Yajilin by Mystery Author
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: 2014
Author/Opus: This is the 2nd puzzle from our new contributing puzzlemaster who will be identified later this week. [ETA: The author has been revealed as Prasanna Seshadri.]
Rules: Standard Yajilin rules.
Answer String: Enter the length in cells of the horizontal loop segments from left to right in the marked rows, starting at the top. If the loop only has vertical segments in the marked row, enter 0. Separate each row’s entry with a comma.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 1:45, Master = 3:00, Expert = 6:00
Solution: PDF
Note: Follow this link for other classic Yajilin. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Yajilin to get started on.
Nice how 1/4 of the grid still needs to be resolved after all clues are used.
Did anybody else get the top right resolved using some “even number of ends” logic? I feel like that was the intended step, but it felt like I had to intuit a bit a few times in this puzzle. It still feels a bit weird using it in a Yajilin, but that might just be me.
As to the identity of the author: I’m going on the assumption that this week will have the mystery author present a couple of their most well-known puzzle types, if the previous introduction weeks are anything to go by. Not too many people I know of make Nanro puzzles; the only puzzle blogger that comes to mind is Prasanna Sedshari. He has made some Yajilin as well, so it is a possibility.
Of course, the inventor of Nanro, Yuki Kawabe, has made a couple as well, most notably on the 2013 LMI Puzzle Marathon. They have also constructed puzzles for Nikoli in the past, so Yajilin wouldn’t be too much of a stretch as a type they’ve done.
IT could even be someone I haven’t considered. Honestly, there’s a lot of good names to pull on from the pool of puzzlemakers for a site like this, so it’s a little tricky to decide who it might be. Guess we’ll wait and see.
I think if you ask what happens if the square to the right of the downward pointing 2 is black and combine that with even/odd logic (which helps resolve the contradiction more quickly) then that might be the quickest way to a solution. It’s only a tiny bit of intuition.
I definitely used end counting at different points for this puzzle (including the bottom rows to shade R7C10, and then in the upper-right as there is a loose end, two open passages out, but only one shading of the 1 arrow clues that uses just one of those two open passages. It is actually the first Tuesday puzzle I tagged as Wednesday in difficulty because, while it fits here in this week, it uses a fair number of uncommon techniques for Yajilin.
Agreed about the uncommon techniques needed. I solved the spots you mentioned in a similar fashion. I sometimes wonder, especially with harder puzzles, whether or not I’ve found the intended logic for a puzzle, especially when the intended logic is unusual or novel. If your solving path matches what I did pretty well, I can be confident that it was intentional.
I want to guess Prasanna, just because it felt a little like the Indian round of the WPC.
One thing that I noticed (besides the end-counting and so forth mentioned above): This is a puzzle that clearly embraces the updated form of Yajilin for the website. If you had to fill in numbers for the blank four “clue squares”, you couldn’t make another set of 2014. So the theme of this puzzle is only pretty without the usual traditional junk clues.
I was a little late with this one, but yajilin has always been a good type for theming in recent years. For a puzzle with no blanks, scroll to the bottom of my recent ramblings.