in my opinion, at least I didn't have to restart after making silly mistakes like I'm gonna have to do for the third time if I want to finish glumhippo's Meidjuluk II.... ;)
on 29. June 2023, 03:19 by wand
wow that was tough, but a great combination of rules. very tricky meidjuluk reasoning toward the beginning!
on 20. June 2023, 21:26 by PrimeWeasel
I started the puzzle before you took it down and sort of decided that it must have been broken, because I got a bit stuck after a while with the Meidjuluk. Then I noticed it came back up, and nothing had changed, so I started it up again and realized what I had to do. I really enjoyed it, but future solvers, be careful with the Meidjuluk! Thanks for setting!
on 20. June 2023, 13:33 by Grausbert
Fixed spelling and changed solution code.
on 19. June 2023, 15:47 by pms_headache
Very confused. If a size 6 region can only include 1, 2, 3, and 6, how can it have no repeats? It says it contains any combination including *none* of them?!
You don't have to write any numbers in the cells, so there will always be some empty cells in each region. Hope that clears things up. This puzzle might be easier if you are allready familiar with the concept of the Meidjuluk puzzle. ~Grausbert