Bridges (Hashi) Puzzles are here
Hey folks, I’ve added some new Bridges puzzles to the site. In Japan, Bridges are known as Hashiwokakero which means “Bridge Building”. They are also known here as Hashi.
In these puzzles, you are presented with a collection of numbered circles, which represent islands. You connect the islands with bridges to form a network of roads so that you can reach any island from any other island. The number on each island indicates the number of outgoing bridges. You may only connect islands horizontally or vertically, and you may use one or two bridges to connect islands, but no more than two. Each Bridge puzzle has only one unique solution, which you can find without guessing.
Fans of Bridges will probably also like the Galaxy and Slitherlink puzzles in my collection, which also involve spatial reasoning.
September 16th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Wait, I always thought Hashi were named after the Japanese word for chopsticks. You know, because you can have at most two sticks between any two spots. Maybe it’s supposed to be a pun or something?
September 16th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Hey Erik,
According to the Wikipedia article, Hashi is a homonym. Written one way it means chopstick, and written another way it means bridge. Here’s the reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashiwokakero
September 17th, 2010 at 3:50 am
Well, to me it doesn’t matter how you call it – I just find it great that Hashis did finally arrive here. I like them a lot. :-)
Yashem
September 18th, 2010 at 11:24 pm
I’m printing off the first medium pack, and I’m excited to try these out!
But, FYI, the link to the large puzzles isn’t working (it leads back to the same page). :(
September 18th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Thanks for catching that! It’s fixed now.
September 23rd, 2010 at 5:11 pm
I discovered Hashiwokero puzzles not too long ago. My one source for the 25 x 25 format puzzles has only 49 puzzles (which I’ve done) so I’ve been looking for more. Any chance you’ll come out with an “extra large” 25 x 25 format?
Incidentally, there does seem to be a formatting/generation error in your large 20 x 20 puzzles. If you look closely you’ll see some that have a pair of overlapping islands right in the center. Puzzles 4, 6, 8, 11, 13 and 15, for example have this issue. It doesn’t affect solving (except there is no space to draw the lines and you can’t see the lines in the solutions). You might want to check your puzzle generation software for the 20 x 20 puzzles and consider redoing them.
September 23rd, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Hi Blaine,
Thanks for catching the formatting error: I’ll fix these problems tonight,
and add a set of 25x25s over the weekend.
– Jim