Snek Is Friend
(Published on 27. May 2022, 01:44 by mith)
Snek Is Friend
by Philip Newman
Normal sudoku rules apply.
A cell is "friendly" if it has a value identical to its row-, column- or box-number, counted in the standard way - row 1 at the top, column 1 on the left, and boxes like this:
123
456
789
All friendly cells in the grid form a single one-cell-wide orthogonally-connected snake, which cannot touch itself, even diagonally.
Cells connected by dot are both friendly; if they are the same "type" of friendly (that is, both match the row-number, both match the column-number, or both match the box-number) the dot is white, and otherwise the dot is grey.
Play on f-puzzles
Play on CTC App
This puzzle is from a series of "nerd snipe" constructions, originally posted on the CTC fan discord server. It is something of a sequel to Why Can't We Be Friends? - the goal (which ryokousha had proposed at the same time as the friendly cell constraint itself) was to make a puzzle uniquely solvable by determining the path of a friendly snake including all friendly cells in the grid, with as little other information as possible. Special thanks to Discord user oberlirr, who provided an exhaustive search of friendly snakes; this puzzle almost certainly would have looked very different otherwise.
Video links: Mark Goodliffe (Cracking the Cryptic); Scott Strosahl (Scott Stro-solves)
by Philip Newman
Normal sudoku rules apply.
A cell is "friendly" if it has a value identical to its row-, column- or box-number, counted in the standard way - row 1 at the top, column 1 on the left, and boxes like this:
123
456
789
All friendly cells in the grid form a single one-cell-wide orthogonally-connected snake, which cannot touch itself, even diagonally.
Cells connected by dot are both friendly; if they are the same "type" of friendly (that is, both match the row-number, both match the column-number, or both match the box-number) the dot is white, and otherwise the dot is grey.
Play on f-puzzles
Play on CTC App
This puzzle is from a series of "nerd snipe" constructions, originally posted on the CTC fan discord server. It is something of a sequel to Why Can't We Be Friends? - the goal (which ryokousha had proposed at the same time as the friendly cell constraint itself) was to make a puzzle uniquely solvable by determining the path of a friendly snake including all friendly cells in the grid, with as little other information as possible. Special thanks to Discord user oberlirr, who provided an exhaustive search of friendly snakes; this puzzle almost certainly would have looked very different otherwise.
Video links: Mark Goodliffe (Cracking the Cryptic); Scott Strosahl (Scott Stro-solves)
Solution code: Row 2, followed by column 2
Solved by Steven R, Bjd, jalebc, Vebby, yttmssootuaykoh, Fluffydeath16, kkli, Bankey, SKORP17, shye, codewizard, gumby, JaiHu, mikepautov, Gliperal
Comments
on 11. July 2022, 10:58 by Bankey
That was a tough one! To discover the full snake was anything but friendly! Got it on the 3rd attempt over the last few weeks. Definitely a 5* for me, for difficulty. But a fun ride. Thanks for setting, @ Philip Newman :)
on 22. June 2022, 00:24 by Fluffydeath16
Excellent Puzzle, Very hard the whole way
