Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

Each color represents a separate staircase, that does not necessarily obey the laws of physics, gravity or staircases.

As the "Neapolitan" version may be a bit busy for some folks, I am providing a "vanilla" version as well.

Maurits Cornelis Escher (more commonly known as M.C. Escher), was a Dutch artist, born in 1898, who made mathematically inspired and very imaginative works of art, in various mediums. He was also a photographer, mathematician, architect and visionary. Many of his works of art are renderings of the impossible, such as never-ending staircases or stairs going up and down every x, y and z axis in a building. These drawings (and in particular the Penrose Stairs) were my inspiration for this puzzle. Since Escher was a mathematician as well, I included a few mathematical elements as clues. Also, in tribute to Escher, no clues are "normal" ... there is a twist or extra constraint on the "normal variants" used as clues here.

Clues:

1. Even though it is Escher inspired, normal Sudoku rules apply.


2. Digits in Thermometers (representing stairs) must increase from bulb to the end or ends or middle, where there is no end. Joined Thermometers may have ambigous sections, when there is no "top". For instance, in the 3 joined thermometers converging in r4c6 and r5c6, either of those cells may be the highest digit.


3. "3F" clues indicate 3 different unique Fibonacci sequences of 3 digits each, in the direction of their associated arrow, from smallest to largest.


4. The green line is a bifurcated¹ palindrome². Think of it as two 7-digit palindromes that share their central 5 digits, but their beginning and ending digits are different. For instance 9655569 and 8655568 would satisfy this clue.


5. All the cells along the r1c5-r5c9 diagonal sum to 34 and are even numbers, thus a modified Little Killer clue.


6. All Killer Cages sum to the number in their top corner. Digits cannot be repeated in a cage. As no clues can be normal in this puzzle, the extra constraint here is that all Killer Cages contain a common digit.


7. "S" clues are modified Skyscraper clues, where the digit in the row/column next to the arrow indicates how many blocks can be seen from (not including) this cell, in the direction of the arrow, unobstructed by taller blocks (digits indicate the height), until a 9 is encountered.


8. The "LK" clue is a modified Little Killer clue, where the digit associated with the arrow (lets call it N) indicates the sum of the first N cells in that direction equals the square of N.

Click the link to play the puzzle on Penpa Edit in color or black & white

¹   An obvious nod to Simon's profound use of this word (or a derivative of it) in one of his recent solves.
²   I am disappointed that the word "palindrome" does not follow the spelling rules of a palindrome. I have similar issues with the length of the word "abbreviation".

Below is my attempt at an "artist's rendering" of what I imagine this puzzle might be, taking 2D concept/design I started with (to the right) and making it somewhat 3D (on a distorted 9x9 grid).