Counting through palindromes
(Published on 25. July 2025, 18:29 by DylanRay)
The 7x7 board is partitioned into three colored regions --- blue, green, and yellow --- with the four corner cells
excluded.
For colorblind friends:
Blue is central 5×5 square in the middle of the grid.
Green is the top and bottom horizontal strips, each 1×5 in size.
Yellow is the left and right vertical strips, each 5×1 in size.
- Fill some of the colored cells with the numbers 1-5 such that each row and column does not contain repeated digit.
In each row there must be exactly one complete set of 1-5 when you consider only the yellow + blue cells.
In each column there must be exactly one complete set of 1-5 when you consider only the green + blue cells.
-
Palindrome lines: The sequence of digits along each gray line must form a palindromic number (for example, 1 2 3 1 3 2 1). Every cell that a gray line passes through MUST contain a digit.
-
Between Counts: If a yellow cell contains a digit, that digit also tells you how many digits lie between the 1 and the 5 in its row (
including both the 1 and 5 themselves).
If a green cell contains a digit, that digit also tells you how many digits lie between the 1 and the 5 in its column (
again, including both ends).
See the example below for better illustration to this rule.
-
Kropki Pairs: Digits separated by a white dot must be consecutive.
CtC Link
CtC Link without background color
Solution code: The digits on the longest palindrome (the one that goes from R6C1 to R1C6, 7 digits)
Last changed on on 18. August 2025, 16:38
Solved by SKORP17, Tacocat, 72kchunshuai, Bubbalubba, sfield, taco.bella, Ryx, rae_cat, paranoid, stafen, geronimo92, abadx, zhangjinyang, jgarber, zrbakhtiar
Comments
on 18. August 2025, 16:38 by DylanRay
Added link w/o background color. Thanks @abadx
on 18. August 2025, 14:15 by abadx
Nice puzzle although background colours difficult colouring techniques
Last changed on 5. August 2025, 11:42on 5. August 2025, 10:35 by stafen
First I thought the puzzle is part of the example and so I did not understand how the palindromes should work.
When I clicked on the link everything is clear....
Nice.
---------------------------------
Thanks for pointing out! Added an "Actual Puzzle" label in the image for clarification. --- DylanRay
on 30. July 2025, 16:20 by Ryx
Very nice puzzle. It took me a bit to figure out how to go about solving this, but once I got that logic sorted out, it was a smooth solve.