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Scrabble Sudoku
🕑 Added 2025-03-18 20:30:02 +0000 UTCAs mentioned in tonight's video, this Scrabble-themed puzzle has been recommended to us. It's by LMDemasi and imagines a fictitious game between Marty Sears and ThePedallingPianist! The rules are long (but extremely faithful to real Scrabble) and there is a little bit of book-keeping necessary to keep track of the letter values but this IS a wonderful sudoku and very worthwhile if you give it a chance. (And well played Stuart!!)
Play the puzzle at the link below:
https://sudokupad.app/r7xpaziqtk
Rules: Martin and Stuart are playing Scrabble on a 9x9 grid: Players take turns to place letters in an orthogonal straight line (one letter per cell) to make words, reading left to right or top to bottom; on his first turn, Martin plays "CASTLE" horizontally in the middle row; subsequently, each word must include at least one letter that has already been played as part of its straight line. Each turn is scored according to the following rules: each letter from ACEHILMST has a unique integer point value from 1 to 9, and no other letters exist; a word's score is the sum of its letter's point values (including letters already on the board), plus any bonuses activated by letters played on coloured squares on that turn only; a letter's point value is doubled by a light blue square and tripled by a dark blue square; a word's score is doubled by a pink square and tripled by a red square; letter multipliers (light/dark blue squares) are applied before word multipliers (pink/red squares). The list of words and scores for each player, in order, is as follows (question marks indicate the number of digits in the score, where the leading digit is not zero):
Martin: CASTLE 76, ALCHEMIST 122, LATHS ??, MEAT ?? Total – 272
Stuart: CHASM ???, LATCH ???, LIST ??, CEL ?? Total - 525
After the game, replace each letter with its points value and fill in the grid according to regular sudoku rules: fill each row, column and 3x3 box with the digits 1-9 once each.
Comments
Kyle Corbin
It never would have occurred to me to consider this "solved" without checking that the values that Simon assigned to letters correctly produced the word scores given in the instructions. Simon simply assumed they were correct because the Sudoku solver said the Sudoku was correct. That could have happened if the Scrabble scores were wrong (e.g., if the designer mistyped one of the scores in the instructions). This did not have the feel of "finished" when Simon simply ignored that major part of the puzzle.
Colin Hay
I'm looking forward to watching this. After a bad day with a trip to emergency ward I need something to relax me and stretch my mind
