Featured Puzzle: Pencils #2 – Back to School Supplies!

It’s that time of year again! Head to the store with a list for pencils, pens, tissue paper, a new design for your Trapper Keeper — wait, wrong decade… Anyway, today we have another Pencils puzzle. I still love that this particular type of puzzle was invented by a student.

Draw pencils into the grid. Each pencil must also draw a line as long as itself, so that all grid cells are used.

• Pencils are 1-cell-wide rectangular regions of at least length 1, ending at the base of a tip (which doesn’t count toward the length).
• Cells with numbers must belong to a pencil of that length.
• Some pencils might contain more than one numbered cell. If so, they must be the same number.
• Not all tips are shown – you may discover extra pencils in the grid.
• Each pencil also draws a line, beginning at the tip, and extends a number of cells equal to the pencil length.
• Drawn lines travel in orthogonal directions that may have 90-degree turns. However, these lines may not cross themselves, a pencil, another tip, or any other line.
• All cells must belong to either a pencil, a line, or a tip.