Chaotic Skyscraper Sums
(Published on 6. August 2022, 16:04 by Florian Wortmann)
This is my 50th puzzle on LMD as well as my first 9x9 Chaos Construction. I've never seen Skyscraper Sums used for CC before; to me this combination felt quite natural. According to testing feedback the difficulty may be be closer to 4.5 stars. Hope you enjoy :-)
Rules
Irregular Sudoku rules apply and the 9-cell orthogonally connected regions must be determined.
Digits in the grid represent skyscrapers of that height. Higher skyscrapers obscure smaller ones. A clue outside the grid is the sum of the visible skyscrapers in the corresponding row/column from the clue's direction of view.
In addition, in every row or column with a clue, the number 'N' of visible skyscrapers indicates that the first N cells (from the clue's direction of view) are in the same region, and the N+1th cell is in a different region.
A ?-clue has the region building property but the sum of the visible skyscrapers is unknown.
The cell with the gray square contains an even digit.
6x6 example
Play the example on the ctc-app.
Main puzzle
ctc-app (with answer check)
penpa (with answer check on numbers and edges)
Solution code: row 8 and column 7
Comments
on 28. February 2024, 20:56 by Myxo
Wonderful CC, very smooth!
on 4. March 2023, 03:00 by dennischen
Wow, what a difficult and brilliant puzzle. Probably helps that I did your easier Skyscraper Sums puzzle, though my expectations were thwarted over and over :) Really glad I did this one.
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Thank you so much for doing both puzzles and the kind words! My original intend was to publish the easier one first but then I thought it would be nice to have this one here as my 50th puzzle on LMD :-)
on 30. September 2022, 22:19 by Christounet
Such a great puzzle ! Even though I managed to make a mess in the midsolve, I really appreciated the fact that local logic needed some push from distant clues to keep the magic going. Great stuff !!
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Thanks so much for the kind comment! Glad you enjoyed the puzzle :-)
on 26. August 2022, 18:10 by hepcecob
This was so good, enjoyed every moment of it. Nice logic beginning to the very end!
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Thank you :-)
on 14. August 2022, 20:38 by BHUNTER47
This is one of the most satisfying solves I've encountered. Simon should absolutely try this on CTC.
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Thanks for your kind words! Fingers crossed for a feature on CTC... ;-)
on 8. August 2022, 22:33 by peacherwu2
One of finest puzzles I ever tried! And the rules are so elegant!
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Thank you so much :-))
on 8. August 2022, 19:05 by DVFrank
Sehr schön konstruiert! :^)
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Danke dir :-)
on 8. August 2022, 05:33 by Razer
What a fantastic puzzle! One of the best I've come across. The rule set fits so well. Hope it features on CtC.
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Thanks for the kind comment, this made my day :-)
on 7. August 2022, 16:10 by marcmees
smooth start, got a bit harder near the end. great puzzle. thanks.
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Thank you :-)
on 7. August 2022, 12:42 by Vebby
Very nice! Some great sequences of deductions.
Congratulations on the 50 puzzles milestone, Florian!
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Thank you very much :-)
on 7. August 2022, 07:06 by bansalsaab
Very nice puzzle. Thank you for sharing.
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Thanks, glad you enjoyed :-)
on 7. August 2022, 01:02 by lerroyy
Very nice puzzle! The ending was really good. thanks
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Thank you so much :-)
on 6. August 2022, 21:19 by KNT
This didn't take me all too long to complete, but nothing about this puzzle was predictable to me. Always nice to solve something quite different!
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Thanks for the solve :-)
