Puzzles #510, #511 & #512 - Christmas in July (So Many Bees Part 1)

For secret solver last year, I was assigned to write a puzzle for dylanamite. I did not write a puzzle, I wrote a 26 puzzle set that I'll be posting over the next 8 days, ending on the 10th with the full PDF that was sent. When Jamie signed Dylan up (Dylan would have anyway) he did so with the comment "please send me so many bees". And so, I sent so, so, so many bees.

Just so many bees.

Army Ants vs. Bees

The rules of this Army Ants variant are as follows: Move some symbols such that each orthogonally connected group forms a sequence of consecutive numbers starting with 1 or consists of more than one bee. Each number in a numbered sequence must be orthogonally adjacent to the next. A symbol may move vertically and horizontally any number of times, but may not pass through bold borders. Each cell may be used at most once: as a symbol's starting point, part of a path, or a symbol's final destination.

In the puzzlink interface, every question mark is a bee. And yes, I did literally put bees in the puzzle. This is going to be a running theme here.

As for my thoughts on this puzzle, I think it's a pretty neat variant rule and could be used in more puzzles than just this, though justifying the rule without leaning into a swarm of bees is definitely on the tricky side.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

BattleBs

Standard Battleships rules apply, with a non-standard fleet. Ships can be rotated or reflected.

This is somehow the first Battleships puzzle I've ever published. I still don't totally understand how to make them well, though in this case the gimmicky fleet goes a long way.

puzz.link interface      penpa interface

Curve Data

Standard Curve Data rules apply.

I actually made this puzzle partially solution first, as tiling the grid entirely with lowercase b shapes is surprisingly difficult. Once I had a working solution, I could tweak it in a lot of different ways, guarantee a clean logical start, and then move clues around to get clue symmetry. A bit of a non-standard construction route to what I think is a nice little puzzle.

puzz.link interface