Adjacent 3s
Medium
Used by Smart Hint
Two 3s side by side: the outer edge of each one — the side facing away from its partner — is always a line.
- Edge the technique adds
- Cells that establish the pattern
How it works
- Two 3s sharing an edge. A 3 has exactly one blank side, so each of these cells is one X away from being fully drawn.
- Suppose the left 3's OUTER edge were that blank side. Then it takes its top, its bottom, and the edge it shares with its neighbour.
- Now the dot at the top of the shared edge already has two lines meeting at it — the left 3's top, and the shared edge itself. A dot never carries more than two, so everything else there is blank, including the right 3's top. The dot at the bottom kills the right 3's bottom the same way.
- That strands the right 3 with only two sides available: the shared edge and its own outer edge. It can't reach 3.
- So the left 3's outer edge is a line — and by the mirror image, so is the right 3's. Both are forced without ever deciding the shared edge.
- The shared edge is a line too, but that needs a different argument: leaving it blank gives each 3 its other three sides, which closes a tiny rectangle. Only Loop Avoidance (or a Quad Window against the board's border) can rule that out.