Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

Links:

CTC (with solution)
F-puzzles
Walkthrough (spoilers)

Standard Rules:

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Normal thermometer rules apply. Digits along a thermometer increase starting from the bulb end.

Definitions:

Let a 'cycle' be the loop in a single row in a grid created by repeatedly going from a digit to the column indexed by that digit in the same row. For instance, if a cell contained the digit 2, the next cell in the cycle would be the cell in column 2 for that row. Then, if column 2 had a 4 as its digit, the next cell in the cycle would be the cell in column 4 and so on.

Let the 'order' of a cycle be the number of unique cells in a cycle. For instance, if column 7 contained a 3, and column 3 contained a 7, this would create an order 2 cycle.

Cycle rules:

Along with normal thermo rules, the orders of cycles strictly increases starting from the bulb.

Cells outlined with a cage have a digit that is equal to their cell's order. E.g. if the digit inside a cage is a 4, that cell is part of an order 4 cycle. (No negative constraint applies/not all possible cages are necessarily given)

Additional info:

I've gotten feedback that this ruleset can be tricky to wrap your head around, so I'm calling out a few insights which directly follow from the above definitions for clarity to make this more approachable.

• Cycles cannot partially overlap. A cell is only ever part of a single cycle
• The order of all unique cycles in a row always sums to 9.
• A cycle can have an order of 1 if, and only if, the digit in a cell is the same as the cell's column number. This means you can remove some candidates in a row that would create an order 1 cycle in situations where you already know there are cycles in the row that sum to 9. For a specific example, if there's an order 9 cycle in a row, then column 1 in that row cannot be 1, column 2 cannot be a 2, column 3 cannot be a 3 etc.