Advent Calendar
(Published on 1. December 2023, 02:13 by marty_sears)
This is my old puzzle Advent Calendar that was featured on CTC on Christmas Eve last year. Nowhere near as clever as AnalyticalNinja's recent Advent Calendar puzzle, but I'm still rather fond of it and had never got round to uploading it to LMD. So here it is...
Rules:
- Normal sudoku rules apply but using the digits 0-8 instead of 1-9.
- Find and colour the 24 hidden cages, which do not overlap. Each cage has a different total between 1 and 24 – the total for each cage is given on one of its cells (by a red clue).
- Digits MAY repeat within cages.
- All cages are triominoes (ie consist of 3 orthogonally connected cells) apart from one, which is a pentomino (containing 5 orthogonally connected cells.)
- Cells with a large snowball in the central 3x3 box count as double their value for the purposes of their cage totals (if they reside within a cage).
- Cells separated by a small white dot contain consecutive digits.
- Cells separated by a small black dot contain digits with a ratio of 1:2 (ie one is double the other.)
- Not all possible black and white dots are given.
Click here to play on the CTC app
Please leave a comment if you enjoy :)
Solution code: The uncaged digits, in reading order (reading each row from left to right, and working downwards.)
Comments
on 23. July 2025, 10:52 by Julien
In terms of logic, this puzzle does feel appropriate for a 2 star rating, and there is a lot of flexibility on what to work on in each section of the puzzle, since there are so many hints scattered around. Despite the difficulty of the logic though, it did still take me awhile to solve it, probably because the amount of cages you have to figure out. Really nice puzzle though, the only thing that I didn't really like as much were the large "snowball" circles in the middle of the puzzle, because they didn't really add too much to the puzzle and added an extra constraint in a puzzle that in other parts is already so well constructed without any extra constraints.
Marty: Thankyou, and I agree. This was one of my very first puzzles, I probably would have found an alternative to the snowballs if I was setting it nowadays
on 8. March 2025, 19:10 by eladv
this was incredibly hard for me! Did not feel like a 2* puzzle. Took me nearly 90 minutes. (With many mistakes on the way -- my brain just could not comprehend the shapes! :) )
Edit: nicely enough, my rating updated it to a 3* puzzle, which I think is more right :)
on 30. October 2024, 18:32 by jakestilesowen
Delightful little puzzle and not too easy (for me at least).
on 16. April 2024, 00:54 by jellef
Ah, such a nice puzzle. It contains so many little puzzles, it really does feel like an advent calendar haha
on 1. December 2023, 23:18 by vitaminz
I enjoy :)
on 1. December 2023, 14:48 by Ragna
Das hat Spaß gemacht. Dankeschön für das Geschenk zum 1. Advent.
:-))
