Outing the Spies
(Published on 20. May 2026, 17:09 by Vythic)
Normal sudoku rules apply.
Spies: Many cells in the grid are considered shaded. The digit in a shaded cell indicates the minimum orthogonal distance to the closest circle (e.g. a shaded cell in r5c4 would have the digit 7).
Digits on an arrow indicate the distance to a shaded cell in that direction. If multiple shaded cells are in that direction, the arrow may indicate the distance to any of those shaded cells.
German Whispers: Each pair of adjacent digits along a green line must have a difference of at least 5.
Solution code: Row 1
Comments
on 1. June 2026, 11:45 by GandalfLeRouge
Very nice! Seemed difficult at first, but once you get to start, goes really nicely!
on 29. May 2026, 13:57 by jez9999
Nice little puzzle!
on 25. May 2026, 22:00 by Lithium-Ion
This puzzle is great fun and definitely deserves a rating above 90%. Lovely idea and great setting!
on 22. May 2026, 03:46 by VitP
i DEMAND BONUS credit for figuring out the rules.
lol
no, it's fine. easy 2.
but in my world, any puzzle with zero defects (which this one is) deserves at least a 90% rating, and then you can argue about the remaining 10%.
on 21. May 2026, 19:36 by Vythic
I appreciate the comments, thank you!
on 21. May 2026, 04:07 by iEtsh
Loved it !
on 20. May 2026, 22:23 by Jasperrr
Nice puzzle, haven't seen the initial ruleset but currently I would rate it an easy 2*
on 20. May 2026, 21:28 by dzamie
That was pretty cool! The diagonals tripped me up a couple of times, but in the end, I figured out a simple way to quickly see which cells could and couldn't be spies.
on 20. May 2026, 18:54 by galium_odoratum
Well, I tried solving it using the old wording of the rules assuming that shaded cells can have values "overwriting" their digit which was quite the interesting ruleset tbh. Mid-solve I got stuck and read the updated rules. Not sure how to rate the difficulty now, with the "old rules" it was a 4* (and maybe not solveable at all), but I really liked the ambiguity, maybe consider this for a sequel puzzle?
on 20. May 2026, 18:16 by Vythic
(Better clarified shaded cells in the rules).
on 20. May 2026, 18:06 by StefanSch
In what cases is the VALUE of a shaded cell taken into account rather than the DIGIT displayed there?
Since all the rules refer to DIGITs and not to VALUEs.
Or does it means that the DIGIT in a shaded cell is equal to the distance to the closest circle?
