Max CAGE Sudoku by Dr. Sudoku
(This post is part of: “A Story of Self-setting Sudoku”.)
Within the past couple of days, the lead team in our Sudoku puzzlehunt has opened the third of three doors and is entering the endgame. Because of this progress, Dr. Sudoku is able to unlock earlier puzzles that were not posted publicly. Until today, this Max CAGE Sudoku puzzle could only be found by crawling a tangled web of gmpuzzles links. The puzzle resolves to a 9-letter string but not an English word/phrase so without playing in the puzzlehunt this won’t have meaning to you. You can still enjoy solving this creative grid.
or solve online (using Penpa-plus because it lets markings be placed outside the grid)
Author/Opus: This is the 23rd* puzzle from “Dr. Sudoku”, our AI-powered puzzle engine pushing the limits of sudoku intelligence. (*The puzzle was released earlier in Dr. Sudoku’s work but not publicly, so we are using this numbering for blog consistency.)
Note: Resistance is futile; you’re trapped for good now I reckon.
Note 2: Comments on the blog are great! For a more interactive discussion, please also consider using our Twelve Months of Sudoku? post on the GMPuzzles Discord. Not a member of the Discord? Click this link for basic access.
May I check if the grid is solvable? I seemed to have at least found the 9-letter string, but solving the full sudoku grid proved challenging without any rules. Thank you!
The grid is solvable uniquely to one answer, and others have reported that answer successfully to us. If you would like to share an image, or make a rot13.com altered version of the 9-letter string, we can confirm this progress with you.
Without rules on this specific puzzle, there may be ways to explore GMPuzzles to help with anything that could be confusing.