Chaos Construction: Take my Temperature with a Working Thermometer
(Published on 1. January 2025, 18:05 by bodemeister)
- Chaos Construction:
Separate the grid into nine nonoverlapping orthgonally-connected regions such that the digits from 1-9 do not repeat in any row, column, and region. - Thermo lines:
Grey lines are thermo lines. Digits strictly increase along each thermo from the bulb end. Orange lines are thermo lines where the solver must determine which end to place the bulb. - Thermo-Region interaction:
Each thermo contains 0, 2, or 3 cells from each region with at most one region contributing 3 cells. Furthermore, for each thermo, cells from the same region cannot all be adjacent on the thermo. For example, if a region contributes digits 2, 4, and 7 to a thermo, then another region must contribute at least one digit between 2 and 7 to that thermo.
Links: You can solve the puzzle with solution check here at CtC or here at Penpa.
Enjoy solving and please leave a comment!
You can also check out my other puzzles here!
Solution code: The digits in Column 2 from top to bottom
Comments
on 3. January 2025, 16:35 by henrypijames
I didn't notice the note that the region division is *known* to be non-unique until I was finishing up - and couldn't. I find this circumference terrible, to be honest - the puzzle is therefore broken.
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You're entitled to your own opinion, but the puzzle is by no means broken. I think it's an interesting and enjoyable solve, and the other comments indicate this as well.
on 2. January 2025, 11:33 by Snookerfan
Very nice and extremely hard puzzle! A little pitty that the regions configuration was not unique. Thank you
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Thanks for solving my puzzle and commenting! Yeah would have been nice if the regions were unique, but I felt the final piece of logic was a nice enough piece of logic to leave it as it was.
on 2. January 2025, 04:45 by askaksaksask
The idea behind this is exceptional. This is difficult, to be sure, and i needed to take a few breaks to crack it. Even after internalizing the thermo restrictions and the implications for region building, i found it quite hard to get traction. The break in was also difficult, but really the first 1/3 of the solve felt much more trying than the rest. All said, fantastic puzzle that gets smoother with progress. Also, the orange thermometers are genius. Thank you!
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Thank you for solving my puzzle and for the feedback! You had the right idea for the break-in, but in addition there's some irregular sudoku logic to really get the ball rolling, and irregular sudoku logic is very useful throughout most of the solve.
