1. The
outlines of the differently-colored regions of a
picture, with
each
region marked with a
number corresponding to some
color of
paint,
intended to produce a painting, similar to
color by numbers.
2. A type of logic puzzle imported from Japan in the early 1990s by
GAMES Magazine and other publications. In this type of puzzle, a small
bitmap image is encoded by presenting the contents of each row and
each column as a list of the lengths of the groups of consecutive black
pixels in that row or column. Each group is separated from adjacent
groups in that row or column by at least one white pixel. There may or may
not be white pixels at the ends of the rows and columns.
These puzzles are readily adaptable to computer form. A web site
devoted to these puzzles is
http://www02.so-net.ne.jp/~kajitani/cgi-bin/pbn.cgi/index.html
Here's a sample paint by numbers puzzle:
2 1 1 2
2 2 2 2
4 6 2 1 1 1 4 3
4 . . . . . . . .
2 2 . . . . . . . .
2 2 . . . . . . . .
8 . . . . . . . .
8 . . . . . . . .
2 . . . . . . . .
2 . . . . . . . .
4 . . . . . . . .
Answer