Timewaster Daily subscriber Completion time: 5:52 Used 'show wrong moves' Used 'check puzzle' when incorrect
I think that there is more than one solution to this. Is that possible Gareth? I have now changed it to agree with yours, but could not find anything wrong with previous solution. When I checked my solution, it said that there were 5 incorrect squares - but I couldn't see why they were incorrect. This has not happened before!
Posted 27th May 2024 at 14:10
Cartoonite Daily subscriber Rated puzzle: Moderate Best completion time: 2:13 Time on first attempt: 4:41
It is not possible with a valid puzzle, but I suppose it is possible that Gareth made a mistake when creating this one.
I suspect it is more likely that the alternate solution is invalid. Are you sure that all of the white sections were the right size and all of the black squares were connected orthogonally?
Posted 29th May 2024 at 14:11 Last edited by gareth 29th May 2024 at 14:13
I can't see another solution, but if you save your puzzle in what you think is an alternative solution then I'll take a look. Or send a screenshot to gareth@puzzlemix.com.
I have a checker I wrote long ago for Nurikabe puzzles. It doesn't create them but it does solve them. There've been a lot of Nurikabe on puzzlemix (334 other ones, I think) without issue so it's probably the case that the software does work correctly - and so the puzzle is okay. But you never know!
This puzzle is unusual in having one square that requires you to use the 'all regions have a number in' rule that Nikoli (the creators of Nurikabe) don't ever require you to use (except one time ever in one puzzle that I have seen). However so long as you set that square to black then the puzzle is unique, I believe. (To be more clear, the bottom-left square is not forced by being required to connect all shaded cells, but it is needed to avoid creating an empty 1 region without a clue - which is specified as a requirement in the Puzzlemix version of the rules). But that doesn't correspond with your 5-cell comment anyway.
The most likely explanation is that your black squares were not all connected, or (as Cartoonite said) a region was not the correct size.
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I suspect it is more likely that the alternate solution is invalid. Are you sure that all of the white sections were the right size and all of the black squares were connected orthogonally?
Last edited by gareth 29th May 2024 at 14:13
I have a checker I wrote long ago for Nurikabe puzzles. It doesn't create them but it does solve them. There've been a lot of Nurikabe on puzzlemix (334 other ones, I think) without issue so it's probably the case that the software does work correctly - and so the puzzle is okay. But you never know!
This puzzle is unusual in having one square that requires you to use the 'all regions have a number in' rule that Nikoli (the creators of Nurikabe) don't ever require you to use (except one time ever in one puzzle that I have seen). However so long as you set that square to black then the puzzle is unique, I believe. (To be more clear, the bottom-left square is not forced by being required to connect all shaded cells, but it is needed to avoid creating an empty 1 region without a clue - which is specified as a requirement in the Puzzlemix version of the rules). But that doesn't correspond with your 5-cell comment anyway.
The most likely explanation is that your black squares were not all connected, or (as Cartoonite said) a region was not the correct size.
You can however view other players' statistics and comments in the tables above.