Welcome back! In just a few weeks, The Shattered Alarm will be celebrating its one-year publication anniversary. I’d like to reiterate how grateful I am for everyone who has read the book and reached out to me with their thoughts. And don’t worry about this being the end, because I have more projects in the works; for now, though, let’s get to this month’s puzzle.

The next entry is based on Skyscrapers. In the Hawkeye family’s living room, Corey Hawkeye is building a city out of toy blocks. The city contains several towers of different heights, and Corey would like to arrange them in a specific manner. Place a tower in each cell according to the following conditions:

• Each tower’s height varies from 1 to the size of the grid (e.g. the maximum tower height for a 4×4 grid would be 4).
• You cannot have two towers with the same height on a given row or column.
• The numbered arrows outside the grid indicate how many towers you would see if you looked in the direction of the arrow.

The pictures below depict a sample puzzle on a 4×4 grid, along with its solution. Note that you cannot see a tower if a taller tower is in front of it; the towers’ heights were drawn to scale to illustrate this concept.

Now, can you solve the puzzle below and help Corey build his towers?

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. It truly is possible for every bird to have its own personal space!