Hello again! Sorry for the late post, but late is better than never. I hope you’re beating the summer heat with some air conditioning and plenty of water. The next best thing to stay cool, of course, is a puzzle; in that case, you came to the right place!

The next entry is based on Slitherlink. Jack Miller, a mail carrier in Hertz County, has to navigate some tricky neighborhoods on his route. Some houses can only be approached from specific angles, and some can’t be approached at all! Given a map of the neighborhood (a grid), use the following guidelines to build Jack’s route:

• Draw line segments between the houses to form a single loop without crossings or branches.
• The number on each house indicates how many line segments must surround it.

The pictures below depict a sample puzzle on a 5×5 grid, along with its solution. The orange lines represent the complete route; note that every house does not have to be inside the loop (although that condition offers a fun variation of this puzzle).

Now, can you solve the puzzle below and help Jack construct his mail route?

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. Look how brightly the park shines now!