Pentopia by Carl Worth
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Theme: Triple Trouble
Author/Opus: This is the 6th puzzle from guest contributor Carl Worth. The theme was inspired by Grant’s “Single Vision” Pentopia.
Rules: Standard Pentopia rules: Place some of the given pentominoes in the grid so that no pentominoes are in adjacent cells that share an edge or corner. Pentominoes cannot repeat in the grid; rotations and reflections of a pentomino are considered the same shape. The arrow clues indicate all the directions (up, down, left, and right) where the nearest pentominoes are located when looking from that square. (Arrow clues cannot contain pentomino shapes.) Also, see this example:
Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the shaded pentomino segments from left to right for the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry from the next with a comma. The example has the solution “21,23”.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:15, Master = 5:45, Expert = 11:30
Solution: PDF
Note: Follow this link for more Pentopia puzzles and this link for other puzzles involving Pentominoes.
Okay, this one confused the heck out me, because I treated the pentomino inventory like it was a statue park puzzle, and thought I needed to cram all 12 pentominos into the grid. Once I realized this wasn’t necessary, things fell into place a lot more readily!
Great puzzle, Carl. I really like these pentopias, and the triple arrows provide a lot of interesting steps.
I’m so pleased that you enjoyed the puzzle. Thanks for trying it out, and for sharing your thoughts about it. It’s always rewarding for puzzle authors to receive good feedback.
I agree that it should probably be made more clear that you don’t have to use all the given pentominoes. I was pretty confident with my solution since it all fell in logically but an extra line in the instructions wouldn’t hurt.
I’ve changed “place some pentominoes” to “place some of the given pentominoes”. They mean the same thing, but more words might help for the emphasis. I can’t really specify that it won’t take all 12, as eventually I might get a puzzle submission that will use all of them, although it will be much larger (15×15?).
Perhaps you should italicise the word some in that sentence?
@Carl: Nice puzzle. 🙂
– Neelix
14:39.Lovely puzzle with a satisfying solve!