Chaos Incorporated
(Published on 4. April 2025, 01:23 by Kafkapharnaum)
The difficulty is tough to attribute for this one. Globally, it is quite certainly harder than the 4/5 rated Technodrome and Trading Places, but as only featuring 6x6 grids, it should by no means rank among the truly hard Chaos Constructions, and it offers plenty of paths for exploration.
RULES
CHAOS CONSTRUCTION
• Divide each grid into 6 regions, each made of 6 orthogonally connected cells. The regions and their grid as a whole must follow the Doppelganger rules as described below.
– A vertical strip between two adjacent grids indicates that these two grids are missing the same set of digits in their rows, in the same order (eg, if the top left grid is missing a 1 in row four, then the top right grid will also be missing a 1 in row four).
– Likewise, a horizontal strip between two adjacent grids indicates that these two grids are missing the same set of digits in their columns, in the same order.
DOPPELGANGER
• For each grid:
– Every row, column, and region contains the digit 0 always, as well as five out of the six digits from 1 to 6 (ie, it's missing one digit that is not 0).
– No two rows, no two columns, and no two regions may be missing the same digit.
– For each 0 in the grid, the digits missing in its row, its column, and its region must be three different digits, yet zeros always have a null value (ie, zero).
REGION SUM LINES
• The region borders divide the blue lines into segments that each must have the same sum; if a line exits a region and reenters it elsewhere, these segments are to be counted separately.
– Within any given grid, all the individual Region Sum Line segments must have the same sum. This sum may or may not differ from grid to grid.
– Every line needs to be divided in at least two segments.
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SOLVING LINKS
(The tracking strips need to be filled with regular size digits to trigger the solution check)
Solve on Sudokupad (Solution check for digits only)
Solve on Penpa (With green inner edges required for the solution check) dopplperschg
Solution code: Row 3 of the bottom two grids (left, than right), with a dash (-) to indicate region borders (grid edges don't need to be entered, nor the digit in the strip between the two grids)
Comments
on 27. May 2025, 23:45 by chrisj50
What a puzzle! This really felt like it had the lot : a variety of clever breakthroughs, disambiguating the RSL totals, deducing the regions and all the while remembering/respecting the DG logic! No truly monstrous steps but it demanded meticulous concentration over what turned out to be a marathon solve. One of your best, I think! Thanks again :)
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And thanks a lot for all your work on this puzzle Chris, and for the kind words, much appreciated! Glad to hear you enjoyed the puzzle like that :D
on 14. May 2025, 20:53 by the_cogito
Straight to favorites, awesome puzzle
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Thank you so much for sharing, I'm honored! Thrilled to hear you enjoyed the puzzle like that :D
on 20. April 2025, 21:16 by Agent
Awesome puzzle, very satisfying to solve!
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Ah, thank you for sharing Agent -- this is quite probably the puzzle I had the most fun setting, I'm happy to hear it's also a fun solving experience :D
on 11. April 2025, 09:56 by wullemuus
Congrats to this extraordinary creation!
As the others commented it's not that difficult in its logic for the use of "only" 6 digits, but these little pitfalls when connecting them all together need a lot of attention. More 4 than 5 stars for me (the overall time results from solving 4 puzzles and not just one). Anyway- a beautiful solving experience!
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Thank you so much for such kind words, glad you enjoyed! And thank you as well for weighting in on the difficulty; with all your experience with the ruleset, and as the only solver so far of Scattered Thunderstorms, I'd imagine that this was ahrdly the toughest one for you, but surely a 4/5 for you will be a 5/5 for many other solvers haha; but thank you for putting it in perspective!
on 8. April 2025, 11:19 by marcmees
How you can turn some simple 6x6 grids into one of the greatest chaos constructions is just magic. Very hard but with very cool & logical interactions between the grids. Thanks
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Thank you so much for the kind words marcmees, I'm thrilled you enjoyed the puzzle like that, and thank you also for confirming the actual difficulty rating. As a puzzle tailor made for earthpuzzles, it doesn't shy away from featuring some more obscure deductions very specific to the ruleset, but it was also easy at the same time to lose sight of just how particular some of these deductions are; in any case, I'm really happy that they added to the experience!
on 6. April 2025, 18:11 by bodemeister
Yet another absolute gem! How you're able to come up with such madness and beauty simultaneously I will never be able to understand. Please do keep in touch with earthpuzzles and get more good ideas for your next puzzle! xD
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Thanks as always for the kind words and support! Glad you enjoyed this one - it certainly took a bit of effort to get it all to work together haha. Now I only wish my skills at coming up with these concepts and deductions would be of more help to me when it's time to solve other people's puzzles, such that my backlog wouldn't keep getting out of control like it does ;-)
on 4. April 2025, 05:35 by earthpuzzles
Thank you very much for the kind words, and for turning my idle thoughts into this wonderful puzzle!
This has so many neat interactions between the grids — even after solving, it’s kept me thinking about different approaches the next time I revisit it.
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I'm super happy you enjoyed! I think this might be the puzzle I had the most fun setting all the way through, and that's in part thanks to our interactions during the setting process. Glad to hear that was mutual! :D
on 4. April 2025, 04:41 by blueberrypug
very nice!! I certainly agree that the logic is closer to a 4, but in terms of the amount present, and the time that it took me to complete the puzzle, it certainly feels more like a 5 to me.
maybe a 4.5 sounds about right?
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Thank you for your comment and kind words, happy to hear you enjoyed the puzzle! And I'm completely aligned with your assessment; even if it's just 6x6 grids, their interconnection in the end really makes the puzzle as a whole play like a 13x13 and will obviously consume a fair amount of time, and that also just multiplies the possibilities of getting stuck on one deduction or another, so 4.5 or higher seems fair. Anyhow, many thanks again for sharing!
