About exactly one year ago, I began my setting journey with my very first puzzle:
a pure arrow puzzle.
This fairly decent puzzle marked as the starting point of my incredible series named
Battle With The Archers. The main aim of the series is pretty much to try my best to make arrow variant look as much fun to solve as possible in each puzzle with arrow as the main theme. The series started out pretty good but ultimately, after reaching #10, I realized lots of mistakes that I've made in the setting process and I decided to spend some time fixing the main issues. After several weeks, the process has been gradually getting better with greater analysis developments and more interesting ideas even up till right now. Besides the series, I also conducted some experiments for puzzles that I've actually never tried before, including some pretty exotic ideas that I wanted to look for once like 'parity version of renban', 'portal sum'...
Apart from some particular issues that I still stumble upon in setting, I can tell at this point that I'm satisfied with how far I've come in this journey, and therefore I'd like to focus on setting some puzzles as special achievements for my upcoming 1-year setting anniversary. This one is also a special thank you gift for many puzzle servers, especially CTC server, for inspiring me to try to become a good puzzle setter.
Anyway, in this puzzle, instead of just "pure arrow" I'd actually like to mix arrow with some cool variants so that the solve looks more pleasing both in terms of aesthetics and logic. Each variant has its own inspiration as follow:
+ Arrow: from my
Archers series.
+ Killer: from many many setters, including: Phistomefel, jovi_al, Qodec, Tallcat and many more...
+ Main diagonal: from
Kashmir by Lerroyy.
+ Renban: from both my
Unity 1 and
Unity 2.
+ Parity consecutive line: from my
Parity Clockwork puzzle.
The difficulty should be about 4/5 so I hope you enjoy! :)
Rules:
- Normal Sudoku rules apply for the 9x9 grid: every row, column and 3x3 box contains digits from 1 to 9 each once.
The marked main diagonal also contains digits from 1 to 9 each once.
- Digits along an arrow must sum to the digit in the circle cell attached to that arrow.
- Digits within a cage can't repeat, and they sum to the small number written in the top left of that cage.
- Digits along a purple line form a set of non-repeating consecutive digits in any order.
- Digits along a gray line must ALL have the same parity (i.e. all odds or all evens), and they form a set of non-repeating consecutive digits in terms of their respective parity in any order. The parity of each gray line is to be deduced.
For example, a 3 cells gray line containing all odd digits can be 1-3-5, 1-5-3, 3-1-5, ...
Puzzle:
F-puzzle link
Sudokulab (alt. link)
Penpa plus (alt. link)
CTC app (alt. link)
Good luck and have fun solving!
Solution code: Row 5 (left to right) and column 5 (top to bottom), 18 digits long with no space
Solved by SKORP17, Vebby, OutOfMyMindBRB, AvonD, jalebc, kolot, lerroyy, Bjd, DVFrank, filuta, abed hawila, soroush, tinounou, Niverio, Mr.Menace, tallcat, Xendari, amirbeirat, Pibonacci, 0123coolkid, SuWi, ... Whaargaarbl, purpl, Nordy, zlotnleo, koba1917, Piatato, dimension7, dlindberg3, cdwg2000, OGRussHood, Qodec, DarthParadox, Ryzen, Bobbobert, ZornsLemon, dennischen, Sewerin, Agent, mezkur7, cybers
Comments
on 1. May 2024, 21:16 by mezkur7
Sudokupad: https://sudokupad.app/iy5b7mxzp1
on 5. August 2022, 19:04 by Piatato
Very nice, I really enjoyed working everything out!
on 7. July 2022, 21:21 by Nordy
Very beautiful puzzle. The gray lines work some magic!
on 8. June 2022, 01:40 by Playmaker6174
Thank you all for the lovely feedback, I really appreciate the enjoyment from all of you! ;)
on 7. June 2022, 12:03 by Xendari
This was amazing to solve, and the puzzle serves as a beautiful culmination of your setting expertise. Thank you very much for sharing :)
on 5. June 2022, 12:50 by filuta
yeah, really cool interactions of various constraints, thanks!
on 3. June 2022, 22:08 by kolot
Very nice puzzle! The break-in was original and not hard to spot, and there were beautiful interactions afterwards.
on 3. June 2022, 19:38 by Vebby
Very nice! Particularly loved the interesting opening logic :)