Broken Sign Blog
#053: Aqre (Arbitrary Regions)
27 October 2022I recently constructed an Aqre for this year’s WPC, inspired by my dual-grid Aqres, where the clue regions were rotated by 45°. That did make me wonder whether there was a way to go even wilder with arbitrary regions. Well…
I’m slightly unhappy with the top half of the puzzle. Those four circles at the sides are a lot more than I actually need, but I just couldn’t find an easier way (that fit the aesthetic) to force a specific cell to be unshaded.
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).