Entrancing Ergosphere (Black Hole)
(Published on 17. October 2025, 14:25 by gdc)
My second puzzle using the Black Holes ruleset by heliopolix. It's quite a mouthful, but offers some unique geometric logic with modifiers. Thanks heliopolix, Mad-Tyas, jakestilesowen, magic_hero and ChinStrap for testing. I tried to make this more approachable than the previous one. Hope you enjoy!
Black Holes (Nullifiers): Place nine black holes, one in each row, column, and box. Digits may not repeat on black holes. For the purposes of the clues, black holes have a value of zero.
White Holes (Doublers): Place nine white holes, one in each row, column, and box. Digits may not repeat on white holes. For the purposes of the clues, white holes double the value of a cell.
White holes and black holes never share the same cell.
Killer Cages: Digits in cages cannot repeat (though values can). Values within a cage sum to the clue in the top left. A killer cage must contain an equal number of black and white holes, but that number may be zero.
Teleporting Little Killers: Clues outside the grid with arrows give the sum of digits along a diagonally-traveling path starting in the cell pointed at by the arrow. This path only ends when it reaches an edge of the grid. When the path enters a black hole cell it teleports to the white hole cell with the same digit maintaining the direction of travel of the original path and including the value of both holes in its sum. The path must visit the same number of black and white holes, but that number may be zero.
Hole Sandwiches: Clues outside the grid without arrows give the sum of the digits between the holes in the row or column, not including the holes.
Example
Want To Solve More Black Holes?
Check out Intro to Black Holes, Part I and the (10+) puzzles linked there to see how the creator of the ruleset uses it. The intro series gives a very gentle entry and the advanced series contains incredibly beautiful and creative applications involving Schrödinger cells!
My first black holes puzzle Apsidal Precession is more challenging than this one with more intricate geometric ideas.
Solution code: The bottom row (row 9) left to right (9 digits)
Comments
on 23. October 2025, 08:50 by Maja34711
Wonderful
on 22. October 2025, 19:20 by virus_dave
This was VERY fun to solve. Fairly smooth (while consistently challenging) once I realized I had mentally swapped the roles of black/white for teleportation. Lost a good 15 minutes to complete bewilderment before I noticed that ????
Great fun and such an interesting ruleset, thanks for setting!
on 22. October 2025, 19:20 by virus_dave
This was VERY fun to solve. Fairly smooth (while consistently challenging) once I realized I had mentally swapped the roles of black/white for teleportation. Lost a good 15 minutes to complete bewilderment before I noticed that ????
Great fun and such an interesting ruleset, thanks for setting!
on 20. October 2025, 11:19 by Exigus
Very smooth, really cool ruleset. Thanks!
on 20. October 2025, 00:15 by Kräuterbutter
So so much fun, thank you very much!
on 18. October 2025, 18:23 by Glasgow
Wow, one of the best puzzles I’ve done this year. Super clever and fun. Thanks!
on 17. October 2025, 16:20 by heliopolix
I thoroughly enjoyed this!
on 17. October 2025, 16:12 by mihel111
Very fun puzzle to play.
Thanks a lot.
on 17. October 2025, 15:33 by ViKingPrime
Incredibly smooth. A worthy successor to Heliopolix' series, which is not surprising; if anyone was mad enough and genius enough to pull it off besides him, it would of course be you.
