Broken Sign Blog
#013: Aqre (Arbitrary Regions)
28 May 2022I originally made this mostly as a joke, but it turns out that offsetting the clued regions from the grid that is being shaded actually leads to quite a lot of interesting logic. So consider this just an introductory example puzzle.
Rules: Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Regions with numbers must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells. There may not exist a run of more than three consecutive shaded or unshaded cells horizontally or vertically anywhere in the grid.
Variant: Arbitrary Regions — The clue regions are not restricted to the grid that is being shaded. Standard Aqre rules apply, except that the numbers indicate the total shaded area in each region (assuming that each cell has an area of 1).