Cracking the Colour
(Published on 18. June 2021, 20:54 by FinnishGuy)
Cracking the Colour
Rules:
1. Normal sudoku rules apply.
2. Digits cannot be placed within a king's move (in chess) away from an identical digit.
3. Digits separated by a white dot are consequtive, and by a black dot have a ratio of 1:2. Not all dots are given.
4. Digits in cages sum to the cage total (given or derived total, see below).
5. Digits along the marked line contain all numbers between the smallest and largest digit along the line (renban line).
In the first part of the solve, ignore the killer cages and kropki dots and the renban line. Solve the grid as a colour sudoku. Once the colour of each cell is known, determine which colour matches which digit. The colours have also been noted with letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and J (note that I is not used!)
3-cell killer cage values are determined from the colour combination of the cage (from left to right, or from top to bottom) as follows:
GHE: 12
DFC: 13
ADG: 14
AJB: 15
EBH: 16
FCH: 17
CAF: 18
BEA: 19
JGD: 20
HJE: 21
FBJ: 22
CLARIFICATION BASED ON SOLVER COMMENT: Only some of the above clues are valid, and others are purposefully bogus. The intent is to match a valid clue to the killer cage and ignore the remaining clues.
Solution code: Alphabetical encoding of the correct numbers (9 capital letters corresponding with digits 1 to 9 in correct order, e.g. ABCDEFGHJ)
Comments
on 20. June 2021, 21:54 by steelwool
Enjoyable idea, two puzzles for the price of 1.
I managed to miss the anti-king constraint to start with, so had the pleasure of finding an incompatible board result first off - read the instructions!
Smooth solve after that, only takes a few minutes to finish the second bit. Thanks for the puzzle.
on 19. June 2021, 18:31 by FinnishGuy
The intent is to first resolve the colour combination in each cell. Then, you can see the colour combination in each of the 3-cell killer cages. If it for eample was purple (G), light blue (H) and light green (E), this would indicate that according to the clues, the total of that killer cage is 12. There are extra clues just to make it harder to try to take shortcuts by doing logic on the killer cage values before the first part of the solve is completed. So perhaps "bogus" was not the most appropriate word, "unnecessary" might have been better. In any case, you should only use the clues which match any killer cage and discard all others.
on 19. June 2021, 00:53 by StephenEsven
Very good puzzle. I am not an experienced Solver. This is my first complete solve on this site. It took me about an hour to color the grid. And about half an hour to place the digits.
on 18. June 2021, 23:47 by FinnishGuy
Instructions clarified based on solver comment.
