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Fillomino On Sudoku

Fillomino On Sudoku

Nikoli invented this puzzle in 2001. Once called Allied Occupation, Fillomino is a merger of the words Filled and Polyomino. A Polyomino describes the shapes assumed of a varying number of multiple cells, that have at least one side touching another cell.

Wikipedia describes this as a logic puzzle and gives more elaborate rules, particularly about the possibility that 2 or more given numbers could belong to the same pentomino. Solution methods are also offered.

As this is a fairly popular puzzle in its own right, there are a variety of Websites that offer Fillomino:

  • Puzzle Club a British Site offers Many Math, Number, Logic, and Word Puzzles in addition to Fillomino. Registration is 10 Pounds/Year
  • Vegard Hanssen’s Fillomino Puzzles, which has more than 16,000 Puzzles in its database. Mr. Hanssen is a perl programming language afficionado, See his perl scripts for generating his name(s).
  • Brainbashers.com provides 8x8s, 12×12 and 16×16 size grids for their daily Fillomino puzzles.
  • Simon Tatham has a similarly named puzzle called Filling on his website.
  • Finally, Djape.net has an interesting discussion about Fillomino Skyscrapers which is a mashup of Fillomino and what I called buildings. The numbers on the outside are clues to how many “buildings” can be viewed from that location. Higher valued numbers block lower valued numbers, but offer interesting clues about the composition of the row or column. See my Sudoku Buildings Cartoon posted last July 15, 2007.

Get your fill of Fillomino! (but take your time.)