Recounting the Rooms
(Eingestellt am 14. Februar 2025, 07:43 Uhr von pdyxs)
This is a direct sequel to Recounting the counting, this time adding numbered rooms into the mix!
Rules
Sudoku: Fill the grid with the digits 1-9, so that each digit occurs exactly once in every row, every column and every 3x3 box.
Kropki: A black dot between two digits means that one is double the other.
Numbered Rooms: Clues outside the grid indicate the digit which must be placed in the Nth revealed cell along the corresponding row or column, where N is the digit in the first revealed cell in that direction.
Counting Circle: A digit X in a revealed circle appears in revealed circles X times.
Dynamic Fog: The grid is covered in fog. Once all visible numbered room clues are satisfied, some of the fog will lift to reveal more cells and clues.
Unstable Rooms: The digits outside the grid are unstable - that is, they may change values when the fog clears.
More Experimental Fog puzzles:
- The grid of forking paths
- Recounting the counting
- A murder most fogged
- Cartography
- Whispers in the mist
- Some Things Fogn
- Sunny, with a chance of fog
For more puzzles, follow me on Bluesky at @pdyxs.bsky.social
Lösungscode: The circled numbered rooms clues above the grid, from left to right
Kommentare
am 23. März 2025, 02:14 Uhr von pdyxs
updating url
am 19. März 2025, 07:24 Uhr von SirRanch
It was hard to wrap my head around the rules at first. i think an example would help a lot. Besides that, it was excellent. The first few deductions were so fun with this uncommon rule set.
am 19. März 2025, 05:59 Uhr von TheNineElements
Solve Time: 38:42
I rated this 2/5 difficulty.
Really interesting & fun puzzle. The rules were pretty tricky to understand at first, but after the third fog reveal I feel like I started to get the hang of it.
This puzzle took me significantly longer than average for a 2* puzzle (which are usually 10-30 minutes for me), but I think that this reflects my unfamiliarity with the rules as well as the "extra work"/cells that arose from the reveals, where I erased my outer progress and had to refigure the circle values in each step.
Overall, each phase (between fog reveals) was reasonably approachable and each step was definitely fair for a 2* puzzle. The final reveal (when I could see the whole un-fogged grid) was probably the most time-consuming portion for me, because I was (for some reason) struggling to scan for classic sudoku and I kept miscounting circles. That is definitely user-error, but it did contribute to my longer solve time. I think if a prospective solver is familiar with counting circles (or is at least nore proficient with the ruleset than me), then this won't be too much of an issue and this puzzle should definitely remain approachable and a reasonably smooth solve.
I thought that this use of dFoW was fun and I've enjoyed seeing a few recent puzzles that similarly involve erasing/resetting certain clues after each fog reveal. It's definitely an interesting way to construct a solve path, and this sort of puzzle feels very different to other variants IMO (which can definitely be enjoyable).
Overall, very fun & neat puzzle, and definitely worth giving it a go!
As a side note: a future/prospective sudokupad feature that allows the "unstable room"-style rulesets to be "automatically cleared/reset" after the fog clearance could be nice and allow for a smoother experience. It would need to balance usability (on the user end) and customizability (on the constructor's end) to be effective, but I could see this sort of feature being useful for this type of ruleset. If the outer circles that get "broken" by the newly revealed fog were to be automatically cleared (or cleared with a basic user input), that could make the user experience more streamlined and provide some interesting features that constructors could utlize to develop this genre further.
I could also imagine a feature that allows certain "clue types" to be changed at different phases of the puzzle, allowing for the rules to change throughout the solve. I suspect that this could be tricky to implement in code (at least tricky to do correctly), but the "dynamic fog" meta has opened up a lot of possibilities and puzzles like this are definitely pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a "sudoku" puzzle!
am 19. März 2025, 00:36 Uhr von Aswen
I COMPLETELY did not understand the rules at all for like 10 minutes; once I got it, I loved it. Great puzzle!
am 11. März 2025, 13:45 Uhr von wuc
I love those changing on growing puzzles. Way underrated. That is a phenomenal puzzle!
