Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

Is it a snake, or is it a worm? It's both!

Fun fact: I came up with this combination of rules, and most of the break-in, in the middle of the night while I couldn't sleep. When I worked it out further at daytime it turned out surprisingly well, so here it is!

Rules:

Normal sudoku rules apply.

Shade some cells such that they form a snake (a one cell wide path that does not branch, cross itself, or touch itself orthogonally or diagonally).
The head and tail of the snake are given by two of the circles.
The remaining circles lie on a bend in the snake path.

The worm rule applies to the snake path, i.e. going along the snake from one end to the other, digits alternately increase and decrease.
In other words, for any digit along the snake, the next and previous digit are either both lower or both higher.

Additionally, the difference between any two adjacent cells along the snake is a maximum of 3.

Clues outside the grid give the sum of all snake cells in the corresponding row/column. These have been encrypted. Each different letter stands for a different digit from 1-9, and each instance of the same letter stands for the same digit.
A letter in the corner of a cell inside the grid indicates that that cell contains the corresponding digit.

Try it here.

Have fun!