Finally a genre I've done a ton of! In fact, out of the 11 puzzles on the database, 7 of them were set by me! Due to this experience, when I went to set one today, I went way over the difficulty mark I'm shooting for with this series. I'll still include that puzzle as a bonus, but the featured puzzle will be my second attempt.
Fun logic puzzle notation / history fact, the rules "no shaded cells are adjacent" and "all unshaded cells are connected" are considered the "dynasty" rules, named after Smullyanic Dynasty. OROD is a dynasty genre, and while this is the only dynasty genre covered in these 25 days, you may know other dynasty genres such as Heyawake, Yajisan-Kazusan, Hitori, Guide Arrow, Kurodoko, or many more.
You may hear me use this term in other ways, such as saying that Statue Park and Heyablock are dynasty-like, as they have the same rules, but applied to shaded groups instead of shaded cells. What I love about dynasty is that a lot of the experience in one genre will carry over to another, so you can skip to appreciating the deductions that make that genre unique.
Anyways,
one room one door rules
Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and the remaining unshaded cells form one orthogonally connected area. Unshaded cells within a region must also form one orthogonally connected area within that region. Numbered regions must contain the indicated amount of shaded cells. Between two adjacent regions, there may be no more than one pair of adjacent unshaded cells crossing their boundary.hint 1
Unlike most genres, numbered hints aren't always the best place to start. After unshading all the cells in the 0 region, recall that the empty region to the right of it can only have one "door" connecting the two.hint 2
OROD has a lot of rules. One of the ways I think of them is:-
Number clues = shadeds in a region
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Regions locally obey dynasty constraints
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Max one door between regions
Rule 1 is pretty standard for puzzles, but rule 2 is a bit unusual for dynasty genres, and rule 3 is the titular rule that sets OROD apart from others.
Rule 2 can have some sneaky ramifications. For example, could a 2x2 region have 2 shaded cells in it? This concept will be applied heavily throughout this puzzle, as keeping unshaded connectivity within regions is a tall order.
Review: I love OROD, but I kinda went through a phase of doing everything I wanted to with the genre. If something inspires me, I may revisit it, as I do enjoying setting/solving it, but I've already done a lot of the ideas that first came to mind when I first learned it.
