Hooked on Puzzles - Hanjie / Shady Puzzles / Picross

This is an interesting number puzzle. The world is now hooked on Sudoku (am hooked on it too!) but have yet to be totally hooked on Hanjie. I find Hanjie more interesting because you can see a picture forming (as below).

You fill / paint in blocks based on the numbers given horizontally and vertically eg. 7 2 (see column 3)  means there are 2 groups of painted blocks, the first block is 7 consecutive squares and the second block 2 consecutive squares. The rest of the column is not to be painted, therefore I have crossed them out. The result is a picture of a panda (in this case).

Challenging puzzles escalate with bigger grids. Well, there are some puzzles that are small but can be very challenging too. You may come to a point where you will need additional logic, somewhat similar to guessing like in Sudoku. Try it and you will see it for yourself.

I came back from Osaka recently and was very excited when I found such puzzles readily available in Japan (you can hardly find them in Singapore). I bought a few magazines there and have been squinting my eyes doing these puzzles. I just simply love them!

If you are interested, you can find ONLY 1 such magazine in Kinokuniya and it cost a bomb! I have 2 such magazines on sale in eBay. You may want to take a look at them.

And if you cannot get enough of them, there are such puzzle books in bookshops but as usual, they cost a bomb! The cheapest I got was 5 volumes of such puzzles in Popular a few years back, by a Taiwan publisher. And at that time, I got them at 50% discount. I have finished 1 book, given 2 books to my sister and will work on the other 2 books later.

Seriously, try this puzzle in place of Sudoku (am alternating between Sudoku and Hanjie currently). You may find another love.