Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

Intro

2023 was a amazing year in puzzling. Two of the greatest innovations were:

• "Zipper" lines, invented by Jaze.
• "Circle" rules, invented by Marty Sears.

This is a tribute to these two wonderful setters.

Rules

Normal sudoku rules apply. Digits in cages cannot repeat and must sum to the cage total. Digits an equal distance from the center of a lavender zipper line must sum to the same total. For odd length lines, the total is the digit in the center of the line. A digit on a zipper line also indicates how many times that digit appears on all zipper lines.

Please leave a comment if you complete this puzzle.

Cracking the Cryptic Solve

This puzzle was solved on CtC:

Note that the puzzle Simon solved was modified so that the 2-cell zipper line was instead a palindrome, which makes the puzzle considerably easier than the original.