Three-Point Snake by Ashish Kumar
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools using a composite mode where left click inside cell shades square, left click + drag draws line segment, right click inside cell adds dot, and right click on cell edge adds an x.)
Theme: Logical
Author/Opus: This is the 1st puzzle from guest contributor Ashish Kumar.
Rules: Locate a snake of unknown length in the grid, whose head, tail, and exact center are given. The snake does not touch itself, even diagonally. Numbers outside the grid indicate the number of snake cells in that row/column.
See also this example:
Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the snake segments from left to right for the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry with a comma. This example has the key “211,31”.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:00, Master = 9:30, Expert = 19:00
Solution: PDF
I’ve always been bad at snake puzzles but the last couple weeks have forced me to get better. This one was the sort of solve where I go from “I have no idea how to even start this” to a slow but steady flow of ahas, which I always particularly enjoy.
Snake variants are one of my worst puzzle types. I can never figure out if they’re supposed to be primarily deductive, like most object placement puzzles, or more intuitive like a Numberlink
As far as I can tell, the answer to “deductive or intuitive” is basically just “yes”. I tend to make enough logical deductions to get some basic constraints and a vague idea of how it has to go, then hack together an approximate solutions, then tweak. At least for harder puzzles — the easy ones you can just sort of logically follow your nose with a little bit of “make it look like a snake solution” intuition.
In the case of this puzzle, the rough structure can be figured out pretty logically, but I had to tweak to get the balance of the halves down.