Gaming For Picross players

kidcharlemagne · Aug 12, 2022

LeMageFro's method makes sense to me. That should work until you can start seeing overlap on the larger numbers.

nWo · Aug 12, 2022

kidcharlemagne said:
Here is a grid showing all possibilities for (4,3) on a row with 15 cells. There are no cells that must inevitably be filled, are there?
|EDIT| Same for (2,3,4)

I don't know where the hell did you get that, but I will try to explain to you, my dear skeptical friend, so you, too, can understand.

Look, from the start of row (4,3) start counting on the first square, count 4, space, and 3, as the indication says. Okay? Now, mark with a dot that last square. Now, on the same row but starting from the other side (in reverse) from the last square, count 4, space, 3. Where does the last square leave us? That's exactly right: On the same one that you counted before. So, no matter what you do, that SQUARE IS ALWAYS GONNA BE ONE WHERE YOU MUST MAKE A FILL. THERE'S NO ESCAPE, THAT SQUARE WHERE THE 3 COLLIDE, THERE GOES A FILL, NO MATTER WHAT. And from there, you can have a new hint.

That's one of many techniques that I use and developed from years of playing Picross.

nantalos · Aug 13, 2022

nWo said:
I don't know where the hell did you get that, but I will try to explain to you, my dear skeptical friend, so you, too, can understand.

Look, from the start of row (4,3) start counting on the first square, count 4, space, and 3, as the indication says. Okay? Now, mark with a dot that last square. Now, on the same row but starting from the other side (in reverse) from the last square, count 4, space, 3. Where does the last square leave us? That's exactly right: On the same one that you counted before. So, no matter what you do, that SQUARE IS ALWAYS GONNA BE ONE WHERE YOU MUST MAKE A FILL. THERE'S NO ESCAPE, THAT SQUARE WHERE THE 3 COLLIDE, THERE GOES A FILL, NO MATTER WHAT. And from there, you can have a new hint.

That's one of many techniques that I use and developed from years of playing Picross.

Here is the solved puzzle. I marked your "MUST BE FILLED! NO ESCAPE! DEFINITELY FILLED FOR SUUUUUUUURE!!!!!!!" unfilled square with red.
Your technique works for single number hints. But for hints with multiple numbers you gotta do it differently.

I really don't understand how finding contradictions by guessing one square and seeing if that leads to a contradiction is not guessing according to the game makers. Because it's guessing. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy these harder ones. But it is most definitely guessing in my book.

Roamin64 · Aug 13, 2022

nantalos said:
Here is the solved puzzle. I marked your "MUST BE FILLED! NO ESCAPE! DEFINITELY FILLED FOR SUUUUUUUURE!!!!!!!" unfilled square with red.
Your technique works for single number hints. But for hints with multiple numbers you gotta do it differently.

I really don't understand how finding contradictions by guessing one square and seeing if that leads to a contradiction is not guessing according to the game makers. Because it's guessing. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy these harder ones. But it is most definitely guessing in my book.

Is it really considered "guessing" if you are methodically testing possible solutions by starting at a corner and trying to solve the puzzle starting with that first square filled? I mean, I'm not guessing anything. I'm testing solutions because there are no other obvious lines where numbers have common squares when counting top down and then down up (or sideways). Since no square overlap anywhere, you have to use the other method of trying to fill a square and check if it's possible with that square filled. I didn't check the time but I finished the OP's puzzle in just a few minutes. Clearly no numbers overlap, so if you start at the very first square at the bottom left and try to fill that one, it doesn't really take long to eliminate it, and so on for the next 6 squares going up. By the 6th square or so you start to get part of the answer and then just by using the numbers you quickly finish it off.

Isn't the usual goal of picross to clear it as fast as possible, guessing or not?

kidcharlemagne · Aug 13, 2022

nWo said:
I don't know where the hell did you get that, but I will try to explain to you, my dear skeptical friend, so you, too, can understand.

Look, from the start of row (4,3) start counting on the first square, count 4, space, and 3, as the indication says. Okay? Now, mark with a dot that last square. Now, on the same row but starting from the other side (in reverse) from the last square, count 4, space, 3. Where does the last square leave us? That's exactly right: On the same one that you counted before. So, no matter what you do, that SQUARE IS ALWAYS GONNA BE ONE WHERE YOU MUST MAKE A FILL. THERE'S NO ESCAPE, THAT SQUARE WHERE THE 3 COLLIDE, THERE GOES A FILL, NO MATTER WHAT. And from there, you can have a new hint.

That's one of many techniques that I use and developed from years of playing Picross.

I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. (4,3) does not mean that there is exactly one space between the 4 and the 3. There can be any non-zero number of spaces between them. That means that on this particular row, there are 20 possible solutions that don't make use of that square, and nantalos has shown that the actual answer doesn't use that square, either.

If you add up the size of each block plus the minimum number of spaces between them (equal to the number of blocks minus one), and the number of remaining spaces is smaller than the size of the largest block, then there will be a certain number of squares that must be filled, regardless of the contents of any other rows or columns on the board. For example, if you have (6,3) appear somewhere on a 15x15 board, then you can calculate 15-(6+3+1) = 5, and you know that the sixth square in the row will inevitably be filled.

In the case of (4,3), 15-(4+3+1) = 7. 7 is greater than 4, therefore there is no collision to be found.

If you still don't believe me, the most obvious example would be to try putting the two blocks at at the far left and right of the row, then centering them, and you will see that there is no overlap:

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