Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

Hi guys, it's been a while! :) I'm back with a combination puzzle, borrowing rules from a few pencil puzzle variants I enjoy.


Normal sudoku rules apply, but to find the solution, you must find a number of snakes hiding in the grid.
A snake is a one cell wide path in the grid. The head and tail cells of each snake needs to be determined. A snake can touch itself diagonally, but it can not touch itself orthogonally or revisit any cell twice.

The cells not covered by snakes form exactly 8 orthogonally connected areas in the grid, one of each size from 1 to 8. These areas are called snake eggs. Each egg of size n contains the numbers from 1 to n exactly once. Eggs must not touch orthogonally, but they might touch diagonally. The numbers given in the grid indicate the position of the highest number of each snake egg.

If you consider the eggs as "land" and the snakes as "water" cells, standard Nurikabe rules apply. The snakes must connect to each other to form a single orthogonally connected area of snake cells, where no 2x2 region is covered entirely by snakes. Separate snakes might orthogonally connect anywhere, including the head cells.

The head and tail cell of each snake must contain the same number. (This number might be different for different snakes.) Numbers alongside the snake are not restricted: they might repeat, and the number in the snake's head cell might be found elsewhere on the snake.







Hint: the grid can be separated to 'snake' and 'egg' cells without knowing anything about the snakes, by using Nurikabe techniques only



You can try it on f-puzzles.

Have fun!



Thanks to Phistomefel for the idea of combining Snake Egg with Sudoku. Check out his original puzzle if you haven't already, it's truly wonderful.