Tadpoles (6x6)
(Published on 12. October 2021, 06:24 by Nordy)
Rules:
Normal 6x6 Sudoku Rules apply.
Tadpoles: Tadpoles are a mix of snakes and arrows. A tadpole is an orthogonally connected, one-cell wide path where the digit in the circled end is the sum of the other digits along the path. Tadpoles do not branch or touch themselves, but may touch other tadpoles. Each circle belongs to only one tadpole, and tadpoles must be at least two cells long. Here are some tadpoles:
And here is the puzzle. You can solve online at F Puzzles or CTC
Solution code: Row 1 followed by Column 6
Comments
on 9. September 2023, 23:07 by gdc
Very nice one! I recently set a similar puzzle and am very impressed how this arrangement creates such a smooth start.
on 22. May 2023, 02:44 by damasosos92
A very deep sudoku, with a lot of things going on. I think I missed something but I found logical deductions, so I'm happy with that. Thank you Nordy! This Sudok-a-thon is revealing some good stuff indeed!
on 25. May 2022, 10:50 by thatkyle
My favorite Nordy puzzle so far! This puzzle was a hard solve for me. The tadpole logic forced me to think about groups of numbers in a way I have never had to before for a sudoku, which made the solution, once I found it, very satisfying!
The nature of the tadpole restrictions, the layout of the tadpoles, and the small grid size make it easy to brute force a solution because there aren't that many combinations you need to try, which is what I initially did when I solved the puzzle because I couldn't figure out the logic of it.
But of course, that felt like cheating and wasn't at all satisfying. So I forced myself to reset the grid and solve it using step-by-step logical deduction, which was very challenging. It may have been more challenging for me than the average solver because I haven't done many snake or arrow puzzles before, so I had to think "outside of the box" of my normal toolbox of standard sudoku techniques, which made discovering the logic behind the puzzle extremely satisfying, and made Tadpoles one of my favorite sudoku puzzles ever.
10/10
