Learn To Play Pencil Puzzles

Today Simon turns again to the Genuinely Approachable Pencil Puzzles published on the new channel "Daily Pencil Puzzle Discussion" on the Cracking The Cryptic Fan Discord server.  This channel publishes one new puzzle every day and they are an absolute treat.  You can join the Discord server here:
Discord: discord

If you do enjoy this video there is another with eight different puzzles available right now for our patrons on Patreon:

Patreon: crackingthecryptic

and also another video like this one, which is on the channel already here:
What Is A "Pencil Puzzle"?

Puzzle 1: Yajilin by jovi_al

https://tinyurl.com/2p872bc8

Rules: Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of all of the remaining empty cells. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the number of shaded cells in a straight line in the indicated direction between the clue and the border of the puzzle (i.e. clues see through each other). You may place shaded cells that do not directly see or interfere with any of the clues.

Puzzle 2: Slant by Tyrgannus

https://tinyurl.com/2p8u8t6t

Rules: Draw a diagonal line in each cell that connects the opposite corners of that cell. Diagonal lines cannot form closed loops within the puzzle. Numbered clues show how many lines are extending from that circle. Note that EVERY cell must have a diagonal line through it.

Puzzle 3: Easy as ABC by Freddie Hand

https://tinyurl.com/5dv2456m

Rules: Place letters from the range given outside the grid (A-C in this case) into some cells so that each row and column contains each letter once. A clue outside the grid represents the first letter seen in the corresponding row or column from that direction.

Puzzle 4: Voxas by Eric Fox

https://tinyurl.com/5fuvrxe9

Rules: Divide the grid into 1x2 and 1x3 regions. Borders must separate two different regions. Borders with white dots separate regions with the same size and orientation. Borders with black dots separate regions with neither the same size nor the same orientation. Borders with grey dots separate regions with either the same size or the same orientation, but not both.

Puzzle 5: Compass by shye

https://tinyurl.com/yckhh5ys

Rules: Divide the grid into regions of orthogonally connected cells, each containing exactly one compass. A number in a compass indicates how many cells belong to its region that are further in the indicated direction than the compass itself.

Puzzle 6: Moon or Sun by jovi_al

https://tinyurl.com/ycknejry

Rules: Draw a non-intersecting, non-branching loop through the centers of some cells which enters and exits each region exactly once. Within a region, the loop must pass through all moons and no suns, or all suns and no moons. The loop may not pass through the same type of clue in two consecutively used regions.

Puzzle 7: Nurikabe by Tyrgannus

https://tinyurl.com/2vjpwjt5

Rules: Shade cells in the puzzle where all shaded cells are orthogonally connected but never form a 2x2 shaded region. Number clues are never shaded and show the number of orthogonally connected unshaded cells it is part of. All unshaded areas are clued.

Puzzle 8: Meandering Numbers by Freddie Hand

https://tinyurl.com/2p88bnu5

Rules: Place a number into each cell so that each region contains an orthogonally-connected chain of consecutive numbers from 1 to N, where N is the number of cells in the region. Numbers of the same value may not touch one another, not even diagonally.