Touching Ring Ring
Touching Ring Ring is a variation of the standard Ring Ring puzzle, first introduced by Pavel Yarkin in September 2025 as part of the Ring-Ring Rally contest.
The variant was inspired by the observation that corner-touching between loops does not break the original spirit of Ring Ring—the resulting structures resemble the same characteristic “cross” interactions seen in classic puzzles. However, allowing such touches freely would increase the variability of solutions.
To control this, the variant explicitly marks the positions where loops are allowed (and must) to touch at corners, giving rise to Touching Ring Ring: a pure structural extension of the original concept. The solver must still draw rectangular loops that collectively visit all cells, but now must also respect designated points where loops may (or must) meet diagonally.
The variant was inspired by the observation that corner-touching between loops does not break the original spirit of Ring Ring—the resulting structures resemble the same characteristic “cross” interactions seen in classic puzzles. However, allowing such touches freely would increase the variability of solutions.
To control this, the variant explicitly marks the positions where loops are allowed (and must) to touch at corners, giving rise to Touching Ring Ring: a pure structural extension of the original concept. The solver must still draw rectangular loops that collectively visit all cells, but now must also respect designated points where loops may (or must) meet diagonally.
Rules
Draw few rectangular loops through the centers of unshaded cell so that every unshaded cell is used. The sides of different rectangles may intersect each other, but not overlap. Two rectangles must have a common vertex in the marked cells and all cells where two rectangles share a vertex are marked.
Click to see the answer.