Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

Based on a true story:

- Me: [watching some people solving older puzzles] I kinda have this small urge to set something with liar Japanese Sum at one point but I doubt that will go well at the end...
- Niverio: Do it just so I can roast you [bleh]

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Well alright then.


Normally I don't really have a lot of good ideas for that type of Japanese Sum, but then I remember that my current project I've been working on for a while is a chaos construction, and that's when an interesting idea popped up into my head and my amused self decided to give this idea a try almost immediately. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone else already had this kind of idea at one point, but anyway...

The following puzzle here is the later of the two results of that process but unfortunately, the first one had a few setbacks in the middle after the double check and I couldn't manage to fix it at the end so here goes the second result (along with some minor changes afterwards). The setting went surprisingly smooth for me throughout - it took me about a whole day only, but mostly because the concept sounded rather natural to me and it clicked with me throughout the setting.

I think this puzzle shouldn't be too hard overall in terms of difficulty, but I hope this one will somewhat inspire some people to explore more cool stuff from this concept :)



Rules:

- Every row and column in the 9x9 grid contain digits from 1 to 9 each once. In addition, divide the entire 9x9 grid into 9 orthogonally connected regions so that each region will also contain digits from 1 to 9 each once as well.

- For certain particular row/column, some outside circle clues are provided on the side with the correct order of left to right for the row and top to bottom for the column.

- Each circle clue corresponds to exactly one continuous group of cells that share the same region in its respective row/column, and its value shows the sum of that group, if given. Region border separates between the groups, but it's possible the same region can represent multiple groups in a row/column.
+ An asterisk (*) shows an arbitrary number of circle clues, which can be none at all.
+ A question mark represents any digit between 0-9 but single digit clue cannot be zero (0) and also for the case of two digits number, the first digit cannot be zero (0).

- However, in this puzzle: for each of those particular rows/columns, there are actually two sets being provided on both sides instead.
One set is correct - with the correct sums following the correct order, while the other set is incorrect - either there exists at least one clue with incorrect sum or the number of clues in that set is incorrect, or both. Solvers are required to deduce which set is correct and which set is incorrect for those rows/columns.

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Here's an example image of how the concept works, with the green sets marked as correct ones and the dark gray sets marked as incorrect ones. One can also solve this example puzzle in either Penpa plus or Sudokupad too.

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Puzzle:   Penpa plus  -  Sudokupad



The answer check in penpa link will activate once all of the digits are correctly filled and also the region borders are correctly drawn. For now, good luck and have fun solving!