Cave (Product) by Grant Fikes
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the linex mode where left click+drag draws lines and right click marks X’s)
Theme: Not Quite Even
Author/Opus: This is the 81st puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Grant Fikes.
Rules: Variation of Cave rules. Each clue represents the product of the # of row cells visible (including the cell itself) with the # of column cells visible (including the cell itself).
Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the cave segments from left to right for the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry with a comma.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 1:45, Master = 3:15, Expert = 6:30
Solution: PDF
Note: Follow this link for other Cave variations and this link for other classic Caves. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Cave Puzzles to get started on.
02:46. This one has a few tricky points, mostly about realizing a clue must be fulfilled in one way only. And the clues to resolve aren’t always obvious. Nice puzzle.
Hie
cant we have thick lined cave puzzles, it is easier to solve that in paint. now due to dotted lines all cells get filled.
thank you.
On Paint.NET, cells fill as they should if you turn the fill tolerance down to a low number (the default is 50% which is not low enough).
i don’t get this problem, and from what I see the pixels between the grid lines aren’t white but a very light grey…
Hi Swaroop. As others have mentioned, we do have a slightly off-white part to the dashed line that should, with good fill tolerance settings, work in all paint programs as you want. I wanted to add one other point to the discussion which is a question I’ve gotten asked several times: “Why do you format XXXXX with dashed lines?” or similar. When I’ve looked at different solvers’ notations for a style, and find that lines on edges are often drawn as notes, then I try to get a dashed line presentation of this form functional for print and web. Fillomino, Cave, and Masyu all work like this now. Other styles where this isn’t valuable (for example, Tapa) get solid lines. But we are mindful of changes in presentation that could be helpful so if there is something you might prefer to see another way, please feel free to propose this idea.
yup sorry no problem
its working fine on paint.
actually looking at dotted lines i thought so.
Sorry for trouble again. 🙂
5:33
My first timed cave, I really like how the clues interact in this variant.