Day 22 - Cloud

With a newly painted Aerostar, you continue onto you meandering road trip, no destination in sight. It’s all vibes, going where the solar winds take you. As you cruise on through another galaxy, you see a cluster of nebulae ahead. You scan your in flight encyclopedia for information about navigating a nebula.

According to your sources, each nebula contains exactly 2 stars, and they are positioned in such a way that no two stars are adjacent. Also, in this region of space, there is a uniform density of stars, meaning there are the same number of stars in each row and column of the projected grid. Once you’ve located all the stars in this region of space, you can safely navigate these nebulae. What causes this cluster of nebulae in the first place?

  • Start near the middle of the puzzle, around the two 6-square sized zigzag shapes. Because of the rules, there will be at most one star in each 2x2 square of the map. In those zigzag patters you know one star must be in the three left-most squares and one star must be in the three right-most squares.

  • Counting from the upper left corner:

    There is a star in the 5th row, 5th column.

    There is a star in the 9th row, 6th column.

  • Read the stars in order from top to bottom, left to right.