TENtacles
(Published on 25. April 2024, 00:12 by marty_sears)
Happy birthday to the brilliant puzzle setter and my good friend Stu (AKA ThePedallingPianist.) A couple of months ago he made two excellent octopus themed puzzles, Orla the Octopus and Killer Octopus. As a birthday treat I've made my own one.
Rules:
- Normal sudoku rules apply.
- Find and draw Stu the octopus's eight tentacles; these are snaking lines emanating from his body (in the central cell) and moving orthogonally or diagonally between the centres of cells. Each one ends somewhere in the perimeter of the grid.
- Each pair of opposite tentacles forms a ten-line, which is 9 cells long, and rotationally symmetrical around that central cell. They must never branch, or intersect each other apart from in the central cell.
- A ten-line can be divided into non-overlapping contiguous segments, each of which sums to 10.
- A blue bubble always sits on a ten-line and marks the divide between two of the segments on that line.
- A small white fish swims between two consecutive digits.
- Not all possible bubbles or fish are given.
- Digits in a cage also sum to 10. The ten-lines must never enter these.
Play a plain background version
Please leave a comment if you enjoy :)
Solution code: Solution codeword shown after solving
Comments
on 1. May 2024, 15:43 by ChinStrap
Beautiful, smooth, approachable, completely fair and still not trivial. Great puzzle!
on 29. April 2024, 17:50 by frogboogers73
wonderful puzzle! loved the box 4 ten box deduction
on 27. April 2024, 01:24 by only1evenprime
What a puzzle!
on 26. April 2024, 07:35 by mthunter26
Absolutely loved this puzzle! I often struggle with 3* puzzles, and while I wouldn't say this was easy, I did always feel like I knew where I should look next.
on 26. April 2024, 05:56 by cam
I hope this momentum keeps up and we get more octopus puzzles. That was fantastic :)
on 25. April 2024, 20:49 by Franjo
A really wonderful and creative present! Congratulations, TPP- and thank you, MS for creating this gem.
on 25. April 2024, 15:49 by ThePedallingPianist
I'm delighted and humbled that you've taken on the Octopus ruleset, let alone set it as a birthday present for me! You've certainly worded the rules more cleanly than mine which is great to see, so I think I'll be stealing that for any future octopi I make! As for the puzzle itself, it ticks every box that a classic Marty puzzle ticks: creative, fun, interesting, and never an unfair step! Thanks for setting and for being such a generous, genius friend!
on 25. April 2024, 05:26 by ozgaz
Delightful solve. Thanks for creating this. Highly recommend it.
on 25. April 2024, 00:58 by ViKingPrime
What a beautiful present! and no pushover of a puzzle, either.
