Monthly Reward for November: "Solver in Sudokuland"

Akos Szabo

When was the roll call for this?

To me, all those cage bars look like a bird cage when put together into the puzzle, especially with the story guiding me to visualize a bird cage.

Took me a while to get the break-in. All I'll say, is that the centre is key, Brezendrache.

Brezendrache

That's what I tried, and the 4s as well .. but after some meiner deductions in 2345 I 'm Stück 🙈

Akos Szabo

I have given up on this a couple of days ago, even more satisfying that I could finish it today. A real head scratcher. I started by colouring where 1s and 9s can go.

Brezendrache

can some give a little hint for the prison rations one?

Just finished Prison Rations. Took me about 3 hours to find the break-in. Quite sneaky and very satisfying.

Those long arrows, and the accompanying mins/maxes on the thermos are much more restricted than they might otherwise appear

Same. Struggling with this one

I started on the thermo/arrow combo in the right part. And involved all other arrows and thermos of that part into the initial setup and pencil marked their cells. Then I did the same on the left side. And then I looked for interactions between these two parts; e.g. a horizontal quintuple which restricts other cells in the row.

I don't mean symmetry with the numbers inside, I mean that the empty cages were only put there because it makes a nice looking pattern on the grid. It's just a stylistic thing. The puzzles function exactly the same if the empty cages weren't there.

The Silver Chords

They do? Is that in the instructions?

I'm pretty sure the numberless cages are just for looks. The cages have symmetry with each other.

The Silver Chords

I also have trouble with this, I'm on my third reset.

I hope you've already solved it, but if you still need a hint, in my solve an arrow strarting in r5c6 helped a lot with limiting the options in boxes 3&6.

Guillem Parés Binué

I'm also really confused about this

Firiat

They're interacting with other arrows and termos in the grid, so you probably should look at that. It's all I can tell, sadly, I looked at the solved puzzle, even unwinded the progress, but honestly can't remember the exact logic by which I've done it.

Firiat

Sandwiches are worse, one that's killer-sandwich I've done just by trial and error. It's most likely something about loads of 9 and 10 sums that should be outside of sandwiches, but I just can't see such things

Tiffany Holzer

Can anyone give me a hint for the "one spark" puzzle? I've reduced my options for the thermo/arrow combos in the upper left and right corners... Not sure where to look next... I'll just keep trying!

I also would like to know this! I haven't managed to solve this one yet I think there's just something I'm not seeing with it! (I've never been the best at the killer sudoku)

Firiat

Can someone tell me, why are there cages without a given number? Cells in those cages are in the same row or column, so they won't repeat anyway. Is there some meaning to it? I solved all puzzles, but still do not understand this.