At some point I will want to go through this list of Japanese puzzles on wikipedia and do a write up for all of them. For right now, I will write them up as I encounter them.
I found this blog recently that contains a few examples of a puzzle called “Mochikoro.” It’s nearly impossible to find any english web sites that feature this puzzle or have descriptions of it. In fact, at the time of this writing, neither wikipedia nor the blog I linked above has any description of the puzzle or instructions on how to solve one.
Fortunately, the blog does contain a link to a page where the puzzle is called “Archipelago” and instructions for solving are included.
The basic idea is to think of the puzzle space as made up of blocks which are either water and land. The numbered squares are land squares and are part of a rectancular island of land that contains the number of blocks indicated by the number. No 2X2 pools of water can exist in the puzzle space and all islands must be joined together diagonally into an archipelago (hence the english name.)
If you’re interested, click over to the blog and try one out. In the meantime, I might write up a wikipedia entry.
Image copyright 2005-6 Adam R. Wood
