Cavernous Japanese Sum: Christmas Tapa ft. Ciphers (14x14)
(Eingestellt am 24. Dezember 2025, 15:00 Uhr von Playmaker6174)
Ho-ho-ho! Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone here! To celebrate the holidays spirit, I present to you this gift of mine...
The following puzzle is my final major project of this year 2025, which follows right from my recent venture into a Japanese Sum variation that you can find in both of these links. I only learned later on that this kind of idea had also appeared from a KNT's puzzle in the past, but I actually developed this idea independently right after finishing my liar Japanese Sum puzzle in the form of a deconstruction puzzle.
In this project, I wanted to combine that variation with one of my favorite shading genres known as Tapa and the entire thing was ultimately designed to match the spiritual Christmas theme at the end.
Unsurprisingly, the setting process underwent a lot of changes and refinement throughout, and at one point I even got that close to consider abandoning the whole thing but luckily, I somewhat stumbled into a rather perfect setup during one long break and eventually developed a lovely continuation from there. This entire setting process actually gave me another refreshing look on this Japanese Sum variation and I sort of hope that I can return to it at some point soon...
... but not yet, not yet. I still have one last major quest to complete after revisiting that one beautiful cave.
Alright, back to the main gift here. From what I've seen, this one has a consistent difficulty throughout but I think the solve will keep delivering till the very end here.
A special thanks to my dear Jesper for testing and also for confirming that this one even solved at all. For now, do enjoy the gift!
Rules:
1) Tapa:
+ Shade some cells in the 14x14 grid so that all shaded cells form a single orthogonally connected area and no 2x2 area is entirely shaded.
+ Every cell with clue[s] cannot be shaded and each clue within that cell represents the length of a continuous group of shaded cells surrounding that cell. If a clued cell contains more than one clue then adjacent such groups must be separated by a continuous group of unshaded cells.
2) Cavernous Japanese Sum:
+ Excluding the clued cells, every remaining unshaded cell will contain a number that’s equal to the total amount of unshaded cells seen horizontally and vertically from that cell’s perspective, including itself, where shaded cells, clued cells and the 14x14 grid perimeter block the visions.
+ A circle clue outside a row/column corresponds to exactly one continuous group of unshaded cells in that row/column, and its value shows the sum of that group, if given. Clued cells don't contribute to such sum. If there's more than one clue outside then adjacent such groups must be separated by a continuous group of shaded cells and/or clued cells.
+ The correct order of the clues is from left to right for the row and from top to bottom for the column. For every row/column, either all clues or no clues are given outside.
3) Ciphers:
+ In this puzzle, all of the given clues have been ciphered and there're eleven different letters available: A, C, E, H, I, M, P, R, S, T, Y.
+ Ten of those letters will correspond to digits from 0-9, while the remaining letter has been 'blessed' and therefore it will correspond to a number greater than 9 (i.e. a multiple digits number).
Same letters will correspond to same number, while different letters will correspond to different numbers.
+ A question mark (?) represents any digit from 0-9 but a single digit clue cannot be zero (0) and for the case of a circle clue containing two characters (letter and/or question mark), it must be a two digits number and the first digit also cannot be zero (0).
(the colors on the letters are for aesthetic purpose only)
Setter's note:
+ To understand how the entire thing works, here's an 8x8 example image below and one can also solve it in either Penpa plus or Sudokupad.
+ I recommend marking the clued cells differently from the shaded cells and unshaded cells as 'empty cells' for the purpose of Tapa shading and Japanese Sum clues.
Puzzle: Penpa plus - Sudokupad
The answer check in penpa link will activate once the shaded cells are correctly marked, the unshaded cells contain the correct numbers and the table at the top left also contains correct numbers as well. For now, good luck and have fun solving!
The following puzzle is my final major project of this year 2025, which follows right from my recent venture into a Japanese Sum variation that you can find in both of these links. I only learned later on that this kind of idea had also appeared from a KNT's puzzle in the past, but I actually developed this idea independently right after finishing my liar Japanese Sum puzzle in the form of a deconstruction puzzle.
In this project, I wanted to combine that variation with one of my favorite shading genres known as Tapa and the entire thing was ultimately designed to match the spiritual Christmas theme at the end.
