Index-istential Crisis (with ChinStrap)
(Published on 19. January 2025, 13:39 by sujoyku)
- Deconstruction: Place 9 non-overlapping 3x3 boxes in the grid. Fill each cell in a box with a digit from 1-9 such that digits don't repeat in rows, columns or boxes.
- Non-region Values: Non-region cells (i.e. cells not belonging to a 3x3 box) have a value equal to either their row or column number. For purposes of the solution check, non-region cells on index lines with value 9 or smaller are to be entered, and all other non-region cells are left blank. For example, if r4c8 is not in a region it may have a value of either 4 or 8.
- Index Lines: On an index line, the value in the Nth cell along the line (starting from the diamond) indicates the position along the line where the value N appears. Eg: 3214 would be a valid line with 3 as the diamond; the 1st value, 3, indicates that the 3rd cell contains a 1, the 2nd cell a 2, and so on.
Here you can solve the puzzle online:
Solution code: Column 3 from top to bottom (up to 11 digits)
Comments
on 5. February 2025, 23:23 by EDL
Interesting idea and beautiful execution. Thanks a lot to you (and to ChinStrap ofc) for this great puzzle.
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You are much welcome, EDL, thank you for your comment! We are glad you enjoyed the puzzle.
Kind regards, sujoyku
on 27. January 2025, 13:01 by Silverstep
Thanks for the puzzle, very nice work! I'm not convinced there was a "tough portion" or "difficult part" I think they are all easy :P
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You are much welcome, Silverstep, thank you for your comment! I don't know about "easy", but we had it at 4 stars initially. :)
Anyhow, we are glad you enjoyed it.
Kind regards, sujoyku
on 23. January 2025, 17:14 by Machiavelli
My first 5 star solve. Very well made puzzle! I found the middle of the solve to be the most difficult part but once you look in the right places it becomes straightforward throughout.
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Congratulations on your first 5 star solve, Machiavelli, and thank you for commenting! We are glad you enjoyed it. I also agree with your assessment, probably the mid-solve is the toughest portion.
Kind regards, sujoyku
on 23. January 2025, 11:06 by sorryimLate
That was very hard! I'm still not sure what the intended path in mid-solve is because I had some quite complicated deductions. Very interesting logic with this ruleset though. Thanks!
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You are much welcome, sorryimLate, thank you for your comment! We are glad that you liked it. If you have some specific question about the solve path, feel free to write a hidden comment. To my understanding, our intended deductions are not terribly complicated but often need a good bit of scanning and asking the right questions.
Kind regards, sujoyku
on 20. January 2025, 19:29 by mihel111
After resolving ChinStrap's Shadow Self, here is my tip for people attacking those puzzles : sacrifice your corner marking to put all friendly values in all cells, ie put 1 in all cells of row 1 and column 1 and so on. When a cell is surely in a box, erase those corner marking.If a friendly value make no logical sense, erase it. When a box is fully determined, you can then use the corner marking as usual.
After all, corner marking in the usual way is of no great value in the early stages of a deconstruction puzzle.
on 20. January 2025, 11:00 by mihel111
That was a tough one. A brilliant puzzle that get me occupied a good part of my sunday. It is so easy to make mistakes on this type of puzzle.
Very well done.
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Thank you for your comment, mihel111! We are glad that you liked the puzzle. And you are so right: The ruleset requires being very careful at all times. During setting, we also experienced how easy it is to miss an option for the possible values of non-region cells.
Kind regards, sujoyku
