Answer Key : Describe the marked rows / columns, using the corresponding number / letter for each cell.
In case of double digit numbers, enter the last digit or unit digit only.

For R6, answer key is 0152978911, For C9, answer key is 311116661



Same answer key method can be used for

• Four Winds
• Shikaku/Rectangles
• Fillomino

I dont know better, and we will use this method for 4 winds puzzle.

Ok, apart from Four Winds, this method can be used for Shikaku/Rectangles, and Fillomino.

I've updated the main post.

may be we can use same format for Anglers puzzle as well.

I've never been a fan of using numbers in puzzles which don't intrinsically use numbers when solving, especially if they are really line/path puzzles like numberlink/fourwinds/anglers. I'd prefer to use notification to indicate how the path goes. Either S(traight)/T(urn) or H(orizontal)/V(ertical)/T(urn). Possibly for for example Four Winds, you could can use an End indication where to show the line ends in that square and for anglers a Fish indication.

I always find it annoying that I have to figure out the number of a certain path after i'm done with the puzzle as I would never put it in while solving. This will take more time the bigger the puzzle is.

Edited by Para 2011-07-11 3:29 AM

I have two issues with the S/T or H/V/T methods:

1. My annoyance with such a method is probably similar to your annoyance with the numbers. Personally having a whole bunch of consecutive H/V/T makes it harder for me to check because my head is stringing them all together. It's a lot easier for me to verify it to myself if I can partition the row/column into discrete blocks corresponding to each number. For C9 in the example, there's a 3, then a block of five spaces for 11 (1), then a block of three spaces for 6, then another 11. On the other hand, if going through checking a test and seeing "HTVVVTVVTH" I wouldn't feel comfortable unless I went through the entire row/column space by space again counting. (also is that 7th space a V?)

2. The information content is far less and it starts getting into guessable territory. The constraints uniqueness places on a Numberlink solution means that for most rows and columns you could probably narrow it down to few reasonable straight/turn patterns.

For really big Numberlinks (like a nikoli selection marathon size) it would indeed be a hassle to use the numbers. But I've never seen such a size used in a competition.


Throwing out a possible alternative even though I don't like it myself for the ease of counting errors: number of turns in the paths that link a few selected pairs of numbers. Would also work for Anglers too. For Four Winds, you might also do something like count the number of dead-ends in each row, or in just a few marked rows.

Edited by MellowMelon 2011-07-13 8:17 AM