Cidouri
If numbers and letters aren't your thing, how do dots grab you? Fast, fun and easy-to-learn, Cidouri is a devilishly addictive puzzle that is guaranteed to send you dotty with its infuriatingly perplexing, join-the-dots gameplay. Ideal for novice puzzlers and serious boffins alike.
How to...
All you have to do is connect every white dot to a different black dot using a vertical or horizontal line. You can only use each dot once and the lines cannot cross. Easy? You decide.
When you find a potential connection, click on your selected dot then click on the dot you want to connect to. If you make a mistake, click on the incorrect dot then click on the dot it should connect to.
Example 1
The first thing you need to do when tackling any Cidouri is find the dot that can only be connected in one way. The best way to find this 'one link wonder' is to look in the corners of the puzzle. In this example you can see that the highlighted black dot can only be linked to the white dot below. That's because the only other dot it could be linked to (the one to its right) is black, and black dots can only be connected to white dots.
By searching for similar forgone conclusions it is sometimes possible to complete the whole puzzle. But most of the time it's not that simple.
Example 2
Once you move on to more taxing puzzles you may well find yourself in the baffling situation shown in Example 2. As you can see, every dot that isn't linked has at least two options of connection (as shown by the arrows). In this case it pays to look for the most central link available, one that divides the most dots. Take a look at the next example and you'll see what we mean.
In this diagram the dotted line is connecting the most central link available. The trick is to work out what would happen if this link was correct. You can see that the highlighted dots would have to be connected but that the black dot beneath it cannot be connected at all. This means the dotted line is an incorrect connection and can be ruled out. It's all about linking and thinking hypothetically.
