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Super interesting! The creator makes sure that each puzzle has a unique solution, right? I don't know if this is intended, but after a few games I notice that
by fenomas 8y ago
Super interesting!
The creator makes sure that each puzzle has a unique solution, right? I don't know if this is intended, but after a few games I notice that knowing this makes it even the expert puzzles relatively straightforward to solve. That is, there are lots of spots where nothing appears to constrain a piece from extending in a given direction, but any solution where it did so wouldn't be unique, so you can rule it out, which makes the puzzle solvable without trial and error.
- jsnell 8y agoGreat question. There is indeed a unique solution, but it's not intended for the player to use that information. (Which is why the rules don't mention that guarantee). I considered a couple of alternatives when writing this: 1. Don't have a single solution, but have any duplicate solutions be trivially transformable to the others. E.g. via the "this piece has two possible orientations, and neither will conflict with another piece". 2. Make having a single solution be part of the rules, and necessary for solving some of the puzzles. 3. Make sure the puzzle generator just never generates a place where the uniqueness of the solution can be used to short-circuit the solution. 4. Punt. Idea number 1 is probably the best one, but the fear was that players would perceive that as "guessing". But looking at how people actually play the game, I think that fear might have been misplaced.