Roller Coaster of Emotions
(Published on 25. December 2024, 09:00 by Agent)
This puzzle was set for Turn 2 of the Skunkworks League event on Discord. The prompt was to set a puzzle inspired from the song "The Boy" by Tom Rosenthal.
Rules
- Chaos Deconstruction: Nine orthogonally connected regions containing the digits 1-9 must be located. Digits may not repeat in any row, column, or region. Cells outside of a region do not contain digits.
- Roller Coaster: Draw a path from the start (S) to the goal (G) that travels orthogonally between the centers of some cells in the grid without entering the same cell twice. Clues on the left give the sum of values on horizontal path segments in that row in the correct order. Clues above give the sum of values on vertical path segments in that column in the correct order. A "?" may replace any value from 0-9, but for double digit numbers, the first digit may not be 0. A '*' indicates one path segment with an arbitrary sum. For each row or column, either all or no clues are provided.
- Memory Cells: There are nine memory cells which must be located in the grid, one in each region and at most one in each row/column. All memory cells must be on the path, and the value of a memory cell containing the digit N is the digit that occurred N steps earlier along the path. Values of digits are otherwise unchanged. Each digit 1-9 appears in exactly one memory cell and each value 1-9 is remembered exactly once.
- The path must pass through each region exactly once.
- The digits placed in memory cells must increase along the path.
- A white circle appears on all cells that are remembered by a memory cell.
Example Puzzle (1-6)
Main Puzzle (1-9)
Solution code: The number of turns of the path in each of row 2, row 4, and row 6. Then the digits in row 5, from left to right, ignoring empty cells.
Comments
on 29. January 2025, 16:07 by MagnusJosefsson
Absolutely amazing! Incredibly fun and rewarding and very original as well.
on 19. January 2025, 03:53 by BloodbuzzCorio
Another absolute masterpiece Agent. Thanks for setting it!
on 3. January 2025, 12:37 by Christounet
A roller coaster of mistakes for me !
But great fun and emotions all the way still.
It’s probably the first time I can say that my prefered clue was a * !!!
Thanks :)
on 1. January 2025, 18:23 by Jesper
Awesome puzzle, thanks!
on 30. December 2024, 16:07 by Playmaker6174
A wonderful puzzle with an original and cool concept! Took a while to get familiar with the concept and the reasoning for certain logic, but that’s certainly more than worth the time :)
on 30. December 2024, 15:27 by Niverio
Very cool from start to finish!
on 27. December 2024, 18:21 by ONeill
Excellent puzzle! Very intricate with a nice variety of logic :)
on 26. December 2024, 16:27 by polar
Super smooth solve as per, with an awesome final resolution. Thanks Agent :)
-- Welcome back on LMD!
on 26. December 2024, 08:07 by askaksaksask
What a puzzle! I thought I had worked through this in around 90 minutes, upon realizing the code didn't work as I had completely elided a rule ("the path must pass through each region exactly once"), which led to some pretty stark goofs. Thank you, Agent, for the quick sanity check. Well on an hour later I was able to retrace a path to victory, and I'm glad I did. This is a toughie, but the final product is so beautiful! I hope more folks take a crack at this one. Bravo!
on 26. December 2024, 07:51 by HertogHJ
Tough one...
on 25. December 2024, 09:51 by Piatato
Great fun!
