#148: Santa's "Not The Witness" Set

Ah yes, summer. Time to share another Secret Santa gift I made. This year, my santee was Zimodo and pretty much all I knew about them was that they’re active in the Witness community.

After a few false starts, I decided to make a set of instructionless puzzles, one for each type of symbol in The Witness (and one without any symbols to teach the base rules, and in particular introduce merged cells). I also decided pretty much right away that I did not want to make path or loop puzzles here, to make it easier to come up with new ideas for each symbol. That said, as you’ll see, some of the rules were still somewhat inspired by how the corresponding symbol works in the game.

There’s also a small meta to solve at the end which leads to a final puzzle. The numbers in the meta have led to some confusion, so if you’re not getting anywhere with it, try swapping the numbers. There is also a BONUS puzzle, but I strongly recommend not looking at it until after you’ve solved the meta. This was the puzzle I originally wanted to lock behind the meta. It didn’t quite turn out the way I had hoped, so I made a new one, but I also liked the idea enough that I didn’t want to scrap it completely.

I am particularly fond of the rules for the Deleters. I’m sure I will revisit those in a different context some time.

Since there are no Penpa links for these, you’ll probably want to solve them by either annotating the PDF or taking screenshots and drawing on those. Alternatively, if you prefer solving on paper, here is a printer-friendly version of the PDF Unfortunately, I don’t have a colourblind-friendly version of the stars handy. If you’re struggling to distinguish the different star colours (there are 3 in the regular star puzzles and 5 in the final and bonus puzzles), please reach out to me and I’ll see what I can do.

Rules: ???