Welcome back! Whether you’re a newcomer or a diehard puzzle fan, thanks for stopping by. This upcoming puzzle is one of my favorite types, so I hope you enjoy it.

The next entry is based on Akari, which roughly translates to “Light Up” from Japanese. Leopold Bertrand, a freelance electrician in Granville, has been commissioned to install a series of lamps in one of the city’s parks. However, town planners would like to use just enough lamps to illuminate the entire park. Given a map of the park (a grid), your goal is as follows:

• Place lamps on the grid so that every dark blue square is lit. A lamp illuminates all squares in the same row or column until it reaches the end of the grid, or until a tree blocks the path of light.
• No lamp may illuminate another lamp; in other words, two lamps cannot be in the same row or column.
• Each tree has a number, which indicates how many lamps must share an edge (not diagonal) with that tree.

The pictures below depict a sample puzzle on a 5×5 grid, along with its solution. The yellow cells and arrows in the solution show how the light extends from a lamp.

Now, can you solve the puzzle below and help Leo light up the park?

The solution will be released in the next blog post. Also, if you tried the puzzle from the last blog entry, here is its solution below. Were you able to satisfy all the chickens?