Loop with a Coral Infestation
(Published on 20. August 2023, 20:00 by KNT)
I wanted to set a normal Summation Slitherlink puzzle, but it seems the arrival of a giant coral has made this a huge mess. The coral is at least as you have seen before: totally connected, contains no 2x2 area, has no loops, and doesn't touch itself anywhere - even diagonally.
Standard Summation Slitherlink rules also apply. A non-intersecting loop is to be drawn along the edges of some cells in the grid, and clues outside the grid indicate the total number of edges used by each group of connected cells inside the loop in the row or column.
When the coral appeared, I thankfully already finished constructing the slitherlink, so it was unable to get inside the loop anywhere. However, this made the outside clues a bit more complicated as lists of clues now also include the coral hints as well. Coral hints, to be clear, just indicate the length of a segment of coral in that row or column. At least where clues are given, they are complete, and everything is written in order of appearance... none of that 'sorted in increasing order' nonsense. A question mark may be any value.
This should be enough to draw the loop and identify the coral.
Below we can find an example, which can be attempted here.
Solution code: The marked row followed by the marked column. C for coral, S for inside the loop, and X otherwise.
Comments
on 27. January 2024, 17:41 by Agent
Wonderful puzzle! A delightful variety of logic.
on 15. November 2023, 21:53 by Christounet
Superb ! Satisfying opening and some very challenging moments along the way. I agree with polar that Calavera's puzzle is a good way of getting the main ideas behind the summation slitherlink rule. I should solve more coral puzzles too ! Thanks :)
on 24. August 2023, 13:57 by AnnaTh
Great variant! The end was very challenging.
on 22. August 2023, 14:44 by MagnusJosefsson
Great puzzle! Very consistent level of difficulty. Took me a while, but I'm probably a bit rusty :)
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Good to see you back :)
on 21. August 2023, 23:25 by ibag
Really wonderful - and not too hard! Thank you, I had a lot of fun!
on 21. August 2023, 13:29 by polar
Super smooth execution of a lovely ruleset ;) Thanks
I very much recommend this puzzle (and a couple more by Uhu) for anyone that enjoyed the summation slitherlink part: https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Raetsel/zeigen.php?id=00006E
on 21. August 2023, 09:03 by Jesper
Great puzzle, thanks!
on 20. August 2023, 22:59 by KNT
Updated example image.
on 20. August 2023, 20:23 by wooferzfg
Tons of fun! This felt like a prequel to the Siamese Coral, and I learned a lot about Summation Slitherlink. Thanks!
