Star Battle by Zoltán Horváth
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Theme: Four Squares (Originally on 2014 Hungarian Puzzle Championship)
Author/Opus: This is the 5th puzzle from guest contributor Zoltán Horváth.
Rules: Standard Star Battle rules. Two stars per row, column, and region.
Answer String: For each row from top to bottom, enter the number of the first column from the left where a star appears. Enter these numbers as a single string with no separators.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:15, Master = 5:45, Expert = 11:30
Solution: PDF
Note: Follow this link for other classic Star Battles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Star Battles to get started on.
11:17 That’s my first time to beat the expert time, so that’s progress (or the published times were softer than usual).
I take back my “softer” comment. This was a good Friday-difficulty puzzle. I think on my first attempt I was a bit careless early in the solving, and just happened to get lucky. When I took more care on a second attempt it took me quite a bit longer to prove my way to the solution.
Agree on difficulty. I had two stars placed when I hit a bottleneck where no obvious deduction seems possible and one needs to select the right nonobvious deduction (or one of them) to make progress. Looks like it would be simple but it has a nice requirement for advanced technique.