Puzzle 94: Writer Block

Cross the Streams Shade some of the cells black so that all black cells are connected and no 2×2 square is entirely shaded black. The clues outside the grid gives the contents of the corresponding row/column, reading from left to right and from top to bottom. A number means a group of consecutive black cells; two different groups in the same row/column must be separated by at least one white cell. A question mark indicates a single group of unknown size; an asterisk indicates an unknown number of groups (which may differ in size, and there might be no group at all).

Expected difficulty Hard • Answer • Comment/E-mail if you want a solution to be published

Puzzle 94: Writer Block
Cross the Streams

Yay, I’m back. Actually, this might be temporary as well; I’m not sure why I don’t feel the same interest on making puzzles as I had a few years ago, but let’s hope I can still trickle out puzzles occasionally. (The title is a reference on that. Just back from writer block, if this is considered writing. Better than a title like “Logical”, at least.)

Meanwhile, I’ve been playing several “programming” games. I’ve completed SpaceChem (finished all obligatory puzzles for the story) a few months back; I got my hands on TIS-100 which I recently completed (but with the upcoming bonus campaign I’ll have several more puzzles to do); I’m redoing Manufactoria after I realized I haven’t completed it. Those might be not exactly the kind of puzzles that you (as in people that enjoy pencil puzzles like this) like, but who knows.