Weekend Special - “Zero” Killer Sudoku
A few visitors to my forum have been creating these puzzles for quite some time. Well, here is one from me.
Rules: Everything is exactly the same as in your ordinary Killer Sudoku puzzles, except that there are even fewer clues given to you to start with. Some cells are not joined in any cages, so you don’t have any starting information about them.
IMPORTANT: I will start posting these Zero Killer Sudoku puzzles every Sunday on the Daily Killer page. They will usually be fairly difficult. Also, as of tomorrow, Monday, August 27, there will be a change on the Daily Sudoku page. After a few months of (non)consecutive puzzles, I will now start posting Jigsaw Sudoku (irregular nonets) and Hyper Sudoku (Windoku) puzzles.
Zero Killer Sudoku for Sunday, August 26, 2007. - Difficulty: IQ
Download the puzzle by clicking on this thumbnail:
Text file to import into Perfect Sudoku. Important: PS v0.4 will report there are 0 solutions for this one because it is unable to solve “Zero” Killer puzzles!
Enjoy!
Killer Sudoku fans
August 27th, 2007 at 7:35 am
Unless I am picking up the wrong text file, I believe this to be invalid. R89C1 is 3 which works out to be 12. R9C89 is 4 which is 13 making R9C1 2 and R8C1 1. R56C3 is 3 (1,2) disabling 1 in the rest of N4. The only place in R4 for 1 is R4C4 and making R9C9 3 and R9C8 1 (diagonal). Following this the only places for 1 and 2 in N1 are R12C2 with 2 in R2C2 (diagonal) and 1 in R1C2. This has the effect of making the combination for R1C67 (5) 2 and 3 and thus the combination for R3C56 (5)1 and 4. Looking at the opposite diagonal R1C9 to R9C1, the only place for 1 is in R3C7, which places that in direct opposition to R3C56.
Unless, of course, I have picked up the wrong text file, or we are allowed duplicate numbers, or I am missing something somewhere else that I am unfamiliar with.
I also placed the text file in JSudoku which also finds an invalid grid.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:02 am
harvick29, your reasoning is Ok up to this point:
\”…and making R9C9 3 and R9C8 1 (diagonal)\”.
Why do you think this puzzle is diagonal (X)? It\’s not indicated neither in the puzzle image nor in the text file. In the text file there is a code \”16\” (which I use for Zero Killers) in second position and if this was a diagonal, there would be \”d\”. Perhaps JSudoku is misinterpreting this \”16\”. If you open up the text file in PS v0.4 you won\’t see any diagonals.
Let me know if you can solve it as non-diagonal puzzle!
Cheers
August 27th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
When in plugged into JSudoku it showed up as a diagonal.
I will try it again later today, it didn’t actually look that hard, but looks can be deceiving.
August 27th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Flowed very smoothly without needing the diagonal. Only took a few minutes. Looking forward to next Sunday; hope they get more difficult.
August 27th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Great to see this sort of killer - enjoyed the break from designing killers! Looking forward to more.
August 27th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
That was a great puzzle, thanks!
August 29th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Tricky. I loved it!
August 31st, 2007 at 3:55 am
Quite simple to solve, but a very nice concept. I look forward to next Sunday’s!