Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

Shattered Uncertainty - Thermo or Palindrome?

(Published on 5. August 2020, 02:06 by hamslice)

Whilst moving this puzzle about, full of palindrome strands and thermometers alike, I accidentally dropped it - causing all of the thermometers to smash! Now I don't know which were which, and worse still, some extra thermometer bulbs may have fallen on in the chaos. Fortunately, the broken bulbs seem to have morphed their properties to accommodate, so perhaps not all hope is lost.

Fill each row, column, and region with the numbers 1-9 once each. Regions are to be deduced. No region may cover any 4x2 (or 2x4) area of space.

In the grid there are 7 grey lines, each of which is either a thermometer or a palindrome strand. It is to be determined from which end each thermometer rises.

There are more thermometers than palindromes, and no two thermometers sprout from their bulb in the same direction. Also, a thermometer must be entirely contained within a single region.

Palindrome: Digits along the grey line read the same from both directions. Thermometer: Digits strictly increase from the bulb end to the tip.

The circles in the grid are now glass baubles. A region cannot contain exactly 1 bauble. The numbers inside the baubles within a region form a single consecutive string of digits.(You can read off the baubles in a region in any order). For example, for a region with only 2 baubles, those two digits could read 45, or 89, etc. The rest of the digits in the region are unaffected by baubles.

Penpa

This is what I had in mind when experimenting with the classic thermo. This is a little trickier - it will put up resistance until the end. Enjoy the solve!

Solution code: Column 8, followed by the number regions that don't cover any 2x2 area of space, in a 10 digit string.

Last changed on on 12. August 2020, 22:22

Solved by emmettcito, NikolaZ, zzw, isajo4002, SeveNateNine, wisty
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Comments

on 28. March 2024, 18:44 by zzw
Awesome puzzle!! A hidden gem with lots of cool interactions. The break-in especially was super interesting.

on 12. August 2020, 22:22 by hamslice
Increased difficulty to 5 stars

on 11. August 2020, 17:22 by emmettcito
What a brutal puzzle! I think this took me around 5 - 6 hours total to solve this and 2 attempts. Though I only took a little less than an hour on my second attempt as I had wrapped my brain around this variant by then, but this is still nowhere near 4 stars and the difficulty should be raised to 5 stars.

I also wanted to say that you are starting to become one of my favorite setters on this site. All of your puzzles I have solved have been really beautiful and pushed me to the limit of what I can do. This puzzle and your other ones definitely deserve more solves.

Last changed on 5. August 2020, 18:51

on 5. August 2020, 16:29 by hamslice
Clarified the baubles.

on 5. August 2020, 02:42 by hamslice
Added Link :)

Difficulty:5
Rating:N/A
Solved:6 times
Observed:10 times
ID:000415

Puzzle combination Puzzle variant New Dissection puzzle

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