Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

The long-awaited Rank Up series finale is here, but because my dad and I couldn't quite put together the perfect final puzzle, Rank Up 20 is it's own mini series of contributions from some of the world's best setters! Thankfully for you, this meant that I no longer felt obliged to set an epic multi-hour mega puzzle that would do justice to the difficulty curve of the rest of the series, so enjoy something a bit more approachable instead!

Rank Up (full series)

Rank Up 20 (mini series)



Chaos Construction: Divide the grid into five orthogonally connected 5-cell regions (Pentominoes) and fill each cell of the main grid with digits such that no digit repeats in a row, column or region. One region border has been given.

Pentomino Cipher: Pentominoes are commonly identified by letter names, some of which are shown below the grid. A circle indicates that the Full Rank value belonging to that external cell is equal to the position in the English alphabet of the letter name of the first seen region. For example, if r5c1 is part of an "I" pentomino, then the Full Rank clue to its left would have the value 9.

Full Rank: A value in an external cell represents the rank of the number formed by reading the digits in that row or column from that direction, where (1) is the lowest such row or column and (20) is the highest.

Little Killer: The value with an arrow gives the sum of all digits on the indicated diagonal.

N.B. If two ranks are tied, the value in both external cells is the lower of the two ranks being shared. For example, if the lowest four ranks are "1", "32", "32" and "51", the values in the relevant external cells would be (1), (2), (2) and (4) respectively.