• Easy — 0:46
• Medium — 3:23
• Hard — 9:10

Easy — 0:46

Easy today was about as clean as this puzzle gets. A couple of the zones basically solved themselves the moment I looked at the board — one region only had one real option, and once that tile landed, two more fell into place behind it like dominoes actually should. No real thinking required, more like pattern-matching on autopilot. Forty-six seconds and done, which might be close to a personal best for me.

Medium — 3:23

Medium is where I actually have to engage my brain, and today was a good example why. It was one connected board, but a winding, staircase-shaped one, and the zones snaked around each other enough that my first instinct kept leading me the wrong way. A couple of the “equal value” zones ended up being what actually forced my hand and got the rest to click into place. 3:23 feels about right for how fiddly it was.

Hard — 9:10

Nine minutes and ten seconds, and I felt every second of it. This board was big — two separate shapes again, and the larger one snaked around enough that I lost track of which zones I’d already satisfied more than once. I got stuck for a while in the middle where a few of the sum zones seemed to have more than one possible combination, and it took actually committing to one path and following it through before the rest of the board resolved. Definitely the kind of Hard puzzle where the last piece clicking into place felt genuinely satisfying instead of just a formality.

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