Broken Sign Blog
#071: Rail Pool (Dance)
30 December 2022I said I would revisit this variant with other loop genres and of course the first one had to be Rail Pool.
The constraints of Dance and having to visit every cell are actually already very strong, so that large parts of the grid ended up not needing any Rail Pool clues. Still, I think there are some nice interactions of the base and variant rules here. I’m looking forward to experimenting with this in other genres as well.
Rules: Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of all cells. Some boldly outlined regions contain number clues. If a straight loop segment visits any cells of a clued region, its length must match one of these numbers. Each number must correspond to at least one such loop segment. Question marks represent any positive integer, but numbers cannot repeat within a region.
Variant: Dance — Draw two loops instead of one. Each cell is visited by at least one loop. The loops cross each other at right angles exactly once in each region. Line length is counted through these crossings. The loops cannot cross themselves. Both loops contribute their segments to a region’s clue.