My cup runneth over intensely
(Published on 19. August 2022, 13:29 by Fool on Hill)
Puzzle rules
Normal Sudoku rules apply.
Summary: all rules are standard. The short thick line is a palindrome and there is a renban line in box 5. An anti-knight and anti-X constraint apply throughout the grid.
Specifically: Digits in cages may not repeat and sum to the total in the corner of the cage. Digits may not repeat on the main diagonals. Digits on the other marked diagonal sum to the given total and may repeat where allowed by the other rules. Cells a knight's move apart may not contain the same digit. Orthogonally adjacent cells may not sum to 10. The thick grey line is a palindrome (reads the same forward and backward). The thin grey line contains four consecutive digits in any order (renban line). The cell with the grey dot contains an odd digit. The stem of the cup is left to the imagination.
Here is the SudokuPad link (with answer check): My cup runneth over
Here it is on F-Puzzles: My cup runneth over
"Intensely" in the title comes from danmeehan91324's comment on my puzzle "The Fool's Windmill", which was my first foray into an exploration of 7-cell 35 cages. I thought such cages might work well with an anti-knight constraint, and tried several arrangements without success. I tracked down my problem to the arrangement of cages used in this grid, which was much more powerful than I expected with the anti-knight constraint, and especially so with the diagonals added.
It has proven hard to set a humanly solvable puzzle, but there is a path on this one. Bizarrely the palindrome line is equivalent to the anti-X constraint (that knowledge will not help the solve, I think) so the puzzle is redundant, and in the presence of the other clues, both could be omitted and give a unique grid. I needed them both and also to know what it was I was looking for to guide my solve.
I think this will take some patience to break, as well as insight into the delicate way in which the constraints interact, but once truly broken the solve seems to me to run smoothly. I find it astonishing and beautiful that this works at all.
Solution code: Row 1
Comments
on 4. January 2024, 23:29 by Fool on Hill
Update SudokuPad link to add solution
on 25. May 2023, 20:01 by danmeehan91324
Took a few months, but I finally got it.
I have to confess - I solved the previous one by making a guess about a 5, and I solved this one by making another guess about 5. This one definitely took more work to solve.
Thanks lots!
Thanks for the comment - glad you made it
on 14. September 2022, 17:25 by antiknight
A really nice idea and a quite hard puzzle !
Thanks so much for the comment, glad you made it to the end and liked it.
on 2. September 2022, 12:15 by Md258
Wow, this was hard. It took me a lot of time trying a couple of approaches before I realised that it was wrong. I did discover lots of interesting implications during that time though.
Once I found the intended solution path, it didn't seem too bad, but it took a while to get there.
Thanks so much for the feedback. I am glad you got through it. I think it is on the cusp of reasonable difficulty: I had to wrk quite hard to get it to that.
on 21. August 2022, 01:00 by FinnishGuy
Incredibly challenging but rewarding puzzle. Throughout the solve I had a clear idea on how the final disambiguation of digits would function, but turns out I was slightly off on that thought. Nice deductions throughout, but took me a while to solve. Thanks for sharing.
on 20. August 2022, 22:42 by Gnosis66
Terrific puzzle. I was surprised by how everything fell into place.
on 20. August 2022, 09:08 by Dook
Beautiful puzzle
on 20. August 2022, 03:12 by cdwg2000
Very nice!
on 19. August 2022, 18:36 by Fool on Hill
Corrected solution code
on 19. August 2022, 18:25 by OutOfMyMindBRB
Lovely, elegantly symmetrical & challenging puzzle! Loved it - thanks :-)
Have checked solution code, sorry
on 19. August 2022, 17:55 by SKORP17
der Lösungscode funktioniert nicht ?
Have corrected, thank you for letting me know.
