Puzzle Description:

This is the center head of Hell's Gatekeeper Cerberus, as seen in episode 7 of the anime "Solo Leveling". When the protagonist attempts to enter the Demon Castle, he is confronted with the giant three-headed dog Cerberus. This head has two curved horns, one on each side, and fire atop its head instead of hair.

#1: AM (adrian) on Feb 14, 2026

Cool! Not easy, but easier than others in this series. No guessing.

From my experience making puzzles so far, if I use a color in the background, I can blot a greater percentage of the clues than if I leave the background as white. It also depends on how many "peninsulas" or "islands" I have that stick out from the main picture. Anything part of the puzzle separated from the largest part of the picture must naturally have fewer blots or the puzzle gains multiple solutions.

My goal when I make a puzzle with at least 2 colors is to always have it be solvable by color and line logic only. If I ever start making single color puzzles, especially if they fill in fewer blocks, I'll probably aim for moderate look-ahead with no blots. For now I like making multi-color pictures of anime characters. Once I exhaust Solo Leveling, I'll need to find a new source for ideas and pictures.

Enjoyable solve.

Question: how come this puzzles cannot be rated for solvability?

Re: Jota
When I create a puzzle, the creation tool has a checker which is very powerful, and can discover if the puzzle has multiple solutions. The checker also looks to see if the puzzle is solvable using only line logic, or only line & color logic. As long as the checker determines that the puzzle can be solved using one of these two methods, then when the puzzle is published the solvability status is pre-set.

One of the admins can probably explain more about how the system works and why it was setup this way. Props to whoever created and/or improved the creation tool checker, it greatly increases the speed at which puzzles can be created and tested.

I am very careful when I add blots to make sure a puzzle never moves beyond line & color logic only. My goal is to get the puzzle close to that line, but to never cross it.

Thanks!

It's Jan who created the checker. He had a strong interest in creating and improving puzzle-solvers. He's been gone since 2015; since then I am the admin and am happy to answer questions.

As Eric said: When the checker *can* tell if a puzzle is solvable, then when the puzzle is published it goes online with its solvability set. The checker is good, but it can't always tell. When the checker *can't* tell, then the puzzle goes online with a question mark, and a human person needs to come along and set the solvability. There are about ten people on the site who can set this.

Thanks!

Goto next topic

You must register and log in to be able to participate in this discussion.