Leaf Fall Puzzle
How to Start
It’s fall in New England and the red and gold maple leaves
are covering the woodland floor. One click or tap on a square puts down a red leaf, a second tap places a gold leaf
and three taps picks both leaves up. The aim of this puzzle is to place more red and gold leaves
on the board obeying these three rules —
1 Every row and every column must have four red and four gold leaves.
2 Not more than two of any colour leaf can be together in a row or column.
3 Each row must be different and each column must be different.
This is a simple puzzle although it needs thought. The ‘Hint’ may be useful. The ‘Check’ button will
search the board and remove any leaves in the wrong place. There is also the
emergency Solve button simply to prove that there is a solution to each puzzle.
History
This puzzle game was originally devised by Adolfo Zanellati in Bologna, Italy called ‘Tohu-wa-Vohu’.
Perhaps the name was a mistake. In 2009, puzzlers, Frank Coussement and Peter De Schepper (www.peterfrank.be) in Belgium
registered the same puzzle under the better name, ‘Binairo’ using characters 1 and 0 instead of Zanellati’s 0 and X.
It was published in the Belgian daily newspaper, Algemeen Dagblad. Later it appeared, for some unknown reason
with a change of name to ‘Takuzu’, in the French newspaper, Le Figaro and in 2018 the English newspaper,
the Daily Mail introduced it as ‘Kurosu’. In Japan, also in 2009, Naoki Inaba devised a version using
X and 0 with added black squares and the extra rule, not more than two in any diagonal. He called it ‘Marupeke’.
Are you still awake? For more puzzles try www.puzzle-binairo.com and www.binarypuzzle.com. The Android app. is called ‘Binoxxo’,
the Apple app. is called ‘Zuzu’. Begs the question, why?
