Contest Puzzle: Linking 200 Cells by Prasanna Seshadri
Prasanna is celebrating two milestones this week and we will have two special large puzzles. The first one here recognizes Prasanna’s 200th submission on GMPuzzles, and combines three of the styles where Prasanna has written books for our e-store.
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or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; while solution checking is not enabled, if you are comfortable with the different tool selection options you should be able to fully solve the puzzle in this mode too.)
Theme: Linking 200 cells
Author/Opus: This is the 200th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Prasanna Seshadri.
Rules:
Grids 1-2: Follow regular LITS rules. Between the two LITS grids, the corresponding white cells can never both be shaded, while the corresponding gray cells must be identical in the three 200-shaped regions.
Use the LITS solutions and your ingenuity to discover the needed constraints for Grids 3-4. For Grid 3, you will find that some gray circles must change color to white or black.
Grid 3: Follow regular Balance Loop rules. Additionally, the loop must cross itself if it passes through a gray circle. The loop must go straight throught the gray circle both times; in one direction the path behaves as if the circle is white with equal loop lengths, and in the other direction the path behaves as if the circle is black with unequal loop lengths. It is not required that the loop pass through all of the gray circles (but it must pass through all white and black circles). (See also the image below.)
Grid 4: Follow regular Yajilin rules.
When taken together, the grids yield a short final answer! Send this (less than five character) string to hiddencontest at gmpuzzles dot com by March 14th, 2021 to be eligible to win an e-book by Prasanna Seshadri. The contest is now closed and results summarized here.
Difficulty: 5 stars?
Solution: PDF
