Easy as Kakuro by Serkan Yürekli
or solve online (using our beta test of Penpa-Edit tools)
Theme: RANDY (for patron Randy Rogers)
Author/Opus: This is the 112th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Serkan Yürekli.
Rules: Variation of Kakuro and Easy as ABC. Enter a single digit from 1 to 9 or letter from R, A, N, D, Y into each cell so that each full row and column contains each letter exactly once. A number clue indicates the sum of the digits in the across or down entry. No digit is repeated within an entry (but digits may repeat within a full row or column). A letter clue indicates the first letter seen from that direction after the clue. (For clarity, all letter and number clues point down or right except for the letter clues on the bottom/right edges of the entire grid which point up/left.)
Answer String: Enter the values in each cell in the marked rows from left to right, separating the rows with a comma. Ignore black cells and USE CAPITAL LETTERS.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 25:00, Master = 42:30, Expert = 1:25:00
Solution: PDF
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ufffffffff.Stating this puzzle as hard would be the mildest way of describing it .
This was an absolute devil….
🙂 I’m so sorry, my intention wasn’t to prepare this one as it is. But sometimes, especially mathematical puzzles I lose myself to make it more beautiful and this turns them into really tough puzzles. I’m not really happy what I did something like that, but I cannot easily ignore them, because they cost me so much time, really hard work. For this one, Thomas marked as “not eligible”, he is totally right, but he also thought it might be a challenge for you.
I found this very, very elegant. The only kind of notes I used were marking cells as letter or number, and I enjoyed simple, steady progress throughout. (About halfway through I did bifurcate once in the lower right sixth, but I suspect this was just me getting impatient with the grid size rather than a requirement.)
This puzzle was so great! Just enough information to make everything unique in the end, even when it seemed to me that was not possible. I too bifurcated in the lower right to break trough for the last third of the puzzle. Very, very fun!
Not sure if anyone is still watching the comments this far back, but I’ve got a mildly philosophical question to ask the void. I know that typically, uniqueness isn’t really a sufficient reason to make a decision when trying for a logical solve, but there’s an interesting cell that’s come up during my solve. I’m curious whether this falls into a “fair” logical deduction in the opinion of anyone who has one.
Obviously, part of solving this involves determining which cells contain letters and which contain numbers. I’ve hit a cell now which has no numeric clues, which means it cannot be solved using Kakuro addition. Also, there aren’t nearly enough intersecting numbers to eliminate 8 of 9 possibilities. So that tells me the cell has to be a letter, not a number. Fair, or relying on the uniqueness property? What do you think?
I remember this puzzle. I don’t recall having to make the deduction you (FoxFireX) mention.
ROT13 just in case:
Ubjrire, V qb erpnyy (naq V whfg qbhoyr purpxrq ol n dhvpx vafcrpgvba) orvat noyr gb sbepr gur cbfvgvba bs gur 5 yrggref va n ebj.
Abj gung V ybbx ng gur chmmyr, V frr gjb fhpu fcbgf va gur gbc ebj gung lbh znl or gnyxvat nobhg (gurl ner ivfvoyr jvgubhg nqqvat nal qvtvgf/yrggref). Frrzf yvxr n ernfbanoyr ybtvpny qrqhpgvba gb zr. Ubjrire V abgr gung gur evtug bar (gbc juvgr pryy orgjrra gur 13/10) vf nyfb sbeprq gb or n yrggre onfrq hcba ybbxvat ng gur 23 pyhr qbja orybj.