Printable puzzle book
Nurikabe puzzle book, one hundred puzzles on paper.
One hundred Nurikabe puzzles in one book, generated and checked by program, laid out to be printed and solved with a pencil. The book is called Voles, it runs to 108 pages, and it comes as two PDFs, one sized for A4 and one for US Letter.
- 100 puzzles: 25 easy, 30 medium, 30 hard, 15 challenge, in that order
- 108 pages, A4 and US Letter both included, solutions at the back
- every puzzle has exactly one solution, reachable without guessing
A real page out of the book, exactly as it prints. Tap it for the free five puzzle sample.
for the Voles book, both page sizes, VAT included. All ten books together are 19.90 €, which saves 29.10 € against buying them one by one.
Buy Voles for 4.90 € All ten for 19.90 €The buy button takes you to the shelf page, where the payment and the download live. Seller: ARLing s. r. o., Company ID 56583486, Bratislava. Stripe is merchant of record and issues the receipt. Terms and Withdrawal.
What is inside
One hundred puzzles, in order of difficulty.
The book holds one hundred Nurikabe puzzles and nothing else: 25 easy, 30 medium, 30 hard and 15 challenge, arranged so that difficulty rises through the book without a jump in the middle. The grids grow with it, from small ones at the front to the full sized challenge ones at the end.
In front of the puzzles are the rules with one worked example, so the book stands on its own without this page. At the back are the solutions to all one hundred, numbered to match.
You get two PDF files: one laid out for A4 and one for US Letter, 108 pages each, the same puzzles in both. Black and white, fonts embedded, vector line work, with cells large enough to shade in by hand without losing the clue numbers underneath.
The rules
Three rules, printed in the front of the book.
- Every number is a vole family, and it says how big their island is, the number's own cell included. Shade the rest of the meadow as water so that every island holds exactly one number and exactly that many cells.
- Islands never touch by a side. Two islands may sit corner to corner, never side by side, or they would be one island with two numbers.
- The water always hangs together as a single sheet, and no two by two block is ever all water.
One solution
Hard to see, not hard to guess.
A puzzle book can say unique solution and mean that somebody checked the answer once. We mean something narrower. Each puzzle is built by a program that also solves it, and the solver is asked to find two solutions; the puzzle is kept only if it finds exactly one, and only if it reached that one by applying rules rather than by shading a cell to see what happens.
The rule that the water stays connected and the rule that no two by two block is all water are both part of that check. Together they are what makes a Nurikabe solvable by reasoning instead of by search.
Two more things the program checks before the book is printed: no two puzzles are the same, and no two have the same answer. The program also re-derives every clue from the printed answer and compares it with the printed puzzle.
Before you pay
Look at it first.
- Free sample, five puzzles (PDF)
Taken from all four difficulty levels, so you can see the hard end before you decide. No account, no e-mail.
- Play a Nurikabe free today
A new one every midnight in the browser, with hints that explain themselves. The book holds different puzzles from the daily ones.
- All ten books on one page
Ten kinds of logic puzzle, 1000 puzzles in all, 19.90 € for the lot.
Questions
Before you pay.
What exactly do I get?
Two PDF files: one laid out for A4 and one for US Letter, 108 pages each. The puzzles are the same in both, only the page size differs. Both are black and white with the fonts embedded, there is no DRM and no account, and the files are yours to keep and print as often as you like.
Is Nurikabe the same as Islands in the Stream?
Yes, that is one of its English names, along with Cell Structure. Each number marks an island of that many unshaded cells, islands never touch by a side, and the shaded sea is connected and never forms a two by two block.
How do I print it?
On any home or office printer, in black and white. Choose the file that matches your paper and print at 100 percent or actual size rather than fit to page. The cells are drawn large enough to shade with a pencil without burying the numbers.
How do you know every puzzle has one solution?
Because a program checked all one hundred. The solver is run with a limit of two solutions; if it finds a second one the puzzle is thrown away. It also has to reach the solution by rules alone, without trial and error. On top of that the program re-derives every clue from the printed answer and compares it with the printed puzzle.
Can I get my money back?
By law, no, and we would rather say so before you pay. Digital content delivered immediately with your consent carries no right of withdrawal: in Slovakia that is section 19 paragraph 1 letter m) of Act No. 108/2024 Coll., across the EU Article 16 letter m) of Directive 2011/83/EU. The free sample exists precisely so you can decide first. If a file is broken or a puzzle is wrong, write to andrej@arling.sk.
Are these the same puzzles as the free daily game?
No. The book holds different puzzles from the daily ones, so nothing in it is a repeat. The free daily Nurikabe is at <a href="/games/voles/">arling.sk/games/voles</a> and the rules are identical.
Related
More to try.
Play Nurikabe free once a day in the browser: Nurikabe online.
All ten books, 1000 puzzles, 19.90 € together: ten puzzle books.