As seems to be usual here, I only start topics when I find some aweosme game to pimp out. This time, my Picross addiction finally made international! Picross DS, the latest Picross game, has been released in North America and Europe in addition to the usual Japan.
Picross puzzles, also known as
Nonograms, are binary-determination logic puzzles; you are given a finite grid with known size and must determine whether each individual cell is "on" or "off" using the given clues. Clues take the form of numbers on each column and row telling how many "on" cells are touching in that column/row before blank spaces or puzzle boundaries surround them - often there will be multiple numbers which refer to multiple groups, separated by one or more "off" cells.
Here's an example:
1 1
1 1 1
5 1 1 1 0
4
1
3
1
4
The solution is
1 1
1 1 1
5 1 1 1 0
4 XXXXXXXX
1 XX
3 XXXXXX
1 XX
4 XXXXXXXX
Anyway, Picross DS has 300+ of these, mostly 15x15 and 20x20 ones but also some 10x10, and you can make your own puzzles and upload them to the 'net as well.
Anyway,,,, I've completed the first 7 puzzle packs in Normal mode (packs are 15 puzzles each) but I had to guess on two of them, puzzles 4-O and 7-A. All the Normal-mode puzzles are supposed to be logically completable without testing theories in advance (a feature allowed in Free mode) but I can't find a way to progress past the first few steps in either puzzle using the given information.
Here's puzzle 4-O for you. Solve it if you can, and if you can get more "on" cells filled than the two obvious columns, -please- tell me how you did it!
I'll upload 7-A in a few days unless someone beats me to it. It's a 20x20.
EDIT: I seem to have gotten better since I last tried 4-O because shortly after posting this I found how to progress. It's a little tricky but it's possible. Now if only I could find the trick for 7-A...
If anyone's trying to solve 4-O here and wants a hint,
here's the first bit of a solution that gets past the initial "what do I do now?" phase.
EDIT 2: OK, so I'm just really bad at picross? Even though I beat Nintendo Power packs like 1-4 a long time ago. Because I played 7-A again, and it took about 53 minutes but I got through with 0 errors. So it's solvable, just hard.
Anyway, Picross is a fun time.