Today I am happy to present a puzzle that combines two Scojo's prompts - "Ambiguity + Disjoint" prompt and second phase of a prompt redeemed by Juggler, to create a puzzle using constraints created by other setters in phase one :-)
I went with Pointer Sum from the puzzle Few Pointers by Palpot and After Parity Party Sum by Flinty, although he has not published his puzzle - but Palpot also covered this constraint in a puzzle Second Chance.
I hope you will enjoy and I would be really grateful for all the comments and ratings.
Normal sudoku rules apply.
Diagonal: Digits along the marked diagonal must not repeat.
Ambiguity: A clue outside the grid is either a Pointer Sum or an After Parity Party Sum (or both).
Pointer Sum: A clue outside the grid gives the sum of all digits N that are N steps away from the digit X, where X is the row or column number.
For example, if row 5 is 159283467, then the sum would be 16 (1+2+6+7).
After Parity Party Sum: A clue outside the grid gives the sum of all digits up to, and including, the second parity switch in that direction.
For example, if row 5 is 159283467, then the sum would be 28 (1+5+9+2+8+3) from the left side and 20 (7+6+4+3) from the right side.
If row 5 is 135792468, then any clue would be invalid, as there would be no second parity switch.
Solution code: Fifth (5th) column of the grid from top to bottom.
on 11. April 2026, 18:46 by peacherwu2
I find this very entertaining in the middle. Thank you!!!
on 13. March 2026, 15:36 by War
Beautiful flow of logic, tricky at points
on 13. March 2026, 15:17 by Gnosis66
Lots of fun. I hadn't seen the Pointer Sum rule before, and it added some quirky and interesting logic.
on 10. March 2026, 09:00 by marcmees
Lots of counting fun. Thanks (so smooth I got it rated at 3* difficulty but surprisingly it turned into a 5* puzzle)