Hanjie

No no... it's not some Chinese word I'm trying to teach or anything. (I'm probably the last person to even try to teach Chinese!). This is a Japanese puzzle... yes, another one of those logic puzzles. It's not numerical in nature, like Sudoku or Kakuro. It's more like filling in the blanks to form a picture in the end. Imagine a box of n x n squares. And at the end of each row and column, they give you a series of numbers which represent how many boxes in that row/column are to be filled.

The following is a simple example to start you off:

Puzzle: "Musical"

How To Play:
Let's start with the last column. The number '8' in the last column means that 8 boxes in a row must be shaded. Likewise in column 5, "1, 1" means that 2 boxes must be shaded, and these must be separated... one box at a time. So there cannot be 2 boxes shaded together. They must be separated by at least 1 spacing. Basically, that's all there is to it!

There are of course some basic tricks. Like, where do you start first? Personally I would start with the last column. In the last column, it says that 8 boxes out of the available 10 boxes must be shaded, in which case there would be some overlapping such that we can say for certain which boxes MUST be shaded. IE, there are only 3 possibilities for this column:

1. You start at the 1st box from the top. This will mean that the first 8 boxes will be shaded, leaving the last 2 boxes blank; OR
   
2. You start at the second box from the top. This will mean only the 1st and last box will be left blank; OR
3. You start at the third box from the top, leaving the first and second box blank.

You will find that under all 3 options, the 3rd till 8th box is ALWAYS shaded. Thus we can fill in these boxes for certain. There, you now have your starting point. :) Now, you can proceed to fill in part of Row 3 with the "1, 4" combination. Since the last box in that row is now filled in, you know for sure that the "4" boxes in a row has to end there. Thus you can fill in boxes 7th-9th in Row 3.

Another trick is to mark boxes where you know for sure should NOT be shaded. This will reduce the number of "eligible" boxes, thus making it easier to determine which sections should be shaded.

Do try it! It's really quite cool!! And extremely addictive!! :P