Talk:Nurikabe (puzzle)

The example puzzle seems to have a second solution, different to the one published.

if 'O's are islands and '%' are streams:

OO%%%%%%%O

%%%OO%OO%O

%O%OOO%%%%

%O%%O%OO%O

%%O%O%O%OO

O%O%%%%O%%

O%%OO%OO%O

%%OO%%%%%O

%O%%%OO%OO

also seems to be a solution.


 * Black squares must connect in a single stream. Your 5th row 8th column has an isolated %, an isolated "pond" of water which prohibited by the rules. Alsee 15:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yep, the stream squares are not exactly "streams"; they should form a single stream. Wipe 02:09, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

What is a binary determination puzzle?
I was suprised to see "binary determination puzzle" did not have its own wiki article, despite appearing on many of the puzzle pages. Is this accepted terminology? What, exactly, does it mean? Quaternion (talk) 04:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I suspect that "binary" refers here to the fact that every square has two possible states. I concur that the opening paragraph is not very good as of now. Wipe (talk) 23:54, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

question about Extra rule against loops
Hi everyone, when I first played a Nurikabe (i believe from here ) I thought I remembered a rule about the black stream not being allowed to form loops where an island or group of islands has a solid stream surrounding it. The easiest example of I this I can come up with is BBB B1B ?BB where B means black and 1 is an island and the question mark is unknown so far. According to this rule, the '?' must be a '.' (or part of an island) because otherwise the black 'B' would form a loop around the '1' island. This rule may be implied by the term "orthagonal contiguous" but i can't find out exactly what that means. so its up for discussion. thanks folks --Balzi (talk) 23:48, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I thought I remembered this too, although I can't remember where I saw it, and I can't find such a rule mentioned on any sites now. It is not implied by "orthogonally contiguous", which simply means "connected in a single group, and diagonal connections don't count". It's too bad too, because I really like that rule. It's a logical extension of the no squares rule, and it gives more global consequence to local decisions. Andrewstoneman (talk) 03:18, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Odd terms, island and sea, used in the rules
Given the puzzle is named after a ghost wall, it seems odd the rules section talks about islands and seas. I had it described to me as a single wall, with no 2x2 areas as that's not a wall but a pillar, surrounding gardens. This seems more in keeping with the name. Are we sure the rules are using the correct original terms? -- Ralph Corderoy (talk) 09:33, 21 February 2022 (UTC)