Dr. Sudoku Prescribes #102 – Cave
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the linex mode where left click+drag draws lines and right click marks X’s)
Theme: 3456
Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the cave segments from left to right for the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry with a comma.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 3:15, Master = 8:00, Expert = 16:00
Solution: PDF
Note: Follow this link for other classic Caves. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Cave Puzzles to get started on.
05:53.
It was not really flavored, pretty plain overall, but the trick used takes sufficient time to discover. And I’m not sure whether trying all possibilities for a number is considered a trick. Or I miss something.
Not really eventful, but a nice aesthetic theme. Sadly that 445 group at the left exists; it should have been a same-digit group of clues.
If you would have liked more than 1 solution, I could have used a better “themed” group than 445. I originally had some version of 366 or 336 on the other side but needed to go to the three sixes to get a nice single solving puzzle.
This uses “reach” a lot, and in one place on the left side near that 445 in a somewhat unfamiliar way. You should not need to try all possibilities for any number.
I guess I understand what you mean by “reach”, but could you give a (somewhat formal) definition ?
I used a lot that the cave segments must escape to form one region, and that the unmarked cells must escape to the edge.
Is that what you mean by reach ?
Is there any particular reason you’ve switched to using dashed lines for Cave puzzles? I had been solving them by opening them in an image editor and using the fill tool to color squares for inside/outside, but with dashed lines I can’t do that anymore. If there’s another method that’s as easy I’d be happy to use that instead, but I don’t know of any.
I can still do that with dashed lines.I guess you didnt try,presuming like me that it wont work,or if you did, I am not sure why it didnt work for you.The reason he switched is to make it look like a workable loop puzzle.
Flood fill will still work as there is a slightly gray line drawn between the dark black lines as in our Fillomino formatting.
There were requests for a style that made drawing borders easier so I’ve switched to dashed lines.
Aha! On the previous Cave, I’d used printscreen to copy the image over to my editor, and I hadn’t realized that the inline image was slightly shrunk – the resizing had destroyed the slight grey line, so that’s why it wasn’t working for me. And then I didn’t actually try this one, since it looked the same as the previous one.
It’s working fine for me now. Thanks for the help, and for the great puzzles.
It’s good to know your experience with our earlier image which I had resized by html. We can definitely try to avoid this in the future which should limit problems when you don’t copy the image over directly.
16:57