Cloud nine
(Published on 17. April 2025, 10:56 by NicoD)
Rules
Normal sudoku rules apply.
Within a cage, digits must sum to the small number written in the top left corner.
White dots join cells with consecutive digits. Not all dots are given.
Solution code: Column 3
Comments
on 19. April 2025, 22:12 by VitP
long comment, with spoilers.
1) there are 3 things that you HAVE to "hit on" immediately, just to get started:
a) there are 4 flavours of 9-dominos, and ...
b) 9 cannot go in any yellow square, and therefore ...
c) X-wing
no beginner is going to do any of these things, and so cannot do this puzzle, so it's automatically level 2 AT LEAST.
THEN, for technical reasons, you will need to know that you can "hide colours".
now, is the puzzle relatively easy after doing all that?
NO, it is not, and therefore the difficulty climbs to 3 AT LEAST.
that isn't a problem YET. in this place, the stated difficulty is < the ACTUAL difficulty about half the time, so we are used to that discrepancy by now.
what MAY be a problem is that i found no way forward after the "break-in", other than massive bifurcation. that doesn't bother ME too much, and i'm not going to rate a puzzle down for that reason, but i suspect that a lot of other people here will do that.
however, i DID find, after the break-in (via bifurcation), there DOES seem to be strong pressure on 8 in col 8, and IF that does provide the second break-in (someone else can study this question), then this puzzle approaches the "brilliant but difficult" category. (after locating that 8, then the difficulty drops to 2)
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ND: Thanks for the feedback. Maybe I misjudged the difficulty, but by coloring the cages it is much easier than what you describe.
on 18. April 2025, 16:06 by keenbowl
Nice puzzle, but I think the rating is quite a bit off on this one.
Was between 3-4 for me.
Thanks for setting&sharing!
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ND: Thank you for solving.
You probably took the hard route!
on 18. April 2025, 04:06 by NicoD
Edit: uncolored version.
