What Is A "Pencil Puzzle"?

▶ SUDOKU PAD - Our New App ◀ It's OUT on Windows (released two days ago!) via Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/17... You can now input your own classic sudoku puzzles into our software using our new App! The app also comes with 12 handmade puzzles from us and we're also releasing occasional bonus puzzles too. It's also available on IOS and Android too! ** Today's Puzzles ** Today Simon gets to try some of the Genuinely Approachable Pencil Puzzles published on the new channel "Daily Pencil Puzzle Discussion" on the Cracking The Cryptic Fan Discord server. This channel publishes one new puzzle every day and they are an absolute treat. You can join the Discord server here:   / discord   This video includes 8 puzzles! Can you beat Simon's times? Each puzzle is linked below with its rules. Enjoy (and please drop us a comment if you'd like to see more videos like this in the future ie perhaps a weekly video like Mark does with the Genuinely Approachable Sudokus). If you do enjoy this video there is another with eight different puzzles available right now for our patrons on Patreon:   / crackingthecryptic   Puzzle 1: Yosenabe by Freddie Hand https://tinyurl.com/8yr6c26x Rules: Move some circles so that every grey region contains at least one circle. Each circle must end up inside a grey region. A circle may move only in one straight line vertically or horizontally. Circles’ paths may not cross each other, other circles, or other circles’ starting points. If a grey region contains a clue, it represents the sum of the numbers in the circles which end up in that region. Puzzle 2: Gems and Stones by Eric Fox https://tinyurl.com/4tu6aa2a Rules: Place circles into some cells of the grid - some white and some black - such that each row and column contains exactly one black circle. A cell may contain at most one circle. A clue outside the grid indicates the number of circles in the corresponding row or column up to and including its black circle, from the direction of the clue. Puzzle 3: Aqre by shye https://tinyurl.com/4rvsybx4 Rules: Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Regions with numbers must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells. There may not exist a run of four or more consecutive shaded or unshaded(!!) cells horizontally or vertically anywhere in the grid. Puzzle 4: Shakashaka by jovi_al https://tinyurl.com/mryp3z3n Rules: Shade a right triangle in some empty cells, each of which occupies exactly half the cell it’s in. Each unshaded area must be rectangular in shape. A number in a cell represents how many of the (up to) four cells orthogonally adjacent to the clue contain triangles. Puzzle 5: Starbattle by Tyrgannus https://tinyurl.com/yckjedwa Rules: Place exactly as many stars is indicated above the puzzle in every row, column, and region. For this particular puzzle, this is 2 stars per row, column, and region. Stars cannot touch themselves orthogonally OR diagonally. For solvers more experienced in sudoku, this can be thought of as a king's move constraint ! Puzzle 6: Tapa by Freddie Hand https://tinyurl.com/2p994t5t Rules: Shade some cells so that all shaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the lengths of the blocks of consecutive shaded cells in the (up to) eight cells surrounding the clue. No 2x2 region may be entirely shaded. Puzzle 7: Numbered Rooms by Eric Fox https://f-puzzles.com/?id=yj72k5d8 Rules: Place a number from 1 to 5 into each cell so that each row and column contains each number with no repeats. A clue outside the grid represents what number appears in the Xth cell in the corresponding row or column from the direction of the clue, where X is the first number seen in the corresponding row or column from the direction of the clue. Puzzle 8: Rassi Silai by shye https://git.io/JXvXV Rules: Within each region, thread a non-intersecting rope through the centers of all cells. No two cells in the grid containing endpoints of the ropes may touch each other, not even diagonally. ** More Patreon Content ** Simon released a video on Patreon on Tuesday where he attempts the first 8 puzzles from the new Genuinely Approachable Pencil Puzzle series on Discord. These puzzles are awesome! Also we've released a series of videos explaining the difficult puzzles in November's monthly reward: The Japanese Sums Sudoku Hunt by Panthera and TheAsylm (including a video each by the authors!). You can join us on Patreon for as little as $2/month here:   / crackingthecryptic