Pentominous (Star Battle) by Grant Fikes
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to alternate between a composite mode for line/edge drawing, a letter entry mode, and shading / shape entry modes depending on how you want to mark the stars.)
Author/Opus: This is the 360th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Grant Fikes.
Rules: Combination of Pentominous and Star Battle. Place stars into some cells so that there are two stars in each row and column; no two stars can touch, even diagonally. Then divide the rest of the grid into 16 regions each containing 5 cells. Regions with the same shape (including rotations/reflections) cannot share an edge. A cell with a letter in it must be part of the pentomino shape normally associated with that letter; an inventory of pentominoes is given below the puzzle.
Difficulty: 4 stars
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:30, Master = 10:15, Expert = 20:30
Solution: PDF; a solution video is also available here.
Note: Follow this link for other Pentominous puzzles. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Pentominous to get started on. More Pentominous puzzles can be found in the Plenty o’ Pentominous series by Grant Fikes and Murat Can Tonta and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.
The start and end were fairly smooth … the middle part was tough going ….
This hybrid was very fresh to me. I loved it!
Completely lost, start with:
gbc yrsg M naq V , V unf gb or ubevmbagny fvapr M vf gurer, gura V nqq gur fgnef. jr tbg 3 K qbja sebz gur M fgnef naq pna’g unir funcrf gung tebj sebz vg jvgubhg 2 V’f…
Will wait for video…maybe i’m not understanding the rules correctly
You might be misinterpreting the rules? We had another example of this hybrid style that got its own solution video (https://www.gmpuzzles.com/blog/2016/09/pentominous-star-battle-grant-fikes/) before our posting tomorrow.
100% misunderstood the rules.. i thought we were puting the stars in the pentominos… Thanks !!!
I solved first half of grid completely logically. Second part I made by my feelings rather than logic how it should look like. This helped me to be close to master time, but I has a risk of getting messed up at the end
Really fun; I liked the way these styles worked together.
This was really fun. I love how important the logic of the star battle works with the logic of the pentominous.