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

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

Wolfdog — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:18:36 -0800

- 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.

By: muddgirl

muddgirl — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:37:09 -0800

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.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:42:53 -0800

Well played. Also, click in the middle of the boundaries. I started off by trying to draw the path around.

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:44:33 -0800

Goddamnit Wolfdog. I have things to do today.

By: Remy

Remy — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:46:26 -0800

Also available for the DS in Japanese. Fairly import friendly if you get familiar with the rules beforehand.

By: yeoz

yeoz — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:47:41 -0800

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.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:49:36 -0800

oh, oh god. I have work to finish and oh.. oh... how did I get here i am not good with spatial-numerical puzzles.

By: Foosnark

Foosnark — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:19:05 -0800

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.

By: Foosnark

Foosnark — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:19:49 -0800

...nevermind. :P

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:31:26 -0800

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.

By: vito90

vito90 — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:32:17 -0800

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.

By: muddgirl

muddgirl — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:34:03 -0800

jacquilynne - I think it's ctrl + left click in windows, and something similar for macs.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:37:22 -0800

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.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:41:23 -0800

Wow, those are quite hard, but fun, and I'm starting to pick up some "rules" already.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:48:18 -0800

It's intriguing to see the number of minor variations you can make on several of the puzzles. Neat metagame.

By: jepler

jepler — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:19:52 -0800

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)

By: yohko

yohko — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:44:09 -0800

Wolfdog, this is a horrible link you have posted. Please post more like it.

By: Many bubbles

Many bubbles — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:23:10 -0800

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.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:42:26 -0800

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.