Cross the Streams by Grant Fikes
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: Easy as 123
Author/Opus: This is the 307th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Grant Fikes.
Rules: Standard Cross the Streams rules.
Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the black segments from left to right for the marked rows, going in order from A to B to C to D and separating each entry with a comma.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:30, Master = 5:00, Expert = 10:00.
Solution: PDF
Note: Follow this link for other Cross the Streams. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Cross the Streams to get started on.
Some nice multi-step ‘escape’ logic in this one!
I loved the story this puzzle told!
Ahhh, Cross the Streams. It’s like my comfort food of logic puzzles. I always feel like I’m going to enjoy it. This one was very nice.
As an aside, I found the Black or White Paint by Numbers puzzle on Round 5 of the 2019 World Puzzle Grand Prix to be very interesting. Would be interesting to see if a “Black or White” Cross The Streams could possibly work.
Something like that should be possible. Grant has made a number of “inverted” puzzles where one direction may be White instead of Black; I can’t recall if one of these was fully arbitrary so you had to determine the state of each clue.
https://mathgrant.blogspot.com/2012/03/march-mutant-1-cross-streams.html
https://mathgrant.blogspot.com/2012/03/march-mutant-19-cross-streams-tetra.html
Thanks for the links!