Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

This puzzle was created for season 1, round 2 of The Skunkworks League run by damasosos92. The prompt was to create a puzzle inspired by the song "The Boy" by Tom Rosenthal. I highly encourage you to watch the animated video here before solving if you'd like the full experience.

This puzzle is dedicated to my father, who passed away shortly before this round started. I have written a short epilogue to "The Boy" as part of this puzzle, which I've included here. This does not impact the rules at all, so feel free to skip it if that doesn't interest you.

Epilogue:

Alone, I walk back along the path from where we came, though I can hardly call it a path anymore; more like a labyrinth that keeps changing its walls. Everything seems altered, as if the ground itself has changed; the earth underfoot unstable. You—the guide I had—are gone now, but your lessons still linger in the corners of this place: embrace the marks left by footsteps that came before, seek opportunity amongst the obstacles.

I knew that grief would come in waves, but I didn’t know the ocean would be this wide, or that the surf would feel so heavy. I tread on, but feel as though I am moving through fog, not knowing how far the road stretches ahead or if it will ever truly clear. It's as if I'm adrift...slowly stumbling, tripping over uneven stones.

But even so, I somehow feel you still guiding me—reminding me that it’s okay to not have the answers. The lessons you taught me come back like old whispers, reminding me that this path was never meant to be a straight line.

Rules:

1. Taj Mahal:
• Draw a square around each given black circle. All squares must have a circle in the center. The square's corners must be located in the centers of cells (solid and dotted lines indicate cell borders).
• Two squares may not intersect or overlap, but they can touch at corners.
• Squares that touch at corners are connected. All squares must form one connected group.
• A number indicates the amount of squares that share a corner with that clue's square.
• Note: Squares must be drawn with the free line tool. A visual representation of standard Taj Mahal rules can be found here.
2. Nurimaze:
• Shade some regions to form a maze. Solid lines indicate regions (ie, dotted lines only indicate cell borders for Taj Mahal rules). A region is either completely shaded or unshaded.
• Regions containing a black circle must be shaded. Regions containing white circles, white diamonds, the sea (wave icon), and the lost flower (flower icon) are unshaded.
• There can not be a vertex that is entirely surrounded by all shaded or all unshaded cells (ignoring vertices on grid edges).
• All unshaded cells form an orthogonally contiguous area, and unshaded cells cannot form loops of orthogonally connected cells. Two unshaded cells joined by only a vertex are not considered to be connected.
• There is exactly one path from the sea to the lost flower which doesn't require backtracking. White circles must be part of this path, while white diamonds must not.
3. Connection:
• If a cell contains one or more corners of Taj Mahal squares, its region must not be on the Nurimaze path. Cells containing an unconnected corner are shaded, and cells containing two or more connected corners are unshaded.
• For each region containing a black circle, the number of orthogonally adjacent unshaded regions must equal the number of other squares it's square connects to. For example, if a black circle's square is connected to two other squares, then exactly two of the four regions adjacent to that circle must be unshaded.

Penpa+: https://tinyurl.com/27qjzavt