Maggot Sandwich
(Published on 8. August 2022, 11:07 by Piatato)
Warning: Don’t solve this puzzle if you plan to eat afterwards …
A very hungry maggot has eaten its way through this grid. You can only see the holes (the large circles) in which it entered and left its meal, but in order to solve this sudoku, you will have to trace its path between these two cells. Can you find the maggot’s path, and are you then still hungry for a sandwich?
Rules:
1) Normal Sudoku rules apply. Every row, column, and box must contain the digits 1-9 with no repeats.
2) Special maggot rules apply.
The maggot’s path
- must visit every box
- may touch itself both orthogonally and diagonally, but can never pass through any cell more than once
- moves orthogonally between cells, never diagonally
The path starts and ends at the circled cells, which are sandwich crust cells (1 or 9). Apart from the very first and last moves, which go between a crust cell and a filling cell in their shared row or column, the path only moves between two cells that are both filling cells (between 1 and 9) in their shared row or column.
3) Normal sandwich rules almost apply. Clues outside the grid show the sum of the digits "sandwiched" between 1 and 9 in the corresponding row/column. However, the digits that are eaten by the maggot are not included in the sum.
4) Cells with a small white dot between them contain consecutive digits.
Example:
Links to the main puzzle:
Solve on Penpa+ here (draw the maggot with a green line for answer check to work).
Solve on F-Puzzles here.
Solve in the CTC webapp here.
Big thanks to filuta and Nordy for some excellent and inspiring snake Sudokus, and to PrimeWeasel for showing time and again that one can do a lot of creative things with the sandwich sums constraint.
Solution code: Row 5 and column 5, excluding the digits that were eaten by the maggot
Comments
on 29. January 2025, 15:36 by Niverio
Really cool puzzle if one reads all the rules carefully!
on 11. May 2024, 19:13 by Christounet
A delicious maggot sandwich, with exquisite crispy slices of logic, and juicy maggot deductions ! Yummy :)
on 15. September 2023, 17:59 by dumediat
Great puzzle! This was perfect for my lunch break. :)
on 27. April 2023, 13:45 by lerroyy
Great puzzle, thanks!
on 24. September 2022, 16:44 by Aaronomys
Beautiful puzzle as always! The use of the maggot rule set was very elegant.
on 27. August 2022, 14:14 by Nordy
I finally understand the meaning of “shared”! I needed to remember the “sharing is caring” lessons from grade school :P Once you fully grasp the rules (which are not complicated—my brain just plays tricks on me sometimes), this is a very beautiful puzzle that flows incredibly smoothly! I enjoyed it immensely
— Thank you for getting back to the puzzle and giving it a try with the actual ruleset. :-D I'm very happy to see that you enjoyed it!
on 12. August 2022, 19:03 by Samish
Very enjoyable puzzle and cool new ruleset ! :-)
—Thanks! It took me a good while to fully form this ruleset actually, and I had a couple of tries that worked less well, before I made the last few tweaks and arrived at what you see here. I’m happy that you liked it!
on 12. August 2022, 11:53 by Jesper
Very nice, thanks!
— Thank you, Jesper!
on 8. August 2022, 22:40 by Piatato
Reworded the rules slightly and changed the title and tags.
on 8. August 2022, 13:02 by Vebby
Very nice! :)
— Thank you, Vebby!
on 8. August 2022, 11:35 by filuta
the maggot somehow made the sandwich even more delicious, loved every bite of it!
— Thank you, I’m very glad to hear that!
on 8. August 2022, 11:16 by PrimeWeasel
Solves best with Funkadelic - Maggot Brain in the background.
— Thanks for the recommendation!
