A Partridge In A Pear Tree
(Published on 27. November 2025, 16:41 by gdc)
This was made as part of a series on the 12 days of Christmas tune. According to testers (thanks everyone) it should be around 2 stars for difficulty. Hope you enjoy!
Tree: Draw a branching tree starting in the root (🌱). The tree only grows directly up and/or diagonally up (⬆️, ↗️, and/or ↖️). Whenever a cell grows into another cell, their digits differ by 3 or more.
Pears: Pears (🍐) are on the tree. Digits in pears and in the root (🌱) count the number of tree cells in the (5 or 8) surrounding cells, not including themselves.
Partridge: The partridge (🦃) is not on the tree and its digit counts the number of non-tree cells in its 8 surrounding cells, not including itself.
Solution code: The bottom row (row 6) left to right (6 digits)
Comments
yesterday, 20:33 by gdc
Thanks @pseudomonas! Uniqueness deductions are not intended or necessary, but I agree that it would make the puzzle a lot easier.
yesterday, 14:59 by pseudomonas
Love the ruleset! A lot of fun.
There were two points where the assumption that there was one unique tree layout (as opposed to one unique number-grid with ambiguous tree layout) would have led to a much faster solve. Not sure if that was the intended path or not.
Also I spent an embarrassing 30 seconds trying to wipe a pear stem off my monitor.
on 2. January 2026, 14:16 by gdc
disable antiking (new SudokuPad bug)
on 3. December 2025, 00:00 by Voidslime
Extremely creative and fun!
on 1. December 2025, 09:11 by Jewel
Interesting ruleset that flows surprisingly well once you get it!
on 28. November 2025, 21:37 by puzzlelad
Very fun and topical! Well made GDC
on 28. November 2025, 18:21 by Sinuit
Loved that! Thanks a lot for creating!
on 27. November 2025, 23:10 by galium_odoratum
This was mind bending. It took a while to wrap my head around all the implications of this ruleset, but then it flowed very nicely.
on 27. November 2025, 18:09 by Wuschel
Very nice, thanks!
