Word Connection by Serkan Yürekli
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or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between lineox mode where left click+drag draws lines and left click in a square marks O and X, and a Letter entry mode.)
Theme: Solar System (words come from Italian, French, Hindi, Norwegian, Greek, English, Welsh, Farsi, and Arabic)
Author/Opus: This is the 89th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Serkan Yürekli.
Rules: Place the words into the grid (one letter per cell) so that they do not touch each other, not even diagonally, and so that they can be read in a straight line in a vertical or horizontal direction. Some letters in the words are already given in the grid. Then find a path that passes through every cell of the grid, starting with the first letter of the first word, passing through the words in order from their first letters to their last letters, and ending at the last letter of the last word.
Or see this example:
Answer String: Enter the number of turns the path takes between each of the words in order as a single string of numbers. (Ignore turns in cells with letters.) The answer for this example is “224”.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 6:30, Master = 11:00, Expert = 22:00
Solution: PDF
I wasn’t sure about this puzzle type at first, but it’s growing on me. Interesting combination of a placement puzzle and a numberlink sorta thing.
Tricky, with the word placement only resolving via the rule that all cells need to be visited.