Samon: Designing a Zen Garden Raking Puzzle

Raking a Zen dry garden is a chore with the shape of a puzzle: a novice who walks into the sand leaves footprints, and must rake his way back out to the gate without crossing his own lines or raking anything twice. We design Samon ("sand patterns"), a puzzle game built on that rule: the player draws one stroke from the gate covering every cell of sand; the monk walks it in, sets down the rake, and walks backwards out, revealing the pattern.

Samon: Designing a Zen Garden Raking Puzzle
https://gwern.net/doc/design/2026-10-03-gwern-samon.html