Nine Quilts
(Published on 5. September 2026, 07:30 by aleksav)
My second puzzle, and I'm quite happy with this one. It seems quite hard to judge your own puzzle's difficulty, so let me know if you think a 3/5 is accurate. Have fun! :)
Rules:
- Normal sudoku rules apply: place the digits 1-9 once in each row, column, and box.
- Digits within a cage sum to the number in its upper left-hand corner.
- Digits along a thermometer increase from the bulb end.
- Orthogonally adjacent digits cannot have a difference that is a multiple of 3.
Solution code: Row 4 from left to right (digits only)
Comments
on 23. October 2026, 22:20 by psams
Very nice puzzle, and excellent setting.
on 19. October 2026, 20:07 by unordered_mat
This was incredible ! I'm not used to global modularity so I took quite a while to get started, but the solve path was very interesting. It was beautiful to see everything "just work" by construction, and the ending disambiguation with the thermos was super satisfying.
on 23. September 2026, 07:44 by aleksav
Thanks for the kind comments everyone! It's really motivated me to keep making more. :)
on 17. September 2026, 06:41 by palletpusher
Brilliant puzzle, aleksav! I do love a good global modularity puzzle, and the shapes and placements of the nine-cages (each perforce a modular set) constrained the pattern of residue classes modulo three very nicely. I did slow down a bit after placing all my multiples of three, but the thermos resolved the rest quite beautifully.
This really is an excellent second puzzle! I do love this type of sudoku and I'm pleased you've gone in this direction and excited to see more of your constructions.
on 6. September 2026, 14:43 by SingingFish
Hi, thank you for the excellent puzzle! I found this to be an absolutely astonishing construction. It is the sort that probably has multiple equivalent solve methods (given it is more of geometry based construction rather than having an explicit solve path) and so it is quite hard to judge the difficulty; for me it took a while and a lot of head scratching so I gave 4/5 but for some people it could be a lot easier (or harder). All the deductions that arise from the specific organisation of the cages and their interaction with the orthogonality constraint was very satisfying. Interesting tensions seemed to keep piling onto the grid before it finally gave way and resolved. For a second puzzle I thought this was impressively delicate. I hope it gets more solves and that you keep on setting.
on 6. September 2026, 14:42 by SingingFish
Hi, thank you for the excellent puzzle! I found this to be an absolutely astonishing construction. It is the sort that probably has multiple equivalent solve methods (given it is more of geometry based construction rather than having an explicit solve path) and so it is quite hard to judge the difficulty; for me it took a while and a lot of head scratching so I gave 4/5 but for some people it could be a lot easier (or harder). All the deductions that arise from the specific organisation of the cages and their interaction with the orthogonality constraint was very satisfying. Interesting tensions seemed to keep piling onto the grid before it finally gave way and resolved. For a second puzzle I thought this was impressively delicate. I hope it gets more solves and that you keep on setting.
on 5. September 2026, 18:06 by Big Tiger
Oh, man, I thought I was actually getting somewhere until I realized I was just trying to keep numbers apart that were 3x each other (1 and 3, 2 and 6).
Now that I'm trying it out properly ("a DIFFERENCE that is a multiple of 3") I am completely stumped. Maybe Simon will make a video of this one because I clueless.
on 5. September 2026, 10:02 by Elliott810
Brilliant construction! Thank you:)
on 5. September 2026, 08:46 by tigran
The way the puzzle unraveled was very satisfactory.
