Snakes, in my heart-blood warm'd, that sting my heart!

May 31, 2007 1:18 PM

SlitherLink - a little spatial-numerical puzzle. Here's a better exposition of the rules from the puzzle's inventors, and another collection of puzzles. Oh, and a little survey of other sneaky, snaky puzzles.
posted by Wolfdog (18 comments total)

On the first link, solve the Medium ones first, not the Easy ones. The Easy ones are actually harder because some of them are not fully constrained.
posted by muddgirl at 1:37 PM on May 31, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well played. Also, click in the middle of the boundaries. I started off by trying to draw the path around.
posted by boo_radley at 1:42 PM on May 31, 2007

Goddamnit Wolfdog. I have things to do today.
posted by eyeballkid at 1:44 PM on May 31, 2007 [2 favorites]

Also available for the DS in Japanese. Fairly import friendly if you get familiar with the rules beforehand.
posted by Remy at 1:46 PM on May 31, 2007

I <3 nikoli.com
I recently came in 4th place in the nikoli derby and got a nifty japanese puzzle book from them.
I <3 japanese puzzles.
posted by yeoz at 1:47 PM on May 31, 2007

oh, oh god. I have work to finish and oh.. oh... how did I get here i am not good with spatial-numerical puzzles.
posted by boo_radley at 1:49 PM on May 31, 2007

I can't even figure out how to play this. I think it's broken. Everything I click on sends me to a Quit/Retry page, and "Retry" doesn't actually do anything.
posted by Foosnark at 2:19 PM on May 31, 2007

...nevermind. :P
posted by Foosnark at 2:19 PM on May 31, 2007

These are really rendered much harder by the fact that there doesn't seem to be a way to mark a specific line as *not* part of the loop.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:31 PM on May 31, 2007

I can't even figure out how to play this. I think it's broken. Everything I click on sends me to a Quit/Retry page, and "Retry" doesn't actually do anything.

You just lost the game.
posted by vito90 at 2:32 PM on May 31, 2007

jacquilynne - I think it's ctrl + left click in windows, and something similar for macs.
posted by muddgirl at 2:34 PM on May 31, 2007

If you hold down space while clicking an edge it'll get x'd out. I get the same effect cmd-clicking on my mac.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:37 PM on May 31, 2007

Wow, those are quite hard, but fun, and I'm starting to pick up some "rules" already.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:41 PM on May 31, 2007

It's intriguing to see the number of minor variations you can make on several of the puzzles. Neat metagame.
posted by boo_radley at 2:48 PM on May 31, 2007

I know I've plugged this on metafilter before, but the first "slitherlink" game is in the portable puzzle collection (for linux, windows, palm, and mac) -- Simon Tatham calls it "loopy" and gives credit for the idea to Nikoli.

My current faves from the puzzle collection are "galaxies" (divide the board into symmetric pieces given the piece centers) and "uneven" (fill in a board of numbers according to the clues)
posted by jepler at 5:19 PM on May 31, 2007 [1 favorite]

Wolfdog, this is a horrible link you have posted. Please post more like it.
posted by yohko at 5:44 PM on June 1, 2007

Fun! I cleared the Easy and Medium ones--although I don't understand what you mean about some of the Easy ones not being fully constrained.
posted by Many bubbles at 6:23 PM on June 1, 2007

The hard ones do seem to be decidedly harder. I found a small handful of techniques that resolved everything on the easier levels but am still moving pretty slowly on these.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:42 PM on June 1, 2007