meander lawn: Sheep Crate

An almost hard Easy as ABC puzzle.

Anuraag Sahay said...: This was a comfortable solve. On the contrary, the puzzle you titled "Decided" was the harder one. I an yet to solve it.; 27 September 2017 at 12:04:00 EEST
Δόλιχος said...: I'm notoriously bad at estimating difficulty. Having said that, I try to keep in mind both the techniques used and the path width ( avg # of distinct deductions available at a time). This one uses an X-Wing style deduction, but has a wide path. The previous one can be done with just the basic 2 kinds of deductions, but has a rather narrow path. Narrow paths are pretty hard in Easy As puzzles, because at any one time the search front you have to work through is so large.

The solution of the previous one follows, and in almost all places you'll find any determined cell requires all previous determinations. But most determinations are of the form "This is the only place in this line Z fits", or "this cell may only contain Z". There are just a couple of occasions of gap counting. In conclusion, I may need to weigh path tightness more.

BXA@R7
XBDC@C1
CAXXD@R1
XXCBD@R2
XB@R1
DB@R3
XX@R4
AX@R2
C@R3
XCAB@R4
XXXA@C5
XX@R3
DXC@R7
XX@C3
BC@C4
DA@C6
XA@C7
XD@C2; 27 September 2017 at 20:24:00 EEST

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