LinkedIn Patches #124 Answer & Analysis

The top-left 6 and top-right 9 are heavily constrained by the borders, so they should be placed immediately. The left corner patch can only occupy the 3x2 block in the upper-left, while the green 9 cleanly fits the upper-right 3x3 block.

Once the corners are fixed, the remaining top-band patches are forced into tall, thin shapes. The 4, 3, and 3 patches in columns 3 to 5 must stand vertically, because no other arrangement leaves room for the large green block on the right.

The left side is split into two clean vertical regions: the orange 3 below the top-left block and the teal 4 beneath it. On the opposite side, the gray 5 is forced into the far-right column, because the center and top-right regions already consume the surrounding space.

The yellow 4 across row 4 is a key divider between the upper regions and the center. It separates the top group from the large brown 8, and it also keeps the lower patches from touching the upper bands too early.

After the center is fixed, the remaining space falls into three clean regions: a blue 4 on the right, a pink 4 across the lower middle, and the two bottom patches on the last row and left corner. This is where the puzzle becomes a simple fill-in of the remaining connected spaces.