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Samurai-MM (Multi-Mode)
http://rcbroughton.co.uk/sudoku/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1483
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Author:  Mathimagics [ Sat Mar 16, 2019 7:40 am ]
Post subject:  Samurai-MM (Multi-Mode)

Multi-mode Samurai's have different puzzle modes (types) in some (or all) of the 5 overlapping puzzle grids.

This is a feature that has been on enxio27's wish list for some time! 8-)

A common attribute of this particular puzzle is the use of arbitrary houses (AH's). AH's are simply a generalisation of the "Girandola" additional house idea:

  • an AH is an arbitrary set of cells (up to 9) which must all have different values

  • an AH with 9 cells can be called a "complete" or "full" house, anything with less than 9 cells is "incomplete"

One can of course apply the "Hidden singles" technique to a full house, but not to an incomplete one.

None of these concepts are particularly novel:

  • SudokuX (diagonals) puzzles are simply standard Sudoku's with 2 AH's, both of which are complete.


  • (Classical, or Standard) Killer cages are simply incomplete AH's.

======================================================================

The puzzle: the 4 outer grids (G1, G2, G4, G5) have a standard Sudoku puzzle with 3 AH's, one of which is full, the other two have just 3 cells.

The center grid (G3), is shown as a Jigsaw, but these are more like "cages", there are 10 here, each with 8 cells.

Global Puzzle rules for all of my Samurai-MM puzzles apply:

When AH's are indicated via shading

  • each AH is a contiguous set of cells. That is, each cell in the AH has a neighbour (adjacent or diagonally joined) in the same AH

  • multiple AH's in the same puzzle will be clearly separated - no cell in one will have a neighbour in another

Overlapped corners are always "Boxes"

  • The 4 overlapped 3x3 boxes ALWAYS have 9 different values. "Sudoku Box" rules will apply in one or other of the two overlapping puzzles. But the normal thick outline used for standard boxes will not be shown when it conflicts visually with a Jigsaw layout, whether that be a normal Jigsaw or a "Killer cage" jigsaw equivalent, as used in the puzzle below.


Attachment:
File comment: Samurai-MM + AH demo
Demo-002P-002.png
Demo-002P-002.png [ 16.92 KiB | Viewed 42310 times ]


Clearly you won't be able to feed this into Sudoku Solver, so it's a good thing the puzzle is printer-friendly. Sharpen your pencils, and your wits!

In the next post I will give details on how the individual puzzles might be fed into SS, or JSudoku.

PS: I will have disappointed enxio27 by not producing a symmetric clue pattern. Apologies! :roll:

Author:  Mathimagics [ Sat Mar 16, 2019 7:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Samurai-MM (Multi-Mode)

The Solution:
Code:
 2 6 3 7 1 8 5 9 4       2 1 8 3 4 6 5 7 9
 4 8 9 3 2 5 1 6 7       3 5 9 2 1 7 8 4 6
 1 5 7 4 9 6 2 3 8       6 4 7 5 9 8 2 1 3
 3 1 5 2 8 7 6 4 9       1 6 5 4 3 2 7 9 8
 6 2 4 1 3 9 7 8 5       7 3 2 1 8 9 4 6 5
 7 9 8 6 5 4 3 2 1       8 9 4 7 6 5 1 3 2
 5 4 1 9 6 2 8 7 3 5 9 6 4 2 1 6 5 3 9 8 7
 9 3 2 8 7 1 4 5 6 8 2 1 9 7 3 8 2 1 6 5 4
 8 7 6 5 4 3 9 1 2 4 3 7 5 8 6 9 7 4 3 2 1
             5 9 1 7 6 2 8 3 4           
             3 2 8 9 5 4 1 6 7           
             7 6 4 1 8 3 2 5 9           
 4 2 9 3 6 7 1 8 5 3 7 9 6 4 2 1 3 5 7 9 8
 8 7 6 4 1 5 2 3 9 6 4 5 7 1 8 2 6 9 5 4 3
 3 1 5 8 2 9 6 4 7 2 1 8 3 9 5 4 7 8 2 1 6
 1 9 3 2 4 6 5 7 8       2 7 1 5 4 3 8 6 9
 2 6 4 5 7 8 9 1 3       8 3 6 9 1 2 4 7 5
 7 5 8 1 9 3 4 6 2       4 5 9 7 8 6 1 3 2
 5 4 1 7 3 2 8 9 6       5 6 4 3 2 1 9 8 7
 6 3 2 9 8 1 7 5 4       1 2 3 8 9 7 6 5 4
 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1       9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


Individual grid specs. Each pair is a puzzle spec in standard format, plus a Jigsaw-style AH spec.

G1:
Code:
2.3.1.......3...6.....9.....1..8.............7......2..............7....8.6.4.9..
............A.C.....A...C...A...C.C.....C.....C.C...B...C...B.....C.B............

G2:
Code:
.1...6.....9....46....9........3......2.....58..76..3.........7..............432.
............C.A.....C...A...C.C...A.....C.....B...C.C...B...C.....B.C............

G3:
Code:
.....6............9....................95.1......8.2...........2......1......8...
AAAIIIIEEAAAIIIEEEAABBBIEEEHHBBBGGGGHHBB.CCGGHHHHCCCGGFFFJCCCDDFFFJJJDDDFFJJJJDDD

G4:
Code:
..9............2.....8.....1............7...3.58....6..4.......6..9.........5...1
............C.A.....C...A...C.C...A.....C.....B...C.C...B...C.....B.C............

