Hello again! It’s hard to believe this is the twentieth entry in my puzzle blog, as it feels like I just started it yesterday. I hope that solving these puzzles has allowed you to exercise your brain while learning more about the characters in my detective series. Figuring out which type of puzzle suits each character is a puzzle in itself, but I enjoy it all the same. Now, please enjoy this month’s puzzle and many more to come!

The next entry is again based on Akari, which roughly translates to “Light Up” from Japanese. As a reminder, Leopold Bertrand has been hired 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.
• Some trees are marked with 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. Chickens need their personal space just like everyone else!