Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

Shade some cells in the grid so that all unshaded cells are orthogonally connected and every shaded cells is connected to the edge through other shaded cells.

Clues indicate the number of cells with the same shading as the clue cell, including itself, that can be seen from the clue cell in its row and column. Cells with a different shading obstruct the view.

6x6 version

To be honest, i was going to make a cave sudoku variant with no given digits. People had try before, but the number of clues are not optimistic for me. I need enough clues to ease my pain to play test a non sudoku variant, which have a high chance to brute force every possibility, which is unfortunately the way i deal with these two puzzles. The problem with this method is that it is really time consuming, and every time i add stuff, it get easier. Luckily, cave is not an easy puzzle type, so i guess it works.

As for this variant, i was not going to dedicate these much effort to actually make it work. But after some asking and searching, the closest cave variant should be twilight cave.and then, another interesting things happened, it’s actually hard to find a simple cave puzzle here, it’s always with something else. That just going to make my rules writing more difficult.

Actually spoilers now. When I make a puzzle whose origin is unfamiliar to me, i look for a prototype. Not twilight cave, the shaded cell part might be enough for a puzzle. I’m not going to use a double layer rule as a prototype. So, i look for cave. For me, cave have more stress on unshaded cells. The end grid consist mostly of unshaded. The clues are sparse, which is good, a lot space for me to add clues. But when i use this rule, it seems the shaded cells take control. The connected to edge has some connection to some yin-yang skills, say top left. The reason why shaded cells take hold maybe because, just my guessing, it contains the unshaded cells rule, and more rules means more constraint, the orthogonally connected can be achieved simply by adding a circle of shaded cells surrounding the original grid. Another problem is, there’s a block of shaded cells, not two, i try, but fail, maybe because of the size of the grid, but i’m not going to go beyond 9X9, my brain can’t count that many cells, even 9X9 gives me way too much trouble

Another conclusion is that there’s definitely a prototype with this number coloring puzzle. I found a lot of similar tricks in non-cave puzzles. It’s a problem for future me, i’m just testing my limit. I only know what a normal cave looks like days ago. And i’m surprised it’s not easy. Hand made puzzles usually tend to be easier than software assist ones(i wish i can, save me the pain to test the number of solution)the difficulty might be from the puzzle idea itself, future me concern this, me, i’m going to take a rest in sudoku variant.