Tasuki Aizu Crossings: the grid looked done, but no win
The grid glowed finished, and the win button stayed silent. Somewhere in the net one extra segment was hiding.
The scene
The puzzle asked something simple: draw one horizontal and one vertical segment through every dot so each segment crosses exactly the given number of foreign ones. I moved fast, clicking grid edges, switching segments on. I never touched Reset. And then the finale: every dot covered, the numbers seemingly right. But the game refused the win. So somewhere I had lied to myself.
The suspect with two crossings
I walked my clicks back. Segment by segment, number by number. And I found it mid-field: a vertical demanding two, crossed by three strangers. When I placed it, two crossings were already there, and the third arrived later, when I drew a neighboring horizontal and never recounted. Classic: the error sits not where you search but where you already checked.
One click fixes everything
I took the neighboring segment off with one click and moved it to the next edge. The crossings settled at two and two. The layout matched the solution, the win counted. The repair took ten seconds. The hunt took fifteen minutes.
The habit of recounting neighbors
Now after every new segment I glance at its neighbors: did anyone gain a spare crossing. The number by the dot is no decoration, it is a counter that shifts with every foreign step. The puzzle plays fair: it hides nothing, it waits until you notice.