Rank Up 20.nell - Balance
(Published on 8. October 2025, 19:44 by Nell Gwyn)
- Place the numbers -2 to 2 once each in every row and column.
- Diagonal Full Rank: Each of the 36 possible diagonal lines across the grid (including each of the four corners, each read from both directions) is read as a 1-to-5-digit number in the balanced quinary numeral system (for example, the number (-2, +1, +2) is interpreted as (-2 * 25) + (+1 * 5) + (+2 * 1), giving a total of -43).
- Clues outside the grid indicate the "rank" from 1 to 36 formed by reading that diagonal from the indicated direction, where higher numbers have higher ranks than lower numbers.
- If two ranks are tied, the value in both clues is the lower of the two ranks being shared. For example, if the lowest four numbers were (-2, +1, 0, -1, 0), (0, -1, 0, +1, -2), (-1, 0, +1, -2) and (-1, +2, 0, +2), the value of their clues would be (1), (2), (2), (4) respectively.
- Some clues are given as inequalities, ">" meaning "greater than" and "<" meaning "less than."
Solution code: Rows 4 and 5, with a "-" in front of the negative digits (e.g. 1-202-1-22-101)
Comments
on 9. October 2025, 18:13 by Nell Gwyn
Fixed an error in the puzzle itself. Sorry about that.
on 9. October 2025, 17:47 by Nell Gwyn
Removed the mention of boxes from the rules. Sorry, force of habit.
on 9. October 2025, 12:28 by zeniko
This is quite the mind-bender, despite its small size. Thanks for sharing this challenge.
BTW: There seem to be two possible solutions. Replacing >9 with >10 makes the solution unique.
~~
Nell: Two solutions, even with the rule about tied ranks being the lower of the values being shared? EDIT: Oops, you're right. Fixing now...
on 9. October 2025, 05:43 by wensty
5*5 sudoku don't have boxes, and this puzzle have no irregular boxs or chaos construction rule. So the box rule should be removed in the first rule?
on 9. October 2025, 01:44 by Nell Gwyn
I fixed the HTML on the page not displaying correctly due to typing a less-than sign in the rules. The puzzle itself is unchanged.
