This is the larger of two puzzles made for Math Pesto as a part of Secret Santa in the CTC discord server. They requested a pencil puzzle / sudoku hybrid, and I had never done a pencil puzzle before. After doing some research, I stumbled across a shading-type genre called "nurimisaki" that I found could give some good logic. Then, I decided to give it a twist. I hope you enjoy the puzzle!
Rules:
Sudoku:
Normal sudoku rules apply.
Yin-Yang-Yong:
Shade three orthogonally-connected, one-cell-wide (possibly branching) paths through the grid. All cells must be on a path, and each path must pass through more than one box in the grid. No 2x2 region can all be a part of the same path.
Circles:
Circles must be orthogonally connected to their path on exactly one side, and the number in the circle indicates the number of consecutive cells on the path that can be seen in a straight line from the circle, including the circle itself.
German Whispers:
One of these paths must be a German whispers line - adjacent digits along this path must have a difference of 5 or more.
Local Renban:
Box borders divide one of these paths into segments, each of which must be a valid renban line - the digits along this path must be a consecutive set in some order along each segment.
One of these paths has no additional rules.
Inequality:
The pointing signs are greater than/less than signs which point towards the smaller digit.
Click the image to play!
Happy solving!
The first gifted puzzle (a 6x6 with slightly different rules) can be found here.
Lösungscode: Cells on either the whisper or renban path in row 6, left to right.
am 27. September 2024, 11:49 Uhr von The Book Wyrm
Fun puzzle! Not too difficult, and some interesting steps. Rather impressive minimal grid.
am 27. September 2024, 04:02 Uhr von SamuPiano
Fixed a rules redundancy. Thank you to theasylm for pointing this out!
am 27. September 2024, 01:06 Uhr von mathpesto
Solved this a long time ago, but late to the party logging my solve here! A lovely injection of some of my favorite things :) Managed to bring a lot of interesting nurimisaki logic into the world of sudoku
am 27. Dezember 2023, 19:35 Uhr von Playmaker6174
Very interesting idea and a lovely puzzle overall! (or should I say, duo puzzles)
A good advice to other solvers: reading the rules more carefully definitely helps along the solve :)
am 27. Dezember 2023, 19:11 Uhr von yttrio
It was fun being able to test this puzzle, and there were a lot of really cool steps throughout the solve!