hutt's puzzle dump

    As the door slowly creaks open, t hey are delighted to find that the chamber ahead of them is naturally lit. Felix claims, "This could be the prize room. We've finally made it." When they enter the room, there is something completely different in the center. A woman is trapped in a cage in the center of the room. Instinctively, she calls for help.     As Renn rushes forward, Felix quickly glances about the room. The oubliette is lit by moonlight through a grate in the roof, which is locked by a hatch from the inside. Various pipes climb the walls, all connected to valves and many gushing water in various directions. One pipe sends water a few inches away from the woman's head. The floor slopes downward slightly from the center toward the walls, where it drops off into a pool shaped like the thick edges of a square.     The cage is held shut by a taut loop of vines surrounding the edges. Renn tries to trim the vine at a safe angle, but the axe keeps want...

     Not too far from the cave, Renn and Felix happen upon a collection of cages amidst a clearing in a dense forest. The towering trees bend away from the boxes as though attempting to flee the scene with minds of their own . Renn shudders, imagining the trees moving and confining them for eternity.      The cages are tall but not very wide. Renn gets close to one and attempts to inspect its miniature label. "Gibberish," he decides. Felix follows suit and gravely claims, "They've been cursed. A substitution spell, most likely. Whoever reinforced these has powerful spells... and powerful cages." They stay for a short while to study how to crack them. Then, they continue backtracking for the map they set out to find. Rules: Solve as a 4x4 Killer Sudoku. The cages' corner clues are encrypted with a cipher: every symbol corresponds to a digit from 0 to 9. Furthermore, the ax may be used on these corner numbers to cut their values in half as many times as need...

 Recently, I came across the book "Artisanal Sudoku". I must confess that I've been spending most of my offline time working through its puzzles. They accomplish the rare feat of being both logically approachable and aesthetically pleasing, and on multiple occasions I've found myself impressed by some more abstract realizations that I haven't seen before. I especially look forward to the final chapter, but I'm forcing myself to go in order. I think the reason I really enjoy variant sudoku and don't often enjoy classic sudoku is because classic sudoku usually isn't set with rigorous deductions in mind. I'd wager that 98% of any uniformly randomly selected classic sudoku is likely solvable with some combination of pointing sets, digits that can only go in one place because the other eight would cause repetition, and places that can only have one digit because the other eight would cause repetition. This is in stark contrast to the flexibility of vari...

 I get the impression this is a relatively old genre because I recall seeing the name in penpa's Shape tab, but the example provided in the rules tab is the first puzzle of this type that I've seen and solved. The auxiliary clue almost reminds me of Akari but it doesn't feel like a fair comparison to make due to how numbers are placed in entire rows/columns of the grid rather than just in whole runs of white space. Really, it's more like if Doppelblock traded sandwich summing for Kakuru-like clues. This genre tends to lend itself especially well to logic involving what must be placed horizontally next to a clue, or vertically next to a clue. This puzzle was set on 6/22/26 and shared the next day. https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?slovak/9/9/5/am2h-11p-16p-19h-23i0i-1eh-28p-31p-32h0m-37

 Despite having "Walk" in its name, I don't think Building Walk is canonically a walk type. I find it especially impressive that this genre has automatic answer checking given how abstract the elevator sequences can be. https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?bdwalk/m/5/5/15512g3j..h2g8h..j3g6 https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?bdwalk/m/5/5/22441g0001i013.601i01i0 https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?bdwalk/m/12/17/11c-11o2g2p2h.3232g.i2h2i2i2i3i3m2i2i.i32323i2p.zzzt3n.i3g3g.3h.h3g3o  (discovered this one was nonunique on 5/6/25) I usually find Skyscrapers difficult to set because the available clues are either only usable in certain circumstances or initially loose, but this does often lead to clues staying relevant throughout the solving process. https://pzprxs.vercel.app/p?skyscrapers/5/5/h1g5g2j22g5k I also tried making a 12x12 mashup of today's genres, but I wasn't able to get it to work.

After the tournament, the newcomer asks the room if anyone in attendance has heard of the Montagues. At this, Ande tenses and stoically utters, "Be ruled by me. Forget to think of her," then continues the excerpt by turning around, falling to his knees, and pleading through a throe of despair, "O, teach me how I should forget to think!" The newcomer tries to deduce meaning from the water enveloping his sclerae and exclaims, "Oh. No, not those Montagues. I refer to a couple with their own island and mansion. They host events like this." There's a smattering of no's from around the room, with the sole exception of the event's winner, who was still being moved by the performance like a one-story home and garden would be moved by a bulldozer. The trance is broken when a chalice slips from the champion's hand and besmirches the ornate rug outstretched on the floor beneath, begetting profuse apologies. The actor sheds some more genuine tears. Rul...