G5:
Code:
.......9..1.....4.....7........4...........75..9..6...5..............6...8..543.1
............A.C.....A...C...A...C.C.....C.....C.C...B...C...B.....C.B............


If your solver supports a single Girandola, you could remove "A" and "B" from the outer grid specs and thus approximate these as individual puzzles.

G3 could be presented as a Jigsaw (if the solver doesn't insist on 9 regions x 9 cells), or as a Killer (if the solver doesn't require sums, and can suppress the standard box constraints!).

Author:  tarek [ Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Samurai-MM (Multi-Mode)

Hi MM,

1st of all well done & I'm looking forward to seeing more of your generated puzzle especially with the ability to tailor them in this way.


A few remarks:


1. The Arbitrary house concept: The Girandola is a type of 9-cell complete AH with the cells having a known fixed location in the 9x9 grid. similar known AHs include: Centre dot, Old Lace, Asterisk, ….

2. Killer cage: In a classic Killer: The cage is an arbitrary house with a known Sum. In non classic Killers: The cage can have repeating candidates but that has to be declared as Classic rules are the default.


3. The Samurai overlapping sub grid areas: The manual solver has to deduce that G1 box 9 has 9 cells although that is not clearly visible from looking at the Samurai printable puzzle.


4. The presence of several AHs in the same sub grid: This also can't be easily deduced from the Printable Samurai without looking at the Supplied Specs


In an ideal world the solver should be able to know what to do just by looking at the printable Samurai. This means using more Lines/Shading/Colours to make clear where everything is especially in the overlapping regions/cells IMO. It is tricky to satisfy evrryone but I think with more puzzle variety there should be something for everyone.

I also haven't seen the concept of the incomplete AH with an undeclared sum used that often. It would be interesting to see how popular it is with solvers

again, well done

tarek

Author:  Mathimagics [ Sat Mar 16, 2019 7:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Samurai-MM (Multi-Mode)

Hi tarek,

Thank you for your constructive feedback. I have dealt with the main issues that you identified thusly:

  • I have made clear above, as a "global rule", that "overlapped corners are always Sudoku boxes", ie always have 9 different values in the 3x3 cells

  • Similarly, I have also made clear that "shaded AH's" are internally "contiguous", and where multiple AH's are used, these are always mutually disjoint

I am extremely reluctant to introduce extra grey-shades to distinguish AH's, and dead set against use of colours. I have a B/W laser printer, for a start. So, printer-friendly for me means newspaper-friendly.

Extra grey-shades will only work for some AH configurations, I have some designs in mind with up to a dozen AH's. But they will always conform to the "global rule" above, and so should present no problem to anyone who knows this.

The "ideal" of a completely self-contained printable grid that requires no annotations or specific instructions to interpret is one that I agree with, but for many of these "multi-mode" puzzles this will simply not be possible. The "overlapped corner" rule will often need to be applied, as Jigsaws (normal or otherwise) will always have some internal box outlines omitted.

If any puzzle has SudokuP (disjoint groups) for any of the 5 grids, then this will require a specific puzzle note to that effect, since I do not do any special rendering at all for this mode. (I would actually like to combine P-mode with Jigsaw some time, and for this perhaps some visual cues might be necessary, we will see).

NC (non-consecutive), can apply to any variant, and this will always require a specific puzzle specification note.

The puzzle demo above can thus be categorised as "nearly ideal", in that it needs no specific puzzle-specific notes, if you accept the implied (and clarified) global rules. At least I think it does … :?

I do hope these necessary compromises will not prevent you from enjoying the puzzles! :)

Cheers
MM

PS: I am in fact already committed to using a 4th shade (white, black, grey1, grey2), which will be needed for Windoku modes, for example, and also for combined "Jigsaw + Sudoku Boxes" modes.

Author:  tarek [ Sat Mar 16, 2019 7:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Samurai-MM (Multi-Mode)

If there are different shades of Grey ( :oops: ) in that printer friendly Samurai then I can't see them. They all appear to be the same. Each corner grid to me has 15 grey cells of the same shade!

If you read some of my previous exchanges with others over the years you will find that I'm a vehement supporter of newspaper friendly presentation of puzzles. With that in mind, I have advised in the past to use Killer style cages when there is an overlap for instace and even advised to use patterns to fill cell backgrounds to differentiate what you describe as AHs when there are more than one in a puzzle. Remember that ultimately in a newspaper there are only 2 colours.

It is good that you set the ground rules at the start of the thread so that you don't repeat everything with each puzzle

Author:  Mathimagics [ Sat Mar 16, 2019 7:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Samurai-MM (Multi-Mode)

tarek wrote:
Each corner grid to me has 15 grey cells of the same shade!

Ok, you passed the eye test! 8-)

When did I ever say there were different shades there? :?:

In fact I went into some detail (probably to the point of tedium) about why there are NOT different shades there … :lol:

Cheers
MM

Author:  tarek [ Sat Mar 16, 2019 8:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Samurai-MM (Multi-Mode)

Mathimagics wrote:
In fact I went into some detail (probably to the point of tedium) about why there are NOT different shades there … :lol:
Which reminds me,: It is worth making the ground rules concise, just in case you get the odd person who only reads the 1st & last lines only :mrgreen:

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