TomTom (Cipher) by Thomas Snyder
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: Cage Symmetry and Logic (contributed by GMPuzzles to the Indian Puzzle Championship)
Author/Opus: This is the 181st puzzle from Thomas Snyder, aka Dr. Sudoku.
Rules: Variation of TomTom rules. The letters A through J represent different digits from 0 to 9. Identify which letters stand for which digits and then solve the TomTom puzzle using the digit set {A < B < C < D < E < F} so that no digit repeats in any row or column and the value of each cage is correct using standard TomTom rules. Answer String: Enter the 3rd row from left to right followed by the 5th row from left to right. Separate all rows with a comma. Use digits (and not the letters A-F) for entry.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 5:00, Master = 8:45, Expert = 17:30
Solution: PDF; a solution video is available here.
Note: Follow this link for other variations of TomTom and this link for more classic TomTom. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest TomTom to get started on.
Love it !
Wow, that wasn’t nearly as hard as it looks. Particularly once I realized -jung gur mreb unq gb or-.
Yay, finally another coded TomTom! Though, I don’t entirely understand why the a < b < c < d< e < f was specified here when none of those letters show up in the actual clues.
This was a competition puzzle and copied the rules exactly as in my prior examples from the Indian Puzzle Championship. These rules were necessary for the example puzzle in the instruction booklet, and were meant to set an expectation for the solvers to focus on A-F, who would have solved the prior IPC puzzle, which this specific puzzle then broke with the G-J clues.
Given that context, I presented the puzzle here in the same way solvers would have seen it there. So I guess, in short, historic consistency even if it leads to slight incongruency.
I love it! Beautiful puzzle with lots of nice base-10 arithmetic facts coming in. It took a minute to adjust to thinking about which digits would be in the puzzle. The design with the clues being disjoint from the digit set in the puzzle is really fantastic, too.
It appears that Penpa doesn’t recognize that 0, 7, 8, and 9 are possibly valid numbers to appear in this puzzle. It marks all of them red.
The checker is just made for 1-N and is trying to autoflag puzzles that are exceptions. I will add this to the list to remove checking from (you should just turn it off while we work on this in beta mode)