A new gift to Corral Fans: "Rubber Bands"

[motris]

I've spent at least a dozen hours in the past month arguing with people on "Corral" vs. "Cave" puzzles. It's caused a lot of stress, almost lost me one collaborator, and it continues to haunt me as others are sharing my puzzles in new settings and reviving old arguments

Comments

[nickbaxter]

Great new design. But I think the instructions would be clearer if you used shading instead of loops.

[rpipuzzleguy]

The sad thing is that it took me several moments to figure out what you were getting at.

[ext_1634373]

Heh, nice one. Although I think you may want to add a rule since it's not obvious to me whether rubber bands can still cross each other:

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[motris]

Thanks - that is a necessary addition to the rules.

[ext_209009]

There's at least one very nonobvious bit of parity logic that's possible in Yin-Yang, and it's far easier to see if you interpret it as a loop type instead.

[motris]

I think there is a lot to be learned by seeing how shading becomes loop and vice versa. Your point on Yin-Yang is well taken, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone recast that as a loop puzzle (yet).

[motris]

Yes, that one bit of the instructions failed the field test and has been improved. There was a unique presentation description someone gave which was to start the grid out with a fully blackened outer loop. Then the end state has two contiguous groups, a "cave" inside a "border". In the absence of that I think I've now chosen to just clarify enclosed squares to mean they all are part of a connected group that touch a border.

[motris]

And I think I once saw (in Bulgaria) a Cave description where a no 2x2 rule was part of the definition of the puzzle. Unfortunately, it was for the non-shaded part (Blacken the rock of the cave to outline its tunnels. The tunnels may fork, but may not form loops. Each cell with a number indicates the number of tunnel cells, including the cell with the number, visible from that position. No part of the tunnel may have a size of 2x2. Grey cells are outside the tunnels.)

Canonicalization of puzzle rules, particularly across countries, is a very hard business. And debates about instructions can get far too long and pointless after awhile as consensus just can't exist if there are two different ways to view the world that are internally consistent.

[affpuzz]

Yeah, the Denksel magazine put out by the fine folks at croco-puzzle.de also used (uses? I haven't subscribed for several years) the no 2x2 rule. It would always confuse me when solving other corrals (Denksel was a significant part of my introduction to logic puzzles, I didn't have a pre-existing knowledge of puzzle rules to fall back on); I'd try to use deductions that weren't valid under the more usual set of rules.