Stolen Whispers
(Published on 1. July 2023, 22:36 by Paquet Voleur)
Once upon a time, a bard and mischievous puzzle constructor named yttrio proposed a riddle named Whisper Loop-de-Loop, which captured the attention of Paquet Voleur, a juggler who wanted to diversify and one day build and release his own puzzles. Paquet Voleur was quite confused by Whisper Loop-de-Loop: he could not understand its 3-star difficulty rating (it had to be at least a 5-star!), and after two hours of tedious torture, he met an unresolvable deadly pattern at the very end of his solve.
Some weeks later, the quantum puzzlics specialist Christounet expressed interest in seeing what a sudoku created by Paquet Voleur would look like. Pressure was building up on the poor Paquet Voleur! He could handle balls and clubs and rings and oranges and apples, even the occasional egg in the mix, but the art of sudoku was beyond him still.
Then came back the memory of that difficult solve from a while back. He had worked at burying this shameful part of his solving history deep into oblivion, but life played a trick on him: not only would this memory live on, but Paquet Voleur himself would even make it public. A setter he was not by any stretch of imagination, but what if he simply took the ready-made Whisper Loop-de-Loop, change the rule he misread, fix the deadly pattern, and make up an extra rule to avoid one painfully convoluted deduction? Then he could pass a riddle for Christounet to solve! Let's do it!
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Many thanks yttrio for accepting to give a shot at this variation on Whisper Loop-de-Loop, and to have agreed to its publication here. Thanks also Christounet for the test and guidance.
Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply.
Digits in a cage may not repeat and must sum to the number in the top left corner of the cage.
Draw a one-cell wide loop of orthogonally connected cells:
- The loop may not touch itself, even diagonally.
- The loop must enter at least one cell of each of the nine boxes.
- Numbers on the loop count as double their value when calculating the cage totals, e.g. a two-cell cage of value 10 could contain a 2 on the loop and a 6 not on the loop.
- Each cage contains at least one cell that is not on the loop.
- The loop acts as a German Whisper, that is, each value on it must be at least 5 away from its orthogonal neighbours on the loop. The face value, NOT its double, is used for the German Whisper constraint.
Solve with Sudokupad. Solve with f-puzzle.
Solution code: Column 6
Comments
on 15. July 2023, 05:47 by shteev
A bit tricky at the end, but a lot of nice stuff before that
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@shteev: Thanks for your solve and kind message. There was one deduction I found a bit trickier towards the end, but I didn't get many comments about it, so I figured it might have been me only. Maybe we struggled at the same place?
on 3. July 2023, 19:29 by koba1917
Really fun puzzle!
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Edit: Thanks for taking the time for a comment, and of course for your solve. I'm happy you had fun with the puzzle.
on 3. July 2023, 16:49 by Counterfeitly
Struggled with the break-in for a bit, and ironically I had to undo a few steps right at the end when I ended up with a cell with no valid options - right around an hour, tho I had a few distractions in the middle
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Edit: That was a pretty quick solve in my books, although I'm pretty slow by other solvers' standards. Thanks for your solve and comment.
on 3. July 2023, 05:15 by bansalsaab
Very nice puzzle. I went to your link to try yttrio puzzle after struggling this one but after solving that my brain got oriented to the ruleset. Looking forward to more of your puzzles or this ruleset.
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Edit: Thank you for your kind comment! I'm glad you enjoyed the ruleset, and happy for you that you got a two-for-one deal out of it.
on 2. July 2023, 22:41 by madhupt
This is a brilliant puzzle. Quite hard for me but could manage to solve it through beautiful bits of logic along the way.
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Edit: I am very pleased that you appreciated solving this puzzle, and persevered when things got a bit less obvious. Thanks for your comment and solve! If you want more of this ruleset, have a look at yttrio's original puzzle: it's a really nice one!
on 2. July 2023, 20:18 by riffclown
Quite elegant.. Beautiful puzzle..
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Edit: I cannot thank you enough for the good you've done to this first published puzzle of mine! Thank you for everything!
on 2. July 2023, 15:46 by Paquet Voleur
Typo
on 2. July 2023, 14:43 by Snookerfan
Very nice puzzle! Thank you
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Edit: Thanks for your solve and comment!
on 2. July 2023, 14:39 by Paquet Voleur
Retouch story
on 2. July 2023, 10:58 by lerroyy
Very nice, thanks!
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Edit: We haven't interacted with each other, but we've been hanging in some of the same areas lately. I feel honored that you gave my first puzzle a shot. Cheers!
on 2. July 2023, 00:18 by SirWoezel
Very nice puzzle. Don't skip this one!
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Edit: These are very nice words! Thank you for the solve and comment!
on 1. July 2023, 23:07 by yttrio
It was quite cool to see how a relatively small change to the original puzzle resulted in a quite different solve path and unique solution! It's always nice as a puzzle constructor to see others take inspiration from what you've done.
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Edit: All puzzles I solved from you were inspiring. Thanks for all the positive feedback you gave me! That cheered me up!
on 1. July 2023, 22:45 by Christounet
Super first puzzle ! I enjoyed testing this, and even if it is very inspired from another puzzle, I know you carefully recrafted it to make it work with your own original ruleset. I'm lookinfg forward to the next one, my friend ! Thanks !!
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Edit: I'm currently still under the shock that I have my name on a puzzle here. Thanks for the gentle push that sparked this! Now I'll need to refine some skills to come up with puzzles that I can build from scratch, but you got the ball rolling!
