Pick-up Sticks (Peach)
(Published on 8. July 2025, 13:13 by marty_sears)
Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply.
Three adjacent digits along a peach stick must contain one low digit (1, 2 or 3), one medium digit (4, 5 or 6), and one high digit (7, 8 or 9.)
A stick always has a lower total (the sum of its digits) than any stick which lies on top of it.
Solution code: Row 9 from left to right
Comments
on 4. September 2025, 19:16 by KelleyCook
I started this colored everything mildly poorly, noticed a pattern and jumped to finishing the coloring spotted the key vertex colored (where 1+2=3) everything. But it didn't help so I gave up on it.
So this morning I restarted. With just that vertex and was able to color everything and switch to numbers. The 3s of course fell out right away.
Stared at the sticks and realized the Outies were actually the keys.
It quickly all fell into place.
on 20. July 2025, 15:18 by Klausku
Again, that‘s a brilliant puzzle. I spotted the break-in and got a few things sorted out. But I was stuck in mid-solve for a long time until I finally found the right intersection to look at. Thanks, again, Marty!
on 14. July 2025, 11:34 by sanabas
Enjoyed the puzzle, fun break-in, fun major step in the middle. But for some reason I find the light blue backgrounds/grid much harder to scan/concentrate on compared to darker outlined lines and the normal black grid on white background.
on 10. July 2025, 05:56 by Elker
Brilliant puzzle. Was fun throughout the whole solve.
on 9. July 2025, 09:50 by cyddrdrd
Glad that I helped with the revision of this wonderful puzzle. Hope we can see more nice puzzles in this series!
on 8. July 2025, 21:33 by TJ
Same here, got the break in on the previous version, made some complicated deductions but couldn't make the last one. New version then was a breeze.
on 8. July 2025, 20:47 by mscha
Yay, Mikadoku!
Whew... I've been staring at the original version of this for at least an hour. Got the break-in, but got stuck after that.
When I refreshed this page and saw that there was a new version, I finished it off in about half an hour.
on 8. July 2025, 19:01 by sujoyku
Wonderful puzzle! I especially loved the ending. Thank you, Marty!
on 8. July 2025, 18:57 by palpot
Fantastic puzzle!
on 8. July 2025, 18:37 by vitaminz
Lovely addition to a lovely series. I have been anticipating this constraint in particular and it didn’t disappoint!
