Ophidiophobia
(Published on 14. August 2024, 14:45 by marty_sears)
Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply.
Draw 4 snakes, moving orthogonally through the grid. Snakes may not move diagonally, branch, enter cages, cross themselves, or share cells with each other. But they may touch themselves and each other in any way they like.
Each circled digit lies at one end of a snake, and indicates how many marked 3x3 boxes that snake visits.
Digits in a cage sum to the clue in the corner (if one is given.)
Digits separated by an X sum to 10.
Digits separated by a black dot are in a 1:2 ratio (one is double the other.)
Each snake follows ONE AND ONLY ONE of the four rules below (breaking all the other rules at least once.) Each snake follows a different rule.
- PARITY: Digits along the snake alternate between odd and even.
- GERMAN WHISPER: Adjacent digits have a difference of at least 5.
- PALINDROME: The snake reads the same in either direction.
- NON-VENOMOUS: No pair of adjacent digits anywhere along the snake sum to exactly the 'venom value'.
The venom value (which is the same for any snake) is to be deduced.
Please leave a comment if you enjoy :)
Solution code: Digits in row 3 that are on snakes, from left to right
Comments
on 27. August 2024, 00:03 by applesauce
Lots of cool deductions sprinkled throughout. Thanks for another great puzzle!
on 23. August 2024, 03:32 by yttrio
Very cool puzzle! Lots of twists, turns, and varying logic throughout the solve!
on 18. August 2024, 06:07 by LehanLehan
Hard,but smooth and fair, beautiful beyond belief. Thank you very much,Marty.
on 16. August 2024, 22:48 by vfig
sstarted very ssmooth and ssinuouss, then i got sslightly sstuck on ssome evassive deductionss in the ssecond half of the puzzzle. but finisshed ssucccesssfully. thankss!
on 16. August 2024, 20:49 by softie
Just amazing. So much fun. Never unfairly hard, but lots of logic to piece together to make progress. I am astounded at how you were able to prevent full determination of 3 of the snakes until almost the very end. I don't know how you create such intricate logic hidden so deep in the solve path, but I'm grateful!
on 16. August 2024, 05:37 by Jafacake
Really have to keep on your toes with these snakes around. Amazing setting.
on 16. August 2024, 00:54 by flyingdragon
Incredible! What a masterpiece!
on 15. August 2024, 20:15 by PierreTombal
Oh that was so frustrating. Fitting the snakes in appeared fairly straight forward due to the position of the cages, but somewhere half way through the puzzle I got confused about the venom value and ended up rewinding the whole thing. Turned out that my error was that out of the two possibles I had narrowed down for the venom value I had been gazing at the wrong one and completely forgot about the other...
on 15. August 2024, 20:03 by frogboogers73
Wow! Every puzzle, a masterpiece :) I found your puzzles on CTC and now watch your page here to find your latest, and am very proud of myself when I play them and then later a video of theirs features it. I really hope that happens with this one!
on 15. August 2024, 15:31 by Niverio
Pretty creative :)
on 15. August 2024, 14:39 by Franjo
I enjoyed the Arukone-opening so much and admire how the non-venomous snake got its shape in the end. Thank you for creating and sharing this masterpiece.
on 15. August 2024, 11:26 by MagnusJosefsson
Excellent! A very enjoyable and satisfying solving experience!
on 15. August 2024, 09:28 by zonny
Sensational! What a fantastic puzzle - genius from start to finish!
on 15. August 2024, 02:00 by sorryimLate
Speechless. You are a brightly shining artist, Marty. Thank you for the show, I enjoyed the immersive experience!
on 15. August 2024, 00:59 by cybers
Sneaky, snake-y, and gorgeously executed. hats off :)
on 14. August 2024, 22:38 by ThePedallingPianist
What a wonderfully executed idea, and a real pleasure to debut on my Twitch stream! This had echoes of Everything In Its Right Place, and joins that puzzle as one of the most memorable and stunning Marty puzzles - which is saying a lot!
on 14. August 2024, 19:24 by ChinStrap
Astonishingly great but very hard for me. Probably the hardest Marty puzzle I've solved. But one of his best too. So many beautiful pieces.
on 14. August 2024, 18:41 by Nylimb
I made an error early on, so I had one of the paths slightly wrong. When I got near the end I discovered that the non-venomous path had a bad pair of digits. I went ahead and filled in the last few digits anyway and got the congratulatory message. I figured out what I'd done wrong, but I wasn't sure if my error had affected my reasoning, so I started over, guided by a Replay file of my bad solution. Fortunately my error hadn't affected much, and now I feel justified in claiming that I've solved it.
Thanks for the amazing puzzle!
on 14. August 2024, 17:48 by Fizz
What an utterly mind-blowing puzzle!
on 14. August 2024, 15:08 by Prof.Dori
One of the best puzzles I solved from Marty. Truly spectacular!
