Paradigm Shift (S-Cell Japanese Sums Cipher)
(Published on 7. March 2023, 09:00 by Agent)
As a follow-up to my previous Japanese Sums puzzle, I thought it would be interesting to try something with Schrödinger Cells, i.e. cells that contain more than one digit. I think the ruleset of this puzzle will serve as a good introduction for a likely S-Cell Japanese Sums sequel. Have fun solving! And don't be intimidated by the plenitude of S-Cells, I think the puzzle is hard but not monstrous.
Rules
- Shade some cells in the grid. In unshaded cells, place the digits 1 to 9 exactly once in each row and each column. Shaded cells do not contain digits.
- Japanese Sums: Clues outside the grid indicate the sum of digits in each contiguous sequence of unshaded cells in the respective row or column. For a given row or column, either all clues or no clues are given.
- Cipher: Each letter represents a different digit from 0 to 9, but all occurrences of the same letter represent the same digit. "?" is a stand in for any digit from 0 to 9, but for a double digit number, the first digit may not be 0.
- S-Cell: Each row and column may contain any number of S-Cells, which contain two digits instead of one. The arithmetic value of a S-Cell is the sum of the two digits.
Main Puzzle: Paradigm Shift (9x9)
Solution code: Row 1 (from left to right) then row 3 (from left to right). Use X for shaded cells. For S-cells, enter the two digits in ascending order.
Comments
on 26. May 2024, 20:02 by StephenR
Another masterclass from Agent, excellent stuff. And thanks to Agent who pointed me in the right direction when I broke the puzzle some way into it.
on 21. May 2024, 22:57 by Christounet
Great stuff ! A condensé of fun deductions, once you accept the fact Agent has absolutely no respect for your "expected" japanese sum geometry ;)
Thanks :)
on 21. May 2024, 10:03 by Piatato
Excellent! I remember that I failed this quite miserably a year ago, yet this time around it felt surprisingly smooth and fun. I guess practice helps. :)
on 18. October 2023, 13:30 by Snookerfan
Great puzzle and great setting! Thank you
on 16. August 2023, 08:57 by madhupt
This is a fascinating puzzle! What a setting, as usual from @Agent! It was really difficult for me. But keeping track of S-cells and determining which need to be S-cell and non S-cells very slowly revealed the extremely narrow solve path. The puzzle did not give in till the very end. This is so satisfying. Thanks a lot for sharing.
on 13. March 2023, 04:02 by RJBlarmo
Nice introduction, looking forward to the sequel!
-- Thanks RJBlarmo, glad you liked this intro to the concept!
on 10. March 2023, 15:24 by AnnaTh
I love puzzles (like this one) where I don't know how to get started and then slowly one cipher after the other magically appears. Fantastic puzzle!
-- Thanks AnnaTh for the kind words!
on 9. March 2023, 19:37 by KNT
@Maizegator I had a similar issue, but what I ended up doing was having 3 different colors for filled cells- one for not S-cell, one for S-cell, and a third for not yet determined. I hope this notation will hold up for the sequel, too :-)
on 9. March 2023, 17:44 by MaizeGator
I loved this puzzle. The possibility of S-cells really played with my brain and the usual "secrets" of japanese sums. Can't wait for the sequel!
The hardest part for me was adjusting my notation/keeping track of when an s-cell was "solved" vs. a normal cell being pencil-marked for 2 candidates with center marks (but, I haven't done many S-cell puzzles, maybe there is a better way to do this)
-- Thanks MaizeGator, really glad you enjoyed it! About the notation I did the same thing as KNT, i.e. a third colour for cells that could either be S-Cells or regular unshaded cells. I think it would help a lot for the sequel as well :)
on 8. March 2023, 21:19 by KNT
mortified for the sequel. i found this brutal
(to clarify, i agree the logical steps are not that mentally taxing, but the scanning is out of this world hard, at least for me)
-- Well, the sequel will likely be even harder... (Maybe not in terms of scanning, though.)
on 7. March 2023, 23:56 by kjholt
I reached a deadly pattern literally right at the end and can't figure out what clue I messed up. It seems like everything fits correctly but I'm certain I missed something. Anybody willing to take a look over discord or something similar?
-- Hi kjholt, you may contact me on Discord: Agent#2896.
on 7. March 2023, 15:11 by PixelPlucker
Moderately challenging and nice as always. I do have to say that "simplest possible implementation of this idea" made me chuckle, given the cipher and Latin square rule when the central conceit is clearly the S-cells. (Then again, I'm a sucker for short and punchy rulesets, so I'm definitely a little biased there.) This isn't a value judgment of any kind, though, just something I found mildly and harmlessly amusing :) Thanks for the puzzle.
-- Thanks PixelPlucker! Yeah ok that part of the description was misleading haha.
on 7. March 2023, 12:44 by polar
I hope people aren't put off trying this based on Niv's comment below haha. Assuming it's only 1-9, it was really quite smooth and approachable!
-- Thanks for testing the puzzle polar! And don't worry, a harder puzzle is coming...
on 7. March 2023, 12:04 by Niverio
This puzzle took me just shy of 3 hours, and I was wondering very hard about how this puzzle was ever considered 4 stars by Agent throughout the entire first 2 hours. Then I realized, the S-cell grid is filled with digits from 1-9, and not 0-9...
It flowed very smoothly after that. Awesome puzzle, despite me solving the first half with 6/5 difficulty... (Seriously, you can get VERY far even with the possibility of 0s, it is crazy).
-- Thanks Niv, looks like you got to solve 2 puzzles for the price of one :p
That the puzzle never breaks and even offers a lot more resistance with an extra digit required in each row and column is definitely not what I would expect.
