Divide & Conquer
(Published on 21. August 2025, 14:22 by .proxz14)
Rules:
1)Latin Square: Place the digits 1-9 into every row and column once each.
2)Permaculture: Divide the grid into 2 areas of orthogonally connected cells. One of them is a Cave, the other is a Coral.
3)Cave: Shade some cells such that each unshaded cell is orthogonally connected (creating the cave), and each block of shaded cells is orthogonally connected to an edge of the cave area (the walls). All clued cells are unshaded, and indicate the total count of unshaded cells connected vertically and horizontally to the clued cell, including itself. Permaculture borders block vision for clued cells.
4)Coral: (Variant) Shade some empty cells to create a single connected wall (the “Coral”). Shaded cells cannot form a 2×2 square anywhere in the area, and each unshaded cell block must be connected to an edge of the Coral area. All clued cells are unshaded, and indicate the amount of shaded cells found in their row and column combined. Permaculture borders block vision for clued cells.
5)Japanese Sums: Clues outside the grid are Japanese Sums clues, which indicate the sums of the connected unshaded blocks in their corresponding row/column, in correct order. For each row or column, all clues are provided. Permaculture border splits Japanese Sums clues the same way shaded cells do. A ? is any digit from 1-9.
Play on SudokuPad
Play on Penpa+
Solution code: Row 4, but place slashes to indicate permaculture borders between cells if any.
Solved by Niverio, Becky, ghaia, Survivalinstinct_07, BloodFalcon, BaguetteSolves, jkuo7, ShoneChello, wildbush7, 30somethingsolver, misko, waffles_the_dog
Comments
Last changed on 15. November 2025, 23:21on 15. November 2025, 07:29 by waffles_the_dog
I found this to be a really fun, though I found it difficult to understand the meaning of the rules around what counted as an edge for the coral.
Once I understood those parts of the rule it flowed really nicely so I'm not sure if it was actually as difficult as it seemed or just not having done any permaculture puzzles before.
Thanks for setting it :D
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Update: after submitting the solution code and getting it approved I wanted to give it pretty colours and found an "error", but after spending half an hour trying to realise how I got the permaculture wrong I found the issue was that I was apparently unable to color the (actually correct) solution properly during the prettification :D
Last changed on 2. November 2025, 22:48on 31. October 2025, 06:23 by CutieRainbow
So in this puzzle, what does a clued cell look like
.proxz14's Response: a "?" on the grid is a clued cell
Last changed on 22. August 2025, 12:42on 22. August 2025, 01:28 by ghaia
smooth puzzle! it's my first time doing a permaculture, and this puzzle made it approachable and fun! thanks!
.proxz14's response: Thanks for the solve, glad you enjoyed it :)