Dr. Sudoku Prescribes #23 – Cave
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools; use tab to shift between shading mode and the linex mode where left click+drag draws lines and right click marks X’s)
Theme: An Almost Perfect 10? The border of this Cave puzzle is almost completely uniform.
Answer String: Enter the length in cells of each of the cave segments from left to right for the marked rows, starting at the top. Separate each row’s entry with a comma.
Time Standard: Cave Master = 3:30, Expert = 10:30, Novice = 33:00
Solution: PDF and solving video.
Note: Follow this link for other Cave variations and this link for other classic Caves. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Cave Puzzles to get started on.
I understood quickly the general idea of this puzzle, but made an error along the way so my unused cells couldn’t escape.
But I really like this one, how dó you come up with so many nice puzzles in such a short time ?
Nice Corral/Cave/Bag puzzle.
It was your first this week that emphasized the necessary “path to the sea” constraint. Was hoping for a super hard one from you, but was satisfied with this one – that took around 7-8 minutes. My favorites are your more advanced Inside/Outside Corrals, or multiplicative ones. Ahh, a boy can dream.
Thanks for a fun week of these though.
TheSubro
Inside/Outside is a little crazy, but I do agree that Multiplicative is close enough to the Classic form that it should be a regular option with this genre of puzzles. I just can’t start with knob #2, invented by Grant, without writing the original style.
Re: super hard versus this – I write certain kinds of themes and see where they end up. Sometimes it is just a particularly elegant but medium difficulty week. This week’s Cave ended up there certainly, as did the Nurikabe.
I’ve settled into a nice little routine of doing these as a set on Saturday. It helps me know the types I’m good at to do a bunch of puzzles of them together. This week went ok, I overshot the mark on this Corral with near 4 minutes to solve, but got into the expert time on the other two. The arrows all went really well. I liked this one in particular as I like the ones where the outer region is in action as much as the inner region.
I just now completed this cave…can there be a cave cell which is not part of any number?because i have submitted the solution and as i was seeing again i saw that there is once cell which cannot be a non – cave segment because then it would be in the middle and that cell is not part of any number too…R2C7
Yes, the cave cells do not all need to be seen by a number. However, needing a single unique solution, there will only rarely be such cells in any cave.
Nice little puzzle, with good use of connectivity (took me about 6-7 minutes)
8:35