Broken Secrets
(Published on 2. June 2021, 07:00 by TotallyNormalCat)
When Simon was young, he used to hide his secrets in 9 cell cages. On his 45th birthday he decided to revisit his childhood toys and found out the cages broke! Help him put them together to reveal the secrets of the universe!
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely intentional.
Rules:
- Normal sudoku rules apply.
- There're 18 cages in the grid. Each cage has exactly one partner, combined together they form a 9 cell cage. Numbers must not repeat in a killer cage.
- Numbers on a thermometer must strictly increase as they move away from the bulb.
- Cells with grey squares must contain even numbers.
CTC App link
F-puzzle link
Penpa link
Note: I recommend using something else than colors to remember which cages together create extra regions.
Both of my testers used CTC app along with corner pencil-marks to keep track of matching cages.
In f-puzzles you can go to cosmetic tools -> cage -> put 'A', 'B', 'C' etc in the top left corner of the cages that are partners.
Example:
Note 2: rangsk developed a multi-color feature for f-puzzles, you can get it in his discord. You need tampermonkey installed + his scripts, which are in #f-puzzles-integration's pins.
Note 3: here's the actual puzzle:
Solution code: Row 4, Column 5
Comments
on 10. December 2023, 16:50 by PierreTombal
One of those puzzles where you go from zero digits to a completed grid in two seconds. Should have realized that from the start.
on 10. December 2023, 09:57 by Lorano
Very slow start. I never thought that I would solve it, but after 3 hours I did.
on 8. December 2023, 01:13 by YourFrownland
This took me 6 hours, it was well worth it! I'm glad there wasn't a (public) CTC video for this puzzle, I would have peeked for a hint hours ago. Instead, I kept trying and now I feel amazing to have solved such a beautiful masterpiece on my own
on 2. December 2023, 23:28 by snr0n
Just a heads up: the Penpa link gave me a 404! I also found that with the expanded palette CTC has these days, using colours to track cages was very manageable. I really hope more people give this one a go now Simon's mentioned it - it's a lovely puzzle, and a much smoother solve than the difficulty rating suggests. Great work!
on 1. December 2023, 18:47 by SecretLawyerMan
I am shocked that I was able to solve this. Not because the puzzle is bad, far from it. It is utterly genius and incredibly beautiful. I just didn’t think I had the skill to solve it.
on 23. March 2022, 10:02 by Vebby
Incredible! It was slow going at the beginning but after a couple breakthroughs the puzzle snowballed very nicely towards the solution. Loved the ending :D
I'd give it 5 stars difficulty just for the initial deductions.
on 14. October 2021, 12:24 by uvo_mod
Labels angepasst.
on 8. June 2021, 00:59 by abed hawila
Wow! at a first glance I thought it is impossible, but after diving into it, it started to reveal its secrets nicely. What a puzzle! Thank you TNC ;)!
on 3. June 2021, 17:51 by Jesper
Very nice! It was fun to figure out which cages belong together.
on 2. June 2021, 17:53 by TotallyNormalCat
Added Penpa link (thanks polar)
on 2. June 2021, 10:49 by polar
Loved it! Very enjoyable original puzzle thanks :) Flowed very smoothly after the initial break in.
Penpa link: https://git.io/JG2n5 (still my favourite software for puzzles that require notation and/or colours. Also the resize option for additional rows/columns is very handy for adding notes or reminders during the solve)
@polar Awesome, thank you x2 :)
