Part of Carl's Christmas Puzzle Hunt: 2014
[Star Battle is another puzzle I discovered at GM Puzzles and is a puzzle type where I have already published my own there. This puzzle here is much easier than what I published at gmpuzzles.com. This is designed to be very friendly to anyone new to Star Battle. At least one of my sons reported that this was his favorite puzzle of all the puzzles this year.]
This puzzle has got your names written all over it. Stick it out to the end for a nice hint.
First, fill some cells in the grid below with stars so that each
row, column, and bold region contains 2 stars. Stars cannot be placed
in adjacent cells that touch even at a corner.
Then, copy the final star locations to the second grid
below. There's your hint.
[Note: I chose the specific letters C, H, A, and S here only because they are the first letters of each of my son's names. The shading is used in the solution to the puzzle, but these specific letters are not, (they could have been meaningless shaded regions and the puzzle would work the same).]