Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

Milton Keynes

This puzzle was made as a gift for fjam in the 2025 Secret Satan puzzle exchange. As the festive season approaches this year and we all start thinking about Satanic puzzles for 2026, fjam kindly allowed me to publish this puzzle from last season.

• This puzzle involves two 'entangled' standard ciphers. For each index i = 1, 2 the letters Aᵢ, Bᵢ, ..., Jᵢ, Mᵢ are distinct digits 0 to 9, to be determined. In addition, for each letter X = A, B, ..., J, M in the two ciphers, the difference X₁-X₂ divides 666. (More explicitly, X₁-X₂ must be ±1, ±2, ±3, ±6, or ±9.) For example, A₁ may be 4 and A₂ may be 7, so that A₁-A₂=-3, which divides 666.
• The ciphers are otherwise standard: a one-character clue (e.g. Aᵢ) represents a non-zero single digit number, while a two-character clue (e.g. AᵢBⱼ) represents a two digit number whose 'tens' digit must be non-zero.
• Some instances of ciphered clues are missing their index (i.e. X instead of X₁ or X₂). In these cases, you must determine whether X represents X₁ or X₂.
• Japanese sums chaos deconstruction: locate nine orthogonally connected regions of size nine, and shade all other cells. Place digits 1~9 in unshaded cells, so that digits do not repeat in rows, columns, or regions. Distinct regions may not share edges, but they may touch diagonally. Clues outside the grid give the sums of all contiguous blocks of digits within their respective row or column, in the correct order.