Saturday, September 5, 2020

Puzzle #199 - Sum Thing New (X Sums Sudoku)

I'm still not really a fan of classic Sudoku- there just aren't interesting deductions to me and it feels like the ruleset is missing a constraint to make it work well. That said, the fact that it's missing "a constraint" means that the missing constraint can be a wide range of things which makes it a flexible base for interesting puzzles. Inspired by a puzzle duel puzzle from a while back, I decided to try making an X Sums Sudoku with, of course, clue symmetry and theming. Solve as a standard Sudoku, additionally each outside clue gives the sum of the first X numbers from the clue, where X is the first number. So 425631 would give a sum of 17 from the left, and 1 from the right.