Normal Witness Rules Apply
(Published on 1. September 2021, 03:59 by FryTheGuy)
Inspired by Sktx's puzzle The Witness.
Instead of matching the visuals of a witness puzzle, I incorporated the rules of puzzles from that game.
To further the immersion, please visualize a glowing power cable after you solve each puzzle, and a BEAM after you solve the final puzzle. :)
Rules
Normal sudoku rules apply.
Witness Line: Draw a snake through the grid that starts and ends in the gray cells. The snake cannot touch itself orthogonally or diagonally.
Witness Dots: The snake must go through every circle.
Witness Squares: The snake must divide the grid into regions such that no region contains both a 1 and a 9.
The snake cannot go through squares.
The snake must go through every cell containing a 5.
Adjacent digits on the snake must have a difference of 3 or less.
NOTE: Although the snake cannot go through the 1s and 9s in the given squares, it can still go through the other 1s and 9s in the grid. The 1s and 9s on the snake do not belong to any region, so the do not need to be separated from other 1s or 9s.
Puzzle 1
Solve the puzzle at https://f-puzzles.com/?id=yhbkqmt5
Puzzle 2
Solve the puzzle at https://f-puzzles.com/?id=yh6lbz8h
Puzzle 3
Solve the puzzle at https://f-puzzles.com/?id=yky2grq6
Let me know if you would prefer to have a separate puzzle page for each one. I put them together to avoid flooding the portal.
Have fun!
Solution code: row 5 from puzzle 1, row 5 from puzzle 2, row 5 from puzzle 3
Comments
on 29. September 2022, 16:37 by codewizard
This was a really nice series! They got increasingly harder, but at the same time it was (for me) easier with each as you picked up strategies, so was very rewarding (and addictive) :).
on 6. September 2021, 10:18 by polar
Thank you FTG - always a pleasure solving your puzzles! Loved that you presented them as a series with a clear learning curve rather than having to wait for each one to be posted. For some reason I found the 2nd the hardest - the path for the 3rd one and placing possible digits was far more intuitive for me than the 2nd but perhaps I missed something there.
Agree with Henry that it would make an approachable puzzle set for CtC, although my vote would still go to one of your arrow puzzles (which I did email to recommend before!)
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Thanks for the support polar! Your comment just reminded me that I created another arrow puzzle a long time ago that I never got around to publishing :)
on 4. September 2021, 14:33 by JonnyKaufman
Incredible. Each puzzle is a work of art, and I love that you presented them as a set. THANK YOU!
on 3. September 2021, 22:40 by filuta
Totally awesome mini-series, you should be proud of. The difficulty certainly increases, but my solving time was actually by far shortest for the last oné, which has the most beautiful, but not too Hard break-in. The most trouble gave me the last nontrivial step in the second puzzle, which really exposed my poor sudoku skills.
Overall absolutely worth the time.
on 2. September 2021, 17:42 by henrypijames
Phantastic series with a steep but exquisitely fine tuned learning curve (just like the puzzles in The Witness) - starts out difficult and gets significantly more so with every puzzle (if judged independently, I'd say puzzle 3 is twice as hard as puzzle 2, which in turn is twice as hard as puzzle 1), but also makes you discover increasing sophisticated logic and re-apply them in increasingly sophisticated ways.
If Simon ever wants to do a two hour sudoku video, this triplet would be my one and only recommendation. Maybe he can do it as an act of celebration after finishing The Witness game?
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I am really happy that you enjoyed the puzzles! I was pretty nervous that I had added too many rules.
I did my best with the difficulty curve, especially introducing the main concepts with the first puzzle. It is rewarding to know your solving experience matched what I was aiming or.
Thanks for solving them!
on 2. September 2021, 02:25 by Piatato
Great execution of a «The Witness» inspired set of puzzles! I found the ruleset to be very intuitive once I had read through it properly. :-)
on 2. September 2021, 01:13 by filuta
just finished the first one, not too hard, but the interactions were quite complex so not too easy either and - most importanlty - really fun.
and, if you ask me, certainly better (and appreciated) when you publish them together, hope more people were doing this.
hope to get to the other ones soon.
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Thanks for feedback filuta! Have fun with the other two puzzles :)