 The following puzzles were made between the 23rd and 25th of May. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not the first person to think of this idea, but I really like how this variant contains logic involving both the meanings of the numbers and copied digits. Normal sudoku rules apply. Lines protruding from diamonds count the distance in squares that can be traveled in that direction from the diamond to find a digit that matches the digit in the diamond. If multiple lines are attached to one diamond, combine the effects of all its lines into one displacement. For example, in the picture below, if the digits on the lines are correct, then the two cells marked in red must contain the same digit: (Note: the answer checker will only care about normal sudoku rules. You'll have to ensure manually that you've correctly satisfied the diamonds.) Puzzle 1 (4x4) Puzzle 2 (4x4) Puzzle 3 (4x4) Puzzle 4 (4x4) Puzzle 5 (4x4) Puzzle 6 (6x6) Puzzle 7 (6x6) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

 It's been a busy month, both in terms of work I've had to do and the quantity of puzzle solving. I highly recommend Skeptical Mario's "Sudokuvania: Digits of Despair": it's huge and it's hard, but the difficulty curve builds up the concepts nicely and it's structured so that the player never has to reset too much progress if they make a mistake and always receives feedback if they complete sections correctly. I've put the writing project on hiatus so that I can focus all my energy into the larger project over the summer. I hope to complete it in May or early June, so that I can publicly release it mid-July. Currently, the project is at least half-complete. The largest bottleneck for the near future is making MS Paint look good, but the final section is what's making it difficult for me to set a precise timeline. The following puzzle was made on 4/17/25 and was inspired by a conversation about fog and other methods of obscuring information in p...

 made yesterday, to see if anyone would attempt to solve it as a Sudoku if I didn't post the link removed bad link on 4/27/26

 As someone who likes to set puzzles a few clues at a time, Kropki Pairs feels more natural to set than classic Kropki because of the constraint it removes. However, this comes at the cost of making the logic a bit more straightforward, or the added benefit of being more streamlined, depending on how you look at it. Rules: Place a number between 1 and the grid width into every cell such that numbers never repeat in any row or column. Cells separated by a white dot contain numbers that differ by one. Cells separated by a black dot contain numbers that have a ratio of 2:1. penpa link penpa link (This post was previously retracted for maintenance on 4/27/26 and reuploaded on 5/7/26)

 Sudoku is probably the most well-known paper puzzle. The base rules are very easy to understand. The grid size is often constrained to a square with less than a hundred cells, yet countless volumes have been filled with classic puzzles and brought to bookstores. I find it nice to solve a classic one every once in a while, but what really appeals to me about this type is its ability to act as a canvas for a ton of fantastic variant puzzles. Whereas classic sudoku might start to feel stale while solving tens in a row, variant sudoku always stays fresh and continues to deliver brand new logical ideas. I'm reminded of my #A25 collection. I intend to make a megapuzzle for #A50. 4x4 Classic (f-puzzles) 12x2 Samurai (penpa) 6x6 Arrow and Thermo (f-puzzles) 6x6 "Missing Products" (penpa)

 made on 5/21/24 Link Place each digit from 1 to 9 exactly once in every row and column. Numbers in squares separated by a white dot are consecutive. Numbers in squares separated by a black dot have a ratio of 2. All possible dots are given, although the edge between a 1 and 2 could be indicated by a black dot or a white dot. Automatic answer checking requires Sudoku-Centre mode.

 made on 5/5/24 Variant: Unclued circles borrow the digit from one of the digits they compare. https://puzz.link/p?minarism/v:/5/5/.p.gphj.j1pgjhj

 made on 4/9/24 https://puzz.link/p?doppelblock/4/4/1j23g https://puzz.link/p?doppelblock/5/5/1h45g23h https://puzz.link/p?doppelblock/6/6/12h89h4573

uploaded on 3/15/24 https://puzz.link/p?tentaisho/4/4/iflerfhf (removed extra link on 4/27/26)

 made on 1/30/24 The sum of digits along the arrow equals the circled digit. The number in the shaded circle is odd. This puzzle combines odd clues with thermometers, which are lines that start on a circular bulb and contain numbers that strictly increase moving away from the bulb. However, it's unclear which circles are odd and which are bulbs.

 So, this is what it's been building up to. I honestly didn't think I would finish in time, but I did! It's highly recommended to try all the other puzzle types on the advent calendar before attempting their respective days' variant sudokus. Huge thanks to random 8 for solving all the sudokus and providing feedback and cheese. Best of luck, and Merry Christmas! http://tinyurl.com/3vpcnewz 1. Choco Renbanana Shade some cells in the form of a choco banana. Every region must have a number which represents its area - the circled digits must represent area. Unshaded regions are renban groups: they contain a set of consecutive numbers (e.g. 234, 12, 12345) in some order. Numbers cannot repeat within a renban group. 2. Castle Wall Solve as a Castle Wall, where every cell with an arrow borrows its digit to form a clue. 3. No Three No digit can be horizontally equidistant from digits that differ from it by the same amount, nor vertically equidistant. For example, R1C3 cannot be ...

 made on 6/18/23 https://tinyurl.com/2xqdhnk7 When the puzzle is finished, a 9-letter word will read from top-left to bottom-right along the major diagonal.

 made on 5/26/23 Back in August 2022, Cray had introduced a few 4x4 Sudoku variants. 381. Square Sum Sudoku https://f-puzzles.com/?id=2pyegd67 382. Invisibulb Sudoku (very hard!) https://f-puzzles.com/?id=2e2jf6vr 383. Invisibulb and Square Sum https://f-puzzles.com/?id=2l869w9t 384. Invisibulb or Square Sum? https://f-puzzles.com/?id=2h4vucpr This also inspired me to do something silly: https://f-puzzles.com/?id=2zrnhym6

 made on 3/18/22; screenshot added on 7/6/26 https://f-puzzles.com/?id=yc99dqav Even numbers solve a LITS.  https://puzz.link/rules.html?lits Multiples of three solve a Norinori. https://puzz.link/rules.html?norinori