This is intended as a gentle introduction to one of my current favourite grid-deduction puzzle types: Aquarium.
The puzzle is played on a rectangular grid divided into regions called "aquariums" (delineated by thick black lines). Your aim is to "fill" each aquarium with water up to a certain level or leave it empty, by shading cells according to the following rules (adapted from puzzle-aquarium.com and Cracking the Cryptic):
- Within an aquarium, cells that are located in the same row are either all shaded or all unshaded.
- When a row is shaded in an aquarium, all cells positioned lower than that row in the same aquarium must be shaded as well.
- The numbers outside the grid indicate how many cells are shaded in the respective row or column. There can be regions without any shaded cell.
Below are two Aquarium puzzles of my own devising. The first can be solved relatively straightforwardly by applying the rules given above; the second is (just a little) more difficult and introduces a couple of additional techniques for solving puzzles of this type.
TASK: Solve both 11x11 Aquarium puzzles below, then combine the two solutions to tell me what are you likely to see when you look into my aquarium?
Please explain the key logical steps in your answer to help others follow your solution path. Enjoy!