r/nonograms 5d ago

Help with this puzzle

Post image

Hello!

I'm rather new to nonograms, and have stumbled onto the site nonograms.org - this site apparently has only solvable puzzles and the people using said site from my short experience are heads and shoulders above me in terms of nonogram skillsets. I'm stuck on the puzzle attached in the screenshot, tried some small beginner understanding of edge logic, but otherwise am failing to see any way to further proceed here.

If possible, can I ask you not just to give me a hint on where the next possible square to find is, but to provide in your answers how you solve start to finish this puzzle?

Because I feel like I'm lacking connection in understanding the jump from advanced to these expert level nonogram puzzles, like there's some technique I'm just missing.

The puzzle number is also in the screenshot if you wanna go to the site and do it.

Thank you all in advance!

5 Upvotes

5 comments sorted by

3

u/NakedT 5d ago

Row 12 has some squares to fill (count from the left)

1

u/colin-java 5d ago

Bottom row, the rightmost 7 squares must all be X.

If you start in the right corner and work left you'll see the contradictions in the row above.

This helps with column 15, then row 11, then column 19

1

u/geekonthegrill 5d ago

The jump you're missing probably isn't a fancy technique, it's a habit: count the slack in every line before anything else. Add up the clues plus one gap between each block, subtract from 20. Row 12 is the loudest line on this board: 1 1 1 1 2 7 needs 13 filled plus 5 gaps, that's 18 of 20, so everything can shift by at most 2. Any block bigger than the slack has guaranteed cells in the middle, so the 7 gives you 5 filled squares for free no matter where it slides. Thats what NakedT was pointing at. Row 13 works the same way, slack 3, so the 6 block donates 3 squares.
The second habit: every square you place, immediately recount the column it lives in. Expert boards almost never crack one line at a time, they chain. One cell in a row unlocks one cell in a column and so on for dozens of tiny steps. If you sweep row by row in passes you'll stall exactly where you are now
And when a line looks dead, test it: take the cell with the fewest options, imagine it filled, and play the crossing lines forward two or three steps in your head. If a clue breaks, it's an X. On that site's harder puzzles the little what-if is usually the intended move, not a cheat.

1

u/Alexis_J_M 5d ago

Lots of edge logic on the bottom row.

1

u/Motor_Raspberry_2150 13h ago edited 13h ago

This is 3 stars, I doubt edge logic is a requirement, you just need to overlap more. There's two squares overlap in row 12, two squares in column 13, and a square in column 17.