I still don’t love some of the names of these variant constraints. “Little Killer” clues sit outside the grid and affect diagonal swathes of digits, but in this grid, I’ve kept a large area free of any influence, and colored it mint green. Which means that area is free from any clues, too. And yet the puzzle can be solved with just a bit of arithmetic.

Another constraint I learned about from a Clover puzzle: imagine each diamond is a white Kropki dot, but instead of the difference between the two digits being one, it’s something else. In fact, if the diamond has digits to the left and right, then the number over in column one is the difference. But if the diamond has digits above and below, then the number up in row one is the difference. That’s X and Y part of XY-Difference Pairs.

I found this constraint in a puzzle by Clover from a few years back. In Touchy Sudoku, every single digit is next to a numeric neighbor, which seems like it could be like Renban, except most digits have two neighbors, and only needs to be next to one. Which seems like it could lead to dominoes, except most digits can be neighbor to two different digits, or to two instance of itself. So it’s not quite like anything else, it’s Touchy Sudoku!

The gap between when I create the puzzles and when I write these blurbs can be hours, or days, and more than once I’ve forgotten why I named a puzzle as I did when I load it up and I’m facing an empty blurb section. Not this time, though! I’m not quoting song lyrics, just referencing the title. Arrows can be dance instructions, left foot, right foot, and there’s fog, so we’ll ignore that the song is about depression and just dance in the dark.

Once a month, I post a Gattai, and usually each grid has a separate constraint. This month, five grids, a full Samurai Sudoku, but they are all classic Sudoku, with diagonal lines the only extra rule. This title is redundant, since 侍 is the character for “Samurai,” making the title “Samurai Samurai Samurai.”

Slow Thermometers are often used to make thermometers very, very long, much longer than nine cells. But they don’t have to be! The average length of these thermometers is 2.7 cells, and they’re very, very slow.

How to come up with a title that somehow references Autophilia, Min/Max, and Non-Consecutive constraints all at once? I tried, I really tried. In the end I settled for something that might remind you of Autophilia and Min/Max, and I just hope you remember Non-Consecutive on your own.

I think most might recognize the Offspring song “Come Out and Play,” but I’m not entirely sure I want to excerpt lyrics about school shootings and gang violence and ultimately what might be a call for segregation. Even if the bassline slaps. For this puzzle, let’s say the low, medium, and high digits which must rotate (and be separated) are planning nice surprises for each other, and definitely do not carry any weapons.

Doesn’t this grid look like the Tower of Hanoi puzzle? I’m going with that because Fisher-Price seems to market “Rock-a-Stack” under different names around the world, even though I colored the cages and now the pyramid regions look even more like the Fisher-Price rings/donuts.

On one side of the Atlantic, spun sugar is called “Cotton Candy,” while on the other side, it’s called “Candy Floss.” Both names seem silly, but so does eating spun sugar! Also, don’t those pink lines look sweet?