Logic Masters Deutschland e.V.

Quite a while ago, Andrewsarchus came up with a new idea for a 3D Sudoku variant, which he called Cubedoku. There have been a few such ideas before, but this one was interesting, since it relied on indexing individual 1x1x1 cubic cells internal to a bigger cubic grid. Clashcode and I helped him develop the idea, and we made a pack of puzzles, which so far has not been published on LMD. I've been catching up on publishing older puzzles, and decided it was time to let these see the light of day.

The rules are a little complicated, so I'm including the first picture below (courtesy of Andrewsarchus) to show how it works. You can see that entering a digit on one face of the grid determines which single internal 1x1x1 cube is indexed (the target cell), and that cube has to be indexed by all the other faces, putting a further digit on all the remaining faces. There are three visible faces, the digits on all of which are constrained by their indexing connections to the internal 1x1x1 cubes, but also to any Sudoku constraints we place on the surfaces of these faces (e.g. irregular regions, thermos or other standard Sudoku variants). This can lead to some new and interesting interactions. To solve the puzzle, we need to place digits in all cells of the three visible faces. If the faces are 4x4, we use the digits 1-4, or if they are 6x6 we use the digits 1-6, etc. just like normal Sudoku puzzles.

This first puzzle is entitled 'Temperature Test' and has a simple thermo ruleset and irregular regions on some faces, in addition to the standard Cubedoku rules above.

Link for solving on Penpa

I'm also including a playable example puzzle, with a solution, to help you get used to the puzzle type:

Link for solving example puzzle on Penpa