Slither Link

I've been kind of a one-puzzle man these days.

http://kwontomloop.com

It's called slither link and some other names at other sites, but I like the community at kwontomloop. Plus there are plenty of archival puzzles for years of play. I find slither link has a vary satisfying geometric bent and great depth as there are always new patterns to learn.

It takes a while to get up to speed with the patterns, so the first month or so is mostly about deriving proofs. E.G. two 3's next to each other must have a line between them, or else that would form a loop. After a while these sink into your brain and everything speeds up. When you're learning put x's everywhere you can, but eventually try to limit them to where they are really helpful. I don't use x's on monthly beasts at all anymore.

I haven't been working on learning patterns recently, so I've never been able to complete a week's puzzles in under a half hour, though I almost always do it under 50 minutes. It probably took me a month or so to join "club 59".

I'd suggest learning by solving Monday problems in the archive until you can do them in under 10 minutes or so. Feel free to ping me if you have any questions.

Hmm... I just checked and apparently I've solved 806 daily puzzles and 1180 puzzles from the archive. I believe the only time I missed doing a puzzle since I started was my honey moon. After all that, I still like them, which is not something I can say for Sudoku, Killer sudoko, or other puzzles (though the Killer Sudoku laster a few months for me).

Wow that makes me sound like a huge dork. My handle on kwontomloop is Bear.