The third wheel
(Published on 13. October 2025, 13:19 by chameleon)
Normal sudoku rules apply.
Arrows: digits on an arrow line sum to the digit in the connected circle.
Triple threat: no three cells in a straight horizontal or vertical line may contain a set of three consecutive digits in any order (e.g. 3, 2, 1, or 5, 7, 6). For instance, the following digits arrangement is not allowed:
Solve online: SudokuPad
Solution code: digits in row 5, left to right
Comments
on 14. November 2025, 07:30 by Djirt
Спасибо, великолепное судоку!
on 18. October 2025, 23:43 by thephantomplayer
Took me entirely too long but absolutely brilliant puzzle!
on 14. October 2025, 13:29 by chameleon
Clarified the rules
on 14. October 2025, 10:56 by eladv
Thank you for the great puzzle chameleon! It is really cool, and very very hard (for me).
70 minutes in, I have one digit and I'm really stuck, and I am wondering whether I'm misunderstanding the Triple threat rule.
Here is my understanding of Triple threat: it says that for every 3-cell vertical or horizontal line, that line is not a legal renban, i.e. for every such line, it does not consist of 3 consecutive digits.
Is that a correct interpretation of the rule? Or am I misunderstanding it somehow?
FWIW, I think the rule formulation is a bit confusing. It's not entirely clear whether the "orthogonally connected cells" can be an L-shaped worm, and it's not clear what a "valid set of consecutive digits" is (i.e. what's an "invalid" set of consecutive digits?). It's not a huge deal, but when a puzzle is this hard and it's a new rule, people like me start asking "wait, am I misunderstanding the rule".
Thank you chameleon!
---
Reply: Hey eladv, sorry for confusion! Yes, you understood the rules right: no renban on a horiontal/vertical line. Only straight lines are affected by the rule, not the L shape.
I re-worded the rules, hope that it's clearer now.
on 14. October 2025, 03:48 by Playmaker6174
What a genuinely mad yet cool puzzle! The amount of time I had to spend on brainstorming throughout was ludicrous, but the way the triple threat theme came into the play was rather eye-opening :o
on 13. October 2025, 17:12 by Snookerfan
Fabulous construction, interesting ruleset, superb puzzle. Thank you!
on 13. October 2025, 13:33 by Myxo
Fantastic! I loved how much the triple threat rule was used.
