Snake Pit
(Published on 29. December 2024, 19:45 by Adrian71)
Digits in killer cages sum to the given total.
Digits connected by an X sum to 10.
Three snakes are living in the grid. Snakes are lines that move horizontally, vertically or diagonally from digit to digit. They do not overlap or cross each other or themselves. Digits in cages cannot be reached by the snakes.
All three snakes consist of 14 digits. Furthermore:
• One of the snakes contains only digits of a single parity
• One of the snakes has its head in the same box as its tail
• One of the snakes has both modular and entropic properties
• One of the snakes contains digits from all 9 boxes
• One of the snakes has German Whisper properties
• On one of the snakes, the digits sum to 90. On the other two snakes, the digits sum to 67.
Play on SudokuPad
Definitions:
Entropic Lines: Any set of three sequential cells along an entropic line must contain a low digit (1,2,3), a middle digit (4,5,6), and a high digit (7,8,9)
Modular lines: every set of three sequential digits along a line must contain a complete set of residues modulo 3, i.e. one digit from {1,4,7}, one from {2,5,8}, and one from {3,6,9}.
German whisper lines: Every two adjacent digits on a line must have a difference of at least 5.
Solution code: The digits in row 9
Comments
on 1. January 2025, 08:51 by sorryimLate
For me this was very hard but very interesting. It was quite tricky to find the correct, approximate places for the snakes, and to prove it was the only possible setting. After that it was a smooth solve. Thanks!
on 29. December 2024, 22:49 by askaksaksask
This is a great puzzle! Harder than 'year of the snake' to be sure, but there is some great logic here. The snake restrictions are fun to tease out. I'm sure it was your intent as the setter, but the total sums of the snakes are almost there as a way to check your logic, as opposed to a rigorous summing exercise (that is to say, very little arithmetic tedium needed in the puzzle). I recall how much I enjoyed the entropic- modular snake in your other puzzle. Very cool logic here, very fun, highly recommend!
