Dr. Sudoku Prescribes #59 – Isodoku
Theme: Last snow of winter? This Snowflake Isodoku may not be the last snowflake to fall this winter, but it will be the last snow-based puzzle from us this year.
Rules: Standard Isodoku rules, using numbers 1-8. Some rows connect across the center of the shape by following the gray lines.
Answer String: Enter the 1st “row” on the left edge, followed by a comma, followed by the 2nd “row” on the left edge.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:00, Master = 8:15, Expert = 16:30
Nice design !
Once you wrap your head around the “rows” the actual solve is not so difficult, generally that’s my ‘problem’ with this puzzle type.
Impressive speed of releasing new puzzles !
I can’t keep up with my solving at this rate
I’m not a big fan of isosudoku, but I did enjoy the geometry on this one. The solving path felt fairly tight and relied largely on getting a feel for the geometry. I like a puzzle that sort of teaches you how to solve it on the fly.
Thanks for your comment Jack. It seems your solve followed my design goal here of teaching a bit about the geometry (like a Jigsaw Sudoku with Law of Leftovers situations) at the same time as challenging the solver with a less familiar grid. It is easy to make these puzzles very hard. It is harder to make them enjoyable.
If we are being honest here, … while it was a very intelligent design scheme, it was as convoluted as sudo-kurves, and just not all that fun to solve. It felt like work and not a pleasant diversion.
Looking forward to next week and beyond …
Yeah, I’d echo this sentiment. It’s pretty to look at, but too busy to solve on.
23:49s
Went wrong because of writing 2 same numbers in the same region (which was due to the clever tricky design which eventually led me past expert time as a result)But the solving was fun!
I think the solving path here is a bit TOO narrow for my taste. After grasping the geometry and using a trick with the shading, I placed all of the 5s, 6s, and 7s, plus a few other numbers. But I finally placed an 8 on the left side of the puzzle after looking at the puzzle several times and making notations all over it; this appears to be the breakthrough I need to finish. It’s felt more like looking for a needle in a haystack than like logical thinking.
There are some symmetric (and potentially early) spots with both 5′s and 8′s that arise from a pointing pair. Specifically, a 5 that can go in the cage where the 8 starts alone and an 8 in the cage that can go where the 5 starts alone. Both follow from the same rationale, so if you encountered that 8 towards the end, you found the big break-in.