Star Battle to Masyu Relay by Prasanna Seshadri
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a shape/star placement mode and linex mode where left click+drag draws lines and right click marks X’s)
Theme: Relay of Logic
Author/Opus: This is the 28th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Prasanna Seshadri.
Rules: Standard Star Battle rules (ignore the shading). Then turn every star in a gray region into a black circle and every star in a white region into a white circle, and solve again as a standard Masyu puzzle. Ignore the region boundaries when drawing the Masyu loop.
Answer String: Enter the length in cells of the horizontal loop segments from left to right in the marked rows, starting at the top. If the loop only has vertical segments in the marked row, enter 0. Separate each row’s entry with a comma.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:00, Master = 3:00, Expert = 6:00
Solution: PDF
Note: Follow this link for other classic Star Battles and this link for other classic Masyu.
02:59, including some transfer time.
I did exclaimed “WHAT IS THIS” (emphasis as original) to Prasanna, so… Yeah, certainly unexpected. Easy but a new twist of course. Nice work.
The Star Battle wasn’t too hard, and the Masyu was quite a bit of avoiding loop closings. Cute combo.
Nice combo 🙂
A really evil version of this puzzle would be to have the Star Battle unsolvable on its own, but require that the solution produce a uniquely-solvable Masyu.
I think you’re the third person I’ve seen saying this. Its true, that would be a bit more of a challenge for the solver. Maybe something to try out in the future. For a start I just wanted a clean relay in some way. Ideally I’d have gone for a RegionDivisionPuzzle-to-PuzzleWithRegions relay but I’ve posted that before on my blog so wanted to work on something original.
6:58
8:09