Hawfold

Hawfold takes the loop puzzle made popular by the Japanese publisher Nikoli, often called Slitherlink, and draws it as a map of an English parish. The grid is a patchwork of fields, and some fields carry a number saying how many of their four sides are hedged. Fields without a number can have any number of hedges. You plant hedges along the boundaries until every number is satisfied, and the result is a single closed loop that never branches, never crosses itself and has no loose ends.

Each puzzle has exactly one solution and never needs guessing. Every parish is made by drawing the loop first and reading the numbers off it, and each carries the seed and program version it was made from, so anyone can recreate it and check.

The tools follow how strong solvers think. You can mark a boundary as hedge or open, and shade fields as inside or outside the loop, since fields either side of a hedge are on opposite sides and fields either side of an open boundary are on the same side. If you get stuck, Show me the next step finds something that must be true, explains why and only then draws it, as often as you like. There are full keyboard controls, optional soundscapes made from field recordings, and an archive of every parish so far.

Hawfold is free, has no advertising and needs no account. It suits players who like pure logic grids and want a calm daily puzzle with help on hand.