Symphonie Fantastique
(Published yesterday, 02:04 by ThePedallingPianist)
I've created a puzzle representing each of the symphony's five movements, with each puzzle's solution message containing a link to the next. My hope was that the solve times of each puzzle approximately correlate to the lengths of the musical movements that they represent, though I do have a terrible habit of making my puzzles unintentionally difficult! So please do have a go at listening along as you solve, but don't be disheartened if it's not possible - honestly on reflection I think I'd need to be on 0.5x playback speed to manage it, though I don't recommend this artistically!
With thanks to Phil The Hat for his excellent line curving tool that helped with aesthetics, and my dad and Justin V for yet more excellent testing. My dad may in fact have his own similar project in the pipeline, so keep an eye out for that one!
Solution code: Digits on the witch's path to the moon in the final puzzle
Comments
yesterday, 20:54 by ThePedallingPianist
Small tweaks, including to puzzle 3
yesterday, 19:23 by vitaminz
What an absolutely fascinating journey with some really exceptional puzzles.
But you are far too good a solver to try to predict the solving times of us mere mortals :)
yesterday, 13:27 by eladv
What a ride! Puzzles 3 through 5 have been the most difficult 6x6 sudokus I've ever solved.
Number 3 took me a whopping 110 minutes, while 4 and 5 took me around 30 minutes each, but I did bifurcate. I have no idea how to solve either of them without bifurcation, although I plan to revisit them right now and find out!
I love the Idee Fixe constraint. It allows some deviously hard logic, because it provides a very "soft" constraint, which only becomes relevant/usable at an unknown time in the solve, so you have to keep coming back to it. It's infuriating, but I kind of love it -- it might be the constraint with the most "softness" I've seen. (Another recent one that comes to mind is the White Chocolate constraint from Juggler's recent puzzles, "Well, Maybe Just One". But over there it's a 4x4, and here it's brutally hard.)
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the Symphonie Fantastique (with accompanying music!), which lived up to its name, despite (or maybe because of) the intricate solve! Thank you very much TPP!!!
(To make this comment visible I'm removing a comment about a constraint, which TPP replied to. Here is the other part of his reply
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TPP: Well done on getting through it, and managing the puzzles in a good time by the sounds of it - I definitely made them way too hard to be solved during the music!!
I've made a slight change to the 3rd puzzle to try and make it a little less brutal, and if you have Discord I'd be happy to talk you through the intended solve paths for puzzles 4 and 5! Thanks again for spending so much time on this one :)
