Sleight of hand
(Published on 11. December 2025, 20:57 by Killer Joe)
Hello.
Normal Sudoku rules apply.
Digits inside a cage sum to the total given in the top left corner of a cage.
Oil and Water:
Inside cages, odd digits (oil) float on even digits (water).
Odd digits always float UP first and to the LEFT second.
Within each cage, odd digits must be placed above or to the left of even digits.
Have fun.
Solution code: Row 9, first 6 digits.
Comments
on 19. December 2025, 12:51 by bboom
I like it, plenty of ways to get to the solution, making it very accessible, but not too trivial.
Funny enough, the slightly different take on oil/water, with the floating to the left, could throw off more experienced solvers.
Not sure if it can be done in Sudokupad, but if you want to make the floating metaphor work even more, you could consider tilting the puzzle to the right a bit, to make the top left the 'highest point' for the oil bubble to float up to. Would be just a visual gimmick, but also makes the puzzle stand out.
- Thanks for your comment. I briefly considered tilting the grid like you said but I wouldn't know how. I'm afraid I'm not aware of the 'regular use' of oil and water and why this might throw off experienced solvers. This just felt natural to me. I do plan on making a more interesting puzzle with this ruleset. Grts Jonesy.
- Maybe it isn't all that regular, but the variant I'm familiar with has strict 'layers', meaning that all the digits in a cage in the same row are always all even or all odd, so there is no floating left/right.
on 18. December 2025, 12:08 by Jen118266
What Zibl said
on 11. December 2025, 21:18 by Zibl
A really nice, almost snack-level, puzzle. Thank you Joe! :)
