Saturday, May 25, 2019

Puzzle #20 - Framed (Country Road)

I have a funny story before posting today's puzzle. Country Road was a genre that I did not understand how to make any progress in the first few times I saw it. The rule about unused cells not being adjacent, but only if across region boundaries threw me off. I don't recall why I took another look at a Country Road puzzle, but it started clicking and that very same rule has some very interesting consequences. Constructing the type, however, is quite the challenge, with managing loop logic, numbers, and region shapes. At least local type fixes are possible!
There is a common variant of Country Road where not all regions must be visited. As the solving interface does require all regions to be visited, I'll treat any puzzles I post with that rule as... a variant puzzle.
This puzzle may seem inscrutable, but there are actually some very strong constraints and the puzzle isn't actually as hard as it looks.

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