So many movie execs seems afraid to be honest about how many times they’ve gone back to that well for more money. It wasn’t Die Hard 3, after all. This is DoubleDoku 3, and it’s my favorite so far, but now I’m determined to mimic the silly names movie execs have come up with.
I’m not singing, but somewhere, out there, beneath the pale moonlight, there are arrows and thermometers to fill the grid. Try to place all of the digits without flipping your lid. Somewhere, out there, there’s no 6 nor 7. Out where dreams come true.
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.
Arrows have been outclassed by bullets in terms of ranged weaponry, but how many digits fit on a bullet? Besides, I’m not sure efficiency should be a goal in weaponry of any kind. I’d prefer the opposite, in fact. Is there a less-efficient ranged weapon than marshmallows?
Between Lines are very logical. The cells physically between the circles have digits with values between the circle digits. Simple. Clear. Surely every puzzle with Between Lines is easy, right?
The challenges in creating these larger puzzles are multiple. I could have created more than four single-grid puzzles in less time than it took to create this one, in part because each change required me to re-solve the puzzle from the start, to be sure I hadn’t broken anything unexpectedly. Still, the satisfaction of a working gattai that also follows the rules I’ve set for myself, it’s worth spending the extra time on one out of every dozen puzzles or so.
I’ve pointed out before that Sudoku arrows don’t often point to anything, but in this case, quite a few arrows seem to be pointed at that center box in the grid. That could mean something.
What do arrows do? They point! Arrows in Sudoku puzzles don’t often point anywhere in particular, though. They just point out that some puzzles do require arithmetic skills, to wit: summing up a series of single digits to a single-digit total.
These arrows keep aiming for those quadruples, but missing. They’ve got the aim of Star Wars stormtroopers. Also, this is the 100th puzzle posted to this blog! (Internally, it’s puzzle 2630.)
In testing, this puzzle provoked some debate. This grid can seem quite complicated, but those “renban arrows” are far more limiting than they might first appear.