(Bit late to get to this due to getting PU-II ready) Parallel Universe is over.

Our Universe Prasanna - Congrats to Gotroch, deu and sinchai4547 who take the top 3 spots respectively. Also, congrats to Kishore (kishy72) for topping the Indian rankings with a well-planned performance. I was happy to see a good participation for this contest with 248 solvers in total. It was quite a wonderful experience authoring this one. Quad Max was the highest rated Sudoku, but its nice for me to see that 5 Sudokus (Linked Consecutive, Quad Max, 2 Even 2 Odd, Arrow Sequences, Palindrome Search) got a high rating. Even the classics, which I don't think I'm that good at writing in general, were well received. There were a few negatives of course, like points allocation being off for some solvers. But I feel there'll be an element of this in many contests, especially ones involving newer variants (like Hamle) because it comes down to the author taking factors into consideration like solvers being new to it, etc. It's not an exact process but obviously the intention is to have the points distribution as fair as possible. I think most of them were accurate, for which I thank my two great testers, Bram and Salih (and also for getting the testing done pretty fast as I was probably a bit on the late side with getting the set ready ).

In general I hope everyone enjoyed this contest, and I hope you enjoy the Puzzle version of it this coming weekend!


Their Universe Prasanna - Congrats to Gotroch, deu and sinchai4547 from your universe. I can't reveal the winners on this side because it'll break the time-space continuum. It was really fun translating the puzzles to my people and letting them enjoy the contest too. Obviously, we shall meet again, very soon, in Parallel Universe II! Check it out on the top right. I took a more active role this time in providing a list of types in our Universe for your Universe's Prasanna to pick from! I hope you enjoy the puzzle types from our side!

Nice puzzles - good for mid-level players like myself. Didn't get the parallel universe part but that didn't seem to be significant.

Anyone else have trouble with Linked Consecutive? I wasted a lot of time on it and came up with an ambiguity that I couldn't overcome.

Actually, one of my testers had this problem, and I had to show them the next step too, so yeah, it can be a bit difficult to spot. I assume the image they sent me covers the portion you're stuck with. In the bottom left grid, use coloring to prove that R1C1=R5C2=R2C3 and you should be able to finish things from there.





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LinkedCons.png (25KB - 1 downloads)

I don't know what "coloring" means. Perhaps this is the short-cut that I'm missing? Please explain.
I solved it both ways and had initially thought both worked tho' now I see the mistake in my "other" solution.
Thanks.

Coloring is basically a way to set placeholders meaning that certain cells will contain the same digit X. R1C1 is 3/6, so are R5C1 and R5C2. So if digit X is in R1C1, it'll be in R5C2 by eliminating itself from R5C1. This same digit will now eliminate itself from R1C5 (because its in R1C1) and R2C2 (because its in R5C2) and will therefore be in R2C3. Coloring's just a simple way of getting to this because you can color (or mark in some way like circling) the cells I mentioned instead of going 3/6 in your mind for each one.