About the contest

• This is an online only puzzle contest with 16 Tapa puzzles.
• A new Tapa puzzle will be live in every 30 hours between 25th Dec to 14th Jan.
• Cumulative points from each day's solving will determine the final scores.
• There will be a leaderboard for early-birds, apart from the official one. Details here.

About the Author

• All contest puzzles are authored by Swaroop Guggilam (swaroop2011)

Tapa Rules

1. Shade some empty cells to create a single connected wall.
2. Numbers in a cell indicate the length of consecutive shaded blocks in the neighboring cells.
3. If there is more than one number in a cell, then there must be at least one unshaded cell between the shaded cell groups.
4. The shaded cells cannot form a 2X2 square anywhere in the grid.
5. Any "?" represent any number greater than 0. Different "?"s in a particular cell may or may not be the same.
6. Cells with numbers cannot be shaded.

Penpa Interface

• For shading use one of DG (Dark Grey), GR (Grey), LG (Light Grey) or BL (Black) colors (Submit button will only detect these colors as answer).
• Other colors can be used for auxiliary marking of un-shaded cells.

• Tip : On laptops -> Right click gives you green color. You can also use numbers to quickly switch between colors.

Example Puzzle

Rules Explanation

1. Shade some empty cells (shown using black color) to create a single connected wall (Shown using red line)

2. Numbers in a cell indicate the length of consecutive shaded blocks in the neighboring cells. (Shown using red numbering)

3. If there is more than one number in a cell, then there must be at least one unshaded cell between the shaded cell groups.

4. The shaded cells cannot form a 2X2 square anywhere in the grid. (shown by red Xs)

5. Any "?" represent any number greater than 0. Different "?"s in a particular cell may or may not be the same.