I have a mild obsession with the novels of Victor LaValle, including his 2009 novel Big Machine, several editions of which feature cover art of a spiraling line, including the audio edition I enjoyed. I often name puzzles as the last step, but in this case I started with the title and set the puzzle “inspired by” the cover art.
There’s a big green rectangle with some weird edges, and it anchors the grid. But there’s this weird rotating line careening wildly across the grid, with very different properties than the rectangle. It grabs a couple of points, but mostly takes its own path. Oh, and also a switch of sorts, a single black dot. I think of it as a circuit, with the peach line representing temporary wiring. But I’ve used that metaphor when naming other puzzles, so it’s time to pick names differently. Note: Some testers considered this a 1 or 1.5 difficulty, while others rated it 2.5 at least!
Some lines force digits to be far apart, while other lines force them to be close together. They only interact at a single point.
Counting is an important skill, in life and in Sudoku. Which is redundant, since Sudoku is life, right?
It could have been named “Son of DoubleDoku” or “2 Double 2 Doku” or even “DoubleDoku: Folie à Deux,” but whatever it’s called, it’s a sequel to DoubleDoku.
As an American, I spend far too much time thinking about urban design. This puzzle prompts thoughts of apartment buildings in Barcelona. They didn’t turn out the way Ildefons Cerda planned, but they’re certainly distinctive.
It’s so easy to get started. So many dots arranged so carefully. And then… well, this cell, let’s make it orange, and then we need three more orange cells in these three rows, but we also need two green cells in two of those rows, so…
I see your 159, and raise you 3 and 7. My hand is strong, so I’m willing to keep raising if I have to. This one also had some testing contoversy, with difficulty estimates and solve times ranging widely.
The shapes look a bit like Oklahoma if you’re generous, and because people who illegally rushed in to claim land ahead of the official opening of the legal theft of Oklahoma land in 1889 were labeled “Sooners,” a name the University of Oklahoma adopted for all future sports teams in 1908. I spend all my creativity on the puzzles, leaving nothing for the names.
Cloned areas can be large or small, but of course we balance things out by having fewer of the small ones and more of the large ones. Wait, that seems backward. But there it is: the large the cloned area, the more clones there are.