The last two weeks have gotten a fair number of comments – many positive, but many calling the puzzles “too easy”. Admittedly, over the 80 weeks I’ve written so-called “Friday Puzzles“, these were some of my more basic weeks. But there are many good reasons to start slowly when constructing a new type of puzzle, particularly when introducing new types to an unfamiliar audience, and I felt my sometimes brain-busting content was not the right way to start. Still, I think the Star Battle and Shikaku posts had some really good puzzles, including the regular but easy Shikaku which had a simple but elegant solve. This week, I’ve revisited the themes of the last two weeks to offer this “booster shot” of puzzles. I still haven’t taken these puzzles to crazy extremes, but here are (hopefully) more challenging versions of the recent Star Battle and Shikaku puzzles. Enjoy!

Star Battle:
Place stars into some cells in the grid so that each row, column, and region contains exactly two stars (in the example, just one star). Stars cannot be placed in adjacent cells, not even diagonally.

Example:

Puzzle:

Shikaku Variant:
Divide the grid below into rectangles so that all cells belong to one rectangle and so that each rectangle contains one numbered circle. The numbered circle must indicate the area of the rectangle, not counting any of the gray cells, as seen in the following example.

Example:

Puzzle:

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Authors: Thomas Snyder

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