Hello, Hello Friends (7x7 X-Sum Chaos Construction)
(Published on 11. April 2025, 05:41 by MaizeGator)
Hello, Hello Friends
I set this puzzle to celebrate ChattyKathy's 30th birthday. Inspired by the brilliant X-sum Chaos Construction puzzles from Abed Hawila, sfushidahardy, and Jesper, I set out to make an approachable puzzle with the same ruleset. The finished product turned out slightly more difficult than I had envisioned, but also much cooler!
- 7x7 Chaos Construction: Divide the grid into seven regions and place the digits 1-7 into every row, column, and region.
- X-Sums: A clue outside the grid indicates the sum of the first X cells in the direction of the clue, where X is the first digit seen in the direction of the clue.
- Region Building: The X cells seen by an X-sum clue belong to the same region, while the X+1'th cell belongs to a different region.
- Cipher: The letters CHATYK all stand for a unique digit from 0-9. Leading 0s (in the tens place) are not allowed.
- Cells clued by a birthday cake are either a 4, 1, or 3.
Solution code: Row 4, with "/" between cells separated by a region border
Comments
on 22. April 2025, 16:47 by Nemefish
I got stuck a few times but that is part of the nature of chaos construction. What a great gift
on 14. April 2025, 22:50 by Christounet
Lovely gift :)
on 11. April 2025, 14:52 by MaizeGator
Clarified rules to disallow leading 0s
on 11. April 2025, 14:50 by Franjo
What a lovely CC-present! Thank you very much for creating and sharing and: Happy birthday, ChattyKathy!
on 11. April 2025, 14:38 by Piatato
Sweet!
on 11. April 2025, 14:17 by Al Fresco
Very smooth and fun. Thank you
on 11. April 2025, 10:12 by wuc
Very nice. Not easy to set a fluent approachable cc puzzle. Congrats.
on 11. April 2025, 09:13 by Jesper
Lovely puzzle, thanks!
on 11. April 2025, 09:11 by Snookerfan
Beautiful puzzle! I found it easy and fun. I was not able to copy/paste the solution code, but that is probably my inaptitude. Thank you
MG: Ah, that's a shame it doesn't work... I thought I'd unlocked a new level of user-friendliness. I changed the completion message to "For LMD" instead, to avoid future confusion.
on 11. April 2025, 06:23 by CalvinM
Very nice puzzle! This was a genuine joy to figure out, and I never felt stumped.
on 11. April 2025, 06:19 by sfushidahardy
Lovely and smooth solve! Some fantastic region logic and shapes, despite the small grid.
