A Quick Killer Sudoku

It’s important to get more familiar with sudoku solving techniques so I can properly design any varient of the puzzle format. But I’m always drawn to learning and messing about with puzzle varients. I hadn’t posted or made anything in a little while so I wanted to jump back in with a killer sudoku.

I filled in the grid with a pre-made solution then got to work figuring out where I wanted to start. It’s interesting to note that often where I start filling in cage clues is not necessarily where the player can best start out from. Part of this more free form puzzle design is getting used to the creating winding puzzle structures on the fly and practicing being able to flex that muscle when it’s needed.

I liked the highlighted cages in column 6 because it’s two unique cage totals with one answer. And it leaves me with three numbers (3, 5 & 6) to signal to. So from this position it was important to play with horizontal clues that work against the vertical ones. I’ve been learning this in the last couple of killer sudokus I’ve made that if you have too many cages running in the same direction then you don’t get a unique solution.

I do need to spend a bit more time making these killer sudokus though. To really have a good blog post showcasing the work that goes into it, I almost need to take snapshots at each stage to show what the process is. So next time I’ll take pictures throughout like in my last Nonogram one and hopefully I’ll be able to be a bit more analytical about the design process!