Tapa (Islands) by Murat Can Tonta
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the composite Yajilin mode where left click marks cells, right click marks dots in cells or X’s on edges, left click+drag draws lines.)
Theme: Illusion of Choice
Author/Opus: This is the 169th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Murat Can Tonta.
Rules: Standard Tapa rules. Also, similar to Nurikabe, each clue cell is part of an island of horizontally and vertically connected white cells. Islands are allowed to touch diagonally. Islands may contain at most one clue cell, and the area of the island must be one of the numbers in the clue (as an example, if a clue is 15, then the island containing that clue must be either 1 cell or 5 cells large).
See also this example:
Difficulty: 2.5 stars
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 2:00, Master = 5:30, Expert = 11:00
Solution: PDF
Note: Follow this link for classic Tapa and this link for Tapa variations. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Tapa puzzles to get started on. More Tapa puzzles can be found in The Art of Puzzles, in Tapa and Variations, and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles, all by Serkan Yürekli.
That felt trickier than 2.5 stars to me! 🙂
Thank you Murat Can Tonta!
Excellent puzzle!
@str: If you look at the Time Standards, you will see that the master time is almost triple the grandmaster time. That may be because experience in this genre helps the solve greatly; configurations like 113 and 23 (where the shaded groups must touch at a corner) would occur automatically to an experienced solver, whereas they would take some time to derive for less experienced solvers. At least that was my experience; I’ve done many of these puzzles before so solved it comfortably in 1:28.
That is true. Once I figured the constraints around the different clues things cleared up nicely. If I where to do another one of the same variation I would have some ”sharper tools” available!
Your skyscrapers variant seems to be a beast of a higher magnitude. Found a few interesting constraints, but it looks like I will have to hope for a video on sunday for that one. 🙂
Great puzzle! And very fitting title 🙂
I’m glad you all enjoyed it! And yes, I’m usually not very good at coming up with titles but I’m happy with this one 🙂