This is the first in a series of Yajilin puzzles that I've been developing! :>
Thank you so much everyone who helped out with testing, especially filuta and chameleon for your constructive feedback!
• Shade some white cells such that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent, and draw a loop that travels orthogonally through all unshaded white cells without intersecting itself or crossing bold borders.
• Clues marked with arrows give the sum of all shaded cells in the given direction, or directions combined, where a cell's value is 1 if it is inside the loop and -1 if it is outside the loop.
• Gears visited by the loop must alternate inside and outside (or vice versa). A gear is considered visited when the loop travels from a cell not touching that gear to a cell touching that gear and no other gears, either directly or through a cell touching multiple gears.
Here is an example of how the rules work:
Clockwork Yajilin series:
• Orientation ◄
• Parallel Motion
• Parity Point
• Challenger
• Blackout Cipher
Solution code: using + and - for inside and outside shaded cells, T for a turn and S for a straight segment: row 5 followed by column 6 (ignore given grey cells)
on 27. May 2024, 04:58 by wisty
clarified solution code
on 27. May 2024, 02:47 by marsh
Great puzzle, took me longer than anticipated. I recommend to update the solution code explanation to "using + and - for inside and outside shaded cells,..."
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thanks for the suggestion! updated the solution code. glad you enjoyed the puzzle!
on 11. April 2024, 01:42 by Wessel Strijkstra
What a joy to discover this series, great idea and very cute starting puzzle :D Looking forward to the rest!
on 19. March 2024, 22:26 by wisty
added links to full series
on 1. March 2024, 16:51 by szabog
Thank you, interesting idea.
on 21. February 2024, 06:44 by ONeill
cool :)
on 18. February 2024, 21:23 by Piatato
Lovely!
on 17. February 2024, 15:14 by Jesper
Very nice, looking forward to more puzzles
on 17. February 2024, 14:26 by wisty
reworded rule regarding touching gears. thank you KNT for raising the error to my attention, sorry it made it past the testing phase
on 14. February 2024, 17:15 by CHalb
A Yajilin series is a very good idea :).
on 14. February 2024, 14:29 by dumediat
I love this rule set!! Such a fantastic creation, and the visuals are absolutely top notch. Thank you so much for sharing, I can't wait to see more of these! :D
on 14. February 2024, 13:24 by Christounet
Very nice introduction puzzle ! Figuring out the gear rule was not obvious for me but it was good fun after that. Also, very nice visual with the mechanical design. Reminded me of a comics called "Cités obscures". Thanks :)
on 14. February 2024, 11:49 by zzw
Super cool puzzle to start the series off! The rules all work very nicely together.
on 14. February 2024, 01:58 by Myxo
Wonderful puzzle, thank you :) Looking forward to trying the others!