Psst, I'm in the Loop
(Published on 9. July 2024, 15:15 by Calvinball)
This puzzle was inspired by yttrio's recent trend of using conventional outside clues in unconventional ways to interact with a loop, and was set with their blessing. I highly recommend checking out those puzzles as well.
If you have any questions feel free to DM me on Discord.
Happy solving!
You can watch Mark's solve of this puzzle here!
Rules:
- Normal Sudoku rules apply.
- Draw a one-cell-wide loop of orthogonally connected cells. The loop may not touch itself, not even diagonally.
- The loop acts as a German Whisper line, all adjacent digits along the line must have a difference of at least 5.
Clues outside the grid are Loopwiches. Loopwiches indicate the sum of the digts between the first and last loop cell in their row or column. (Both loop and nonloop cells between the 2 crust cells are summed).
Solution code: Digits on the loop in row 4.
Comments
on 5. September 2024, 00:42 by sujoyku
Absolutely stunning puzzle! This sparse grid giving you so much to work with is unbelievable. I admit the solve felt like a fight that took all of me and fried my brain in the process. But how rewarding this puzzle is! Thank you very much for setting and sharing this gem, Calvinball!
on 26. August 2024, 22:24 by cybers
Very cool! A great mixture of loop logic and precise number logic, smooth and pretty all the way through
on 20. July 2024, 03:22 by Nordy
Lots of fresh ideas, and remarkably smooth if your scanning is better than a Storm Trooper (spoiler: mine was not better). Very enjoyable solve!
on 17. July 2024, 22:50 by Bootenks
I was trained by yttrio and my mate Elchiglia, so it was quite doable.
But anyway, it was exceptional clever! There are some real "brilliant" nuggets inside.
on 12. July 2024, 17:38 by ChinStrap
As someone who's done a lot of yttrio's GW loop puzzles I have to say this was awesome! Lots of fresh questions I had to ask and the one place I got truly stuck when I finally figured it out it felt very fair.
on 11. July 2024, 19:25 by zegres
What a brilliant puzzle.
Very neat idea and amazing execution.
The interplay of different types of logic here was very neat.
on 10. July 2024, 23:52 by ArnulfKoch
Very nice, you never got stuck, so I gave it a 3-star difficulty rating.
on 10. July 2024, 02:50 by yttrio
Very fun puzzle in my obviously completely unbiased opinion :P
There were some really interesting deductions throughout the solve, and it did feel a bit like test-solving one of my own puzzles. I may have to blatantly steal this idea and use it with another loop type ;)
on 9. July 2024, 21:18 by marcmees
very nice. thanks
on 9. July 2024, 16:40 by lmdemasi
A great puzzle. Some interesting things to discover and think about but also quite fair.
on 9. July 2024, 15:39 by gdc
I tested this a day ago and was really pleased with that puzzle. The idea of a loop-sandwich was new to me and the logic felt very fresh. What I liked most is that the difficulty-curve felt so consistent without any bumps in the road.
