BACA by John Bulten
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a letter entry mode and a shading mode. CAPS LOCK is recommended for letter entry.)
Theme: Beach Booty
(This pirates’ map depicts eastern Palm Beach County, Florida, showing the locations of the communities of Abacoa, Boynton Beach, and Boca Raton, in relation to the coastal road U.S. Alternate Route 1A. More information about the treasure hidden therein will appear in a later post.)
Author/Opus: This is the 4th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster John Bulten.
Rules: Either shade or add a single letter (A, B, or C) to each square so that each row and column contains exactly one A, one B, one C, and the rest shaded squares. Cells in the grid already marked with a letter can be shaded or remain unchanged. Clues outside the grid include both letters and numbers. Letters indicate the first letter seen from that direction. Numbers describe the size of groups of consecutive shaded squares in that row or column in order. There must be at least one unshaded square between groups.
Or, see here.
Answer String: Enter a nine-character string, consisting of the number of the column where the B is placed in each row, starting with the top row and proceeding to the bottom.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:30, Master = 5:00, Expert = 10:00
Solution: PDF
Note: Follow this link for other Number Placement variations.
Wow, so hard, I’ve always been bad at number placements, but here, took me 20 minutes …
I liked the puzzle anyway, but I still have the feeling that I’m missing something in theses puzzles.
Nice puzzle.~ 25 mins
Not quite sure what to think of this puzzle type… while i love paint by numbers this felt much more like an endview variation and at first i was very confused about the rules and the extra signs in the grid. nice solving path though, even it took me some time to find it. Also i’m curious about the hidden treasure….
Also, why exactly is this a number placement puzzle? Seems to me more like a crossing of shading and object placement..
I read “number”=”symbol”. So “letter”=”symbol” fits in the same category. You are writing symbols into cells, focused on the distinct element being placed into each cell.
With object placement, effects on the surrounding cells are usually a much larger part of the logic. So they are more of a packing puzzle, as you’ll see with Battleships and Pentomino puzzles. There is no real feel of packing in this genre.
20:00 Quite challenging for a Monday, (though certainly part of my time was just warming up to how the rules interacted). But a very fun solving path regardless. Thanks, John! I’m looking forward to more of your puzzles.
Thanks to Serkan for introducing me to BACA. This is a form of Latin square puzzle (symbol placement) where the added internal and nonogram clues provide a great balance. Grizix and Grieg might want to read next week’s schedule too.