Teal

It's sad to see it go, but I understand why. I don't think I'll be migrating to any large social media site so instead I've purchased my own website!

It's a steep learning curve to get it set up, but the "read-only" deadline is quickly approaching, so I don't have much of a choice. If any of y'all are curious to see what puzzly stuff I'll be up to in the future, you can find me at teal.lgbt

That's right, https://teal.lgbt/ was simply waiting there, waiting for someone to overpay for it. If you go there right now, it'll be some placeholder blocks, but hopefully within the next month or so I'll actually configure it into something presentable.

I wish I had been a larger part of this site, but I will still love my eggbug plush regardless. Thanks for the memories!

You are the Rat Detective! And there's been a robbery in Ratville! The cheese storage has been raided! In order to solve this mystery, you must name all 5 rats (this isn't a puzzle, just give them a name that you think is appropriate) and determine which one ate which cheese!

You first ask the morning watchrat if they had seen anything unusual.
"I saw five rodents sneaking 'round, but I ne'er caught 'em in the act. It must've been them, I feel it in me whiskers. In order, I saw:"

• "A rodent that would repeatedly scold the others: _ _🐀_"
• "An elusive rodent that had previously procured valuable cheese for its mysterious cheese collection: _ _🐀_ _"
• "A rodent that would prefer to be anywhere else: 🐀_ _ _"
• "A rodent that was clearly in charge of bringing food supplies for the others: 🐀_ _ _ _"
• "A rodent that must have been jamming. It would bounce and shake rapidly: _ _ _🐀_"

"And I'd checked the reserves as well! All five different cheeses were there, hidden in plain sight. In no particular order, I confirmed:"

• "Some cheese was hidden amongst a stored poisonous projectile: _ _ 🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀 _"
• "Some cheese, we were going to distribute, to a lesser degree, to everyone: _ _ _ _ 🧀🧀🧀🧀 _ _ _"
• "Some cheese was set aside for the secure costumier: _ _ 🧀🧀🧀🧀 _ _ _ _"
• "Some cheese was stamped with a brand icon, above some other junk: _ _ 🧀🧀🧀🧀 _ _"
• "Some cheese was set aside for those two gay ratgirls who live in the charming bungalow: _ _ 🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀 _ _"

Checking in with the night watchrat, he gave you his account:
"By the time I got here, they had already left! The rodents were nowhere to be seen, but I did notice five figures leaving, in no particular order. I didn't smell cheese on them either, they must have already eaten it. But they were all nibbling on some leftovers from their heist"

• "One that smelled of honey, as well as the beast we do not squeak of. They were nibbling on the first piece of their leftovers"
• "One had hinted that I check the other way, which had me chasing my tail. They were nibbling on third piece of their leftovers."
• "One had a certain aura to them, like that of a pi🐀e. They were nibbling on the first piece of their leftovers."
• "One ratgirl had a pronoun pin on, but I steered clear as she whet a blade. She was nibbling on the last piece of their leftovers."
• "One particularly zappy fellow had many charges against them already. They were enormous, and from NYC, so I didn't want to mess with them. They were nibbling on the third piece of their leftovers"

After the guards rounded up the suspects, you cracked the case, but what did Ratville give you in return?
_ _ _ _ ? _

Ququ, I wonder if i've set this before. It's a charming lil genre, but has a pretty narrow range of deductions. That being said, I find it quite enjoying and relaxing to solve, and it's a refreshingly new grid type, which lends itself to a different way of doing connectivity. I'm sticking to 8x8, and unlike parquet which had deceptively few clues, this genre has deceptively many! Each cell has 4 cells, so this more of a 8x8x4 puzzle (ok i dont mean to imply it has 3 dimensions its more that its 4x as large cool cool cool)

That is all to say, this is a large puzzle, and will likely take much longer to solve than previous ones.

Solving link

Review: I keep coming back to this genre, just because of how different the grid feels, while still having the same type of ideas as most shading genres. It's fun and refreshing, and while I try to add wild variants to make spicier deductions, I usually don't end up with something I'm happy with. That being said, if I end up succeeding, I will definitely post it!

After a moment of reflection of looking at the solved grid, I think I just really like shading triangles. I think shakashaka is a pretty fun genre sometimes, but I'll be damned if it doesn't have the prettiest solved grids.

I'm late again! This genre solves a lot faster than its size may appear. While it is an "8x8" puzzle, 8x8 puzzles tend to have 64 cells to determine, while this one only has 16 regions to shade / unshade.

Solving link

Review: When I first read the rules to this genre, there was exactly one puzzle I wanted to set. I set that puzzle, am very happy with how it turned out, but feel like I've already exhausted the interestingness of the genre. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the scope of the rules feels like it doesn't have a lot of nuance to the possible deductions. I could imagine using this to set very thematic puzzles, say if you wanted to put a name in pixel art or something, but otherwise I doubt I'll set parquet again.