Snake by Thomas Snyder
This is a free “warm-up” puzzle; Season 4 subscribers will see today’s main puzzle in the same style posted at 9:05 AM PT.
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools with a composite mode where left click inside cell marks as O or X, left click + drag draws line segment; hit tab to also access a shading mode that can be used for answer entry.)
Theme: Arithmetic Series
Author/Opus: This is the 502nd puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.
Rules: Locate a snake (a 1-cell wide path) of unknown length in the grid, whose head and tail are given. The snake does not touch itself, even diagonally. Numbers outside the grid indicate the number of snake cells in that row/column.
Difficulty: 1 star
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 0:45, Master = 1:00, Expert = 2:00
Solution: PDF and solving animation.
Note: Follow this link for other Snake puzzles. More Snake puzzles and variations can be found in Snake and Variations by Serkan Yürekli.
Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our Week 2 Discussion post on the GMPuzzles Discord.