Canal View by Grant Fikes
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the linex mode where left click+drag draws lines and right click marks X’s)
Theme: Twins
Author/Opus: This is the 364th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Grant Fikes.
Rules: Shade some empty cells black to create a single connected group. Cells with circles cannot be shaded, and the shaded cells cannot form a 2×2 square anywhere in the grid. Each numbered cell indicates the total count of shaded cells connected vertically and horizontally to that numbered cell.
Difficulty: 1 star
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 0:35, Master = 1:00, Expert = 2:00
Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.
Note: Follow this link for other shading puzzles. More Canal View puzzles are in Shading Variety Collection by Prasanna Seshadri and at this link on our site.
Fun puzzle … fun puzzle type … invented in india I think 🙂
Yes, first created by Prasanna Seshadri and appeared on 2014 US Puzzle Championship (quick summary details as on this earlier post: https://www.gmpuzzles.com/blog/2016/07/canal-view-by-prasanna-seshadri/ which is the first time the name Canal View was used instead of the original “Tapa View” or even earlier “Something” when Prasanna first submitted to me and said title to be determined later.) The addition of circles for better visual separation and allowing unused clue cells came in most recent writing of the style for the book, I think, but maybe was elsewhere after our 2016 Canal View posts.