Symphonie Fantastique
(Published on 19. August 2025, 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
on 24. October 2025, 01:37 by lmdemasi
This is not a good puzzle.
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It's 4 good puzzles.
on 29. August 2025, 00:47 by marty_sears
This was extraordinary! The fact that I would almost certainly not have been able to solve all of it myself did not spoil my enjoyment of it. Great ideas, and amazing presentation too. You can tell how much time and love went into it. Stu continues to be a wonderful asset to this community
on 29. August 2025, 00:06 by ViKingPrime
This was stunning. This might very well be my favourite set of puzzles, period. It was immediate from the first how truly special this pack would be, a journey which for me personally was derailed (temporarily!) by my inability to see a clear path forward.
There are certainly ways to short-circuit the logic on display - seems almost unavoidable within the limitations of a 6x6 - but taking the time to go back and find those intended steps, the elegance of each puzzle shines through.
If you've gone through and finished a solve, I encourage you to come back to this at a later date with a fresh set of eyes. Any particular pain points you may have had will melt away when you finally connect the pieces together in the way the author intended.
This is the first and only puzzle I have ever described as "symphonic" which is all the more fitting given the theme. I hope these puzzles do not get lost to time, this is a landmark series from one of the (if not THE) premier setters of our age.
on 19. August 2025, 20:54 by ThePedallingPianist
Small tweaks, including to puzzle 3
on 19. August 2025, 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 :)
on 19. August 2025, 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 :)
