WerkFrix

Greetings from the salt flats!

Out here brine walks through shallow pans until it gives up its salt. WerkFrix packs that work into two deduction puzzles and two benches.

Pan Marks is my morning habit. Each board splits into walled regions. Set one salt tack in every region, then check your lines: no three tacks in a straight row or column, and from pan 13 the diagonals count too. Boards climb from 3x3 with three regions to 7x7 with eleven, with crust cells and fewer givens. Sixty-four pans.

Brine Spans fills the evenings. Each channel is a grid filled with digits 1 to N, once per row and column. The number beside a channel sums the digits strictly between its two anchor sluices, the 1 and the highest digit. Seventy-two channels up to 7x7.

The benches earn their keep. Evap Bench turns pond area, depth and evaporation rate into days to saturation and brine density. Harvest Bench turns crust depth and bulk density into tonnage, purity grade and a rake cutlist. File any run to the Ledger.

Wish you were here.