Unsurprisingly, the setting process underwent a lot of changes and refinement throughout, and at one point I even got that close to consider abandoning the whole thing but luckily, I somewhat stumbled into a rather perfect setup during one long break and eventually developed a lovely continuation from there. This entire setting process actually gave me another refreshing look on this Japanese Sum variation and I sort of hope that I can return to it at some point soon...
... but not yet, not yet. I still have one last major quest to complete after revisiting that one beautiful cave.
Alright, back to the main gift here. From what I've seen, this one has a consistent difficulty throughout but I think the solve will keep delivering till the very end here.
A special thanks to my dear Jesper for testing and also for confirming that this one even solved at all. For now, do enjoy the gift!
Rules:
1) Tapa:
+ Shade some cells in the 14x14 grid so that all shaded cells form a single orthogonally connected area and no 2x2 area is entirely shaded.
+ Every cell with clue[s] cannot be shaded and each clue within that cell represents the length of a continuous group of shaded cells surrounding that cell. If a clued cell contains more than one clue then adjacent such groups must be separated by a continuous group of unshaded cells.
2) Cavernous Japanese Sum:
+ Excluding the clued cells, every remaining unshaded cell will contain a number that’s equal to the total amount of unshaded cells seen horizontally and vertically from that cell’s perspective, including itself, where shaded cells, clued cells and the 14x14 grid perimeter block the visions.
+ A circle clue outside a row/column corresponds to exactly one continuous group of unshaded cells in that row/column, and its value shows the sum of that group, if given. Clued cells don't contribute to such sum. If there's more than one clue outside then adjacent such groups must be separated by a continuous group of shaded cells and/or clued cells.
+ The correct order of the clues is from left to right for the row and from top to bottom for the column. For every row/column, either all clues or no clues are given outside.
3) Ciphers:
+ In this puzzle, all of the given clues have been ciphered and there're eleven different letters available: A, C, E, H, I, M, P, R, S, T, Y.
+ Ten of those letters will correspond to digits from 0-9, while the remaining letter has been 'blessed' and therefore it will correspond to a number greater than 9 (i.e. a multiple digits number).
Same letters will correspond to same number, while different letters will correspond to different numbers.
+ A question mark (?) represents any digit from 0-9 but a single digit clue cannot be zero (0) and for the case of a circle clue containing two characters (letter and/or question mark), it must be a two digits number and the first digit also cannot be zero (0).
(the colors on the letters are for aesthetic purpose only)
Setter's note:
+ To understand how the entire thing works, here's an 8x8 example image below and one can also solve it in either Penpa plus or Sudokupad.
+ I recommend marking the clued cells differently from the shaded cells and unshaded cells as 'empty cells' for the purpose of Tapa shading and Japanese Sum clues.
Puzzle: Penpa plus - Sudokupad
The answer check in penpa link will activate once the shaded cells are correctly marked, the unshaded cells contain the correct numbers and the table at the top left also contains correct numbers as well. For now, good luck and have fun solving!
Lösungscode: Enter the 'blessed' letter along with its corresponding value first; then enter the lengths of all continuous shaded segments in column 1, then column 2 and finally column 3 (enter from top to bottom for each column).
Zuletzt geändert am 26. Dezember 2025, 16:05 Uhr
Gelöst von Jesper, han233ing, h5663454, LouZX, Tom-dz, Statistica, wildbush7, Da Letter El
Kommentare
am 30. Dezember 2025, 00:39 Uhr von wildbush7
Amazing puzzle...took me about 3-4 hours but so much fun!
am 26. Dezember 2025, 16:05 Uhr von Playmaker6174
The penpa link apparently missed a clue but it’s fixed now, the main image is the official puzzle.
Zuletzt geändert am 24. Dezember 2025, 18:34 Uhr
am 24. Dezember 2025, 18:15 Uhr von Da Letter El
just want to be clear on the rules:
while I understand that clued cell with two letters imply two different runs of shaded cells, it isn't stated that the converse is true; is it implied that the question marks and the T only see one such continuous shaded group of the length provided, or is it possible they see multiple different groups of shaded cells but are just clueing one of them?
——
Hi there! Yes, a cell containing a single clue will only have one shaded group surrounding it.
am 24. Dezember 2025, 16:22 Uhr von Jesper
Great puzzle! I tested this yesterday and it was a lot of fun :)
