A murder most fogged
(Eingestellt am 24. Januar 2025, 01:22 Uhr von pdyxs)
This is a continuation of the concepts I started to explore in The Grid of Forking Paths. In this puzzle, how much fog you have (and therefore how hard the puzzle is) is entirely up to you! The more doors you open, the easier it'll be to solve. I'd love to know how people approach this one, so if you can comment with the doors you opened it'd be much appreciated.
Rules
There's been a murder, and only you can solve it!
Sudoku: Fill the marked 3x3 boxes with digits 1 to 9, so that each digit occurs exactly once in every row, every column and every 3x3 box.
There are 4 types of clues in the grid, which will lead you to the victim (blood), the killer (footprints), the witness (paw prints) and the mastermind behind it all (paper trail).
These clues map to the following types (there is exactly one of each):
- The difference between digits is N
- The digit that the clue points towards is at least N larger than the other (like a thermo). A difference of N appears at least once in each box
- The digits add to N
- One digit is N times the other
The N for each clue is unique, and is the answer to that part of the mystery.
ROOMS/DOORS: Each 3x3 box is a room, and the cells marked with letters between boxes are doors. Follow a clue through a door by entering the marked letter into the door square. If you follow a clue all the way to the end, you'll find the N for that clue circled at the end of the trail.
Any clues that continue through doors apply to the digits on either side of the door.
SOLVE THE MURDER: Deduce all 4 N's and complete the middle room to solve the murder, while opening the fewest doors possible. A master detective can solve this by opening only 4 doors, can you do better?
CATCH THE KILLERS: Once you've solved the murder, kick open the remaining doors and solve the sudoku to catch the killers and bring them to justice.
Solving note: The first door you open is a bit of an arbitrary choice, so just pick the clue that speaks to you!
More Experimental Fog puzzles:
Lösungscode: Solution code will be revealed once the puzzle is solved in SudokuPad
Kommentare
am 8. Februar 2025, 05:00 Uhr von pdyxs
Rules and formatting fixes
am 7. Februar 2025, 06:25 Uhr von VitP
suggestion to the setter:
if you want lots of people to solve this puzzle AND you want them to enjoy it, then you need to write the rules in such a way as to expedite it, rather than confusing people.
here is a partial list of what should be included:
1) the 9 3x3 boxes of a standard sudoku grid have been "exploded", but the relations between the boxes are unchanged. the gray cells between the boxes have NO EFFECT, except for the doors.
2) to start the puzzle, pick a random door and enter its letter into the puzzle. NOW read the rest of the rules.
3) to make the puzzle as easy as possible, open all 8 doors before starting the solve.
4) in any case, using paper notes is highly recommended, because you will need to deduce 4 TYPES of clues, as well as the associated 4 values of N.
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>> pdyxs
Hey VitP, I really appreciate the feedback on the rules on a lot of my puzzles, but I'm really struggling with the tone and approach you're taking with your feedback.
I'm pretty new to puzzle setting and I don't expect to get these things perfect. I also tend to set pretty unusual puzzles, where it's not clear what approach to the rules will work best. But I do put a fair bit of thought into them, and get every puzzle tested before I post it (including for rules clarity). I also do try to make updates as I receive feedback.
While some of your suggestions are fixing genuine errors, a lot of them are rewording or re-ordering the existing rules in a way that makes more sense to you. I'm happy to consider these, but the reality is that there is no perfect ordering of information - every person processes things in different ways, and any choice of wording creates different opportunities for someone to misinterpret them.
Some of the changes are what I'd also call aesthetic - this is how you'd prefer your experience of a puzzle, but that might not be the experience I'm trying to create. That might just mean that the puzzle isn't your style, and that's fine too.
As I said earlier, I've mostly been making things that are a bit experimental (and I'm starting to explicitly label them as such), which often also means that I'm purposefully not trying to tell people how to approach the puzzle, because I want to see (and hear) how they do it themselves.
My goal here is not just to get the most people to play my puzzles - I'm here because I enjoy creating weird and interesting things, and seeing how people interact with them. Some of those things will have rough edges, but that's just the reality of experimental work.
In terms of the feedback itself - when I'm making changes to a puzzle, I have to think about how a lot of different people might interpret those changes, and how that interacts with my own goals for that puzzle. To help me with that, the most useful thing for me to know is what YOU found hard to understand or confusing. I'm happy for that to come with suggestions, but your own perspective is the most important part. A lot of your feedback is coming across as assertions about the 'right way' to word a rule, and that's just not very useful.
am 3. Februar 2025, 18:54 Uhr von Asphodel
Really good use of dynamic fog and adaptative difficulty !
I'm a bit puzzled by the ending though... I thought I missed something in the rules but now I understand what "in a consistent direction" means.
||pdyxs - yeah it's supposed to invoke a thermo with a minimum difference, maybe I should just say that haha
am 31. Januar 2025, 20:04 Uhr von pdyxs
Fixing a typo...
am 31. Januar 2025, 09:21 Uhr von pdyxs
Adding solving note
am 31. Januar 2025, 09:14 Uhr von pdyxs
A small added note
am 31. Januar 2025, 09:08 Uhr von pdyxs
Small rules clarification, and a slight improvement to the link button
am 28. Januar 2025, 14:02 Uhr von MattYDdraig
Really cool idea. Solved using G,H,A,C.
Wording on the second clue type could use some clarity, but otherwise this was fun.
Needed to open only 2 other doors to complete the sudoku too!
am 25. Januar 2025, 02:26 Uhr von Lorena
Love the originality, had an absolute blast solving it, definitely a favorite. I also love that it isn’t too hard so I can share it with people who aren’t into hard puzzles. Thank you very much, I can’t wait to see what you do next!
am 25. Januar 2025, 00:57 Uhr von dzamie
The "consistent direction" and "appears at least once" is difficult to understand. I wound up having to guess-and-check for a lot longer than I'd like to verify which theory was right.
Aside from that, this was pretty nice.
am 24. Januar 2025, 20:10 Uhr von pdyxs
Fixed error in solution code (in sudokupad)
am 24. Januar 2025, 15:13 Uhr von kublai
Fun! I solved the crime with ACEG.
The solution code provided on Sudokupad did NOT work. I guessed at some changes and found the right code on the third try.
|| pdyxs: Thanks for the heads up - twas just a dumb typo, fixed now!
am 24. Januar 2025, 09:07 Uhr von pdyxs
Adding a clarifying rule
am 24. Januar 2025, 07:43 Uhr von briiisy
Oooh I love this. I'll have to come back to solve it when I can get on my laptop. No opening doors for me on mobile
