Featured Puzzle: Stitches #3 – Rev Up Your Sewing Machine!

Today in 1790, Great Britain issued Patent #1764 to Thomas Saint for the very first sewing machine design. Sadly, he may have patented the idea, but he never actually built and marketed his invention. That happened in 1874, thanks to William Newton Wilson, who discovered the old patent, built it, and proved it worked. To honor the day, let’s sew some Stitches!

Add buttons and stitches so that each region is connected to every neighboring region by one stitch each.

• A “stitch” is a line of length 1 between the centers of orthogonally adjacent cells in two neighboring regions.
• Each stitch has two “buttons” – one at each end.
• Only one button may fit in a cell, and it cannot be used by more than one stitch.
• Number clues tell you how many total buttons exist in that row or column.
• Rows & columns without clues might contain any number of buttons.