Artisanal Sudoku, Volume 146

Putting this right at the top: make sure you read the rules for the first puzzle. Especially the part in bold.

1. Fraternal

• Normal sudoku rules apply (fill each row, column, and 3x3 box with the digits 1-9 once each).

• Clones: the shaded regions contain the same digits in the same relative positions.

• Killer cages: the sum of the digits inside each cage is equal to the small number in the top left corner.

• Arrows: the sum of the digits along an arrow is equal to the digit in the connected circle.

• Very rough difficulty estimate: 3/10

Play online: SudokuPad | F-Puzzles

New to variant sudoku? Check out these beginner-friendly guides to killer cages and other popular rulesets.

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2. Junket

• Normal sudoku rules apply (fill each row, column, and 3x3 box with the digits 1-9 once each), and all clues are standard.

• Arrows: the sum of the digits along an arrow is equal to the digit in the connected circle, and these digits can repeat if allowed by other rules.

• Thermometers: digits on thermometers increase from the bulb.

• Very rough difficulty estimate: 5/10

Play online: SudokuPad | F-Puzzles

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3. Beaker

• Normal sudoku rules apply (fill each row, column, and 3x3 box with the digits 1-9 once each), and all clues are standard.

• Thermometers: digits on the thermometer increase from the bulb.

• Entropic lines: along the orange line, every set of three adjacent cells must contain one low digit (1-3), one middle digit (4-6), and one high digit (7-9).

• Digits in cells separated by a white dot are consecutive. Not all dots are necessarily given.*

• Very rough difficulty estimates: 9/10, 6/10

Play online: SudokuPad | F-Puzzles

Extra clues: SudokuPad | F-Puzzles

*I don’t normally feel the need to include this, as I tend to think that “not all dots are necessarily given” is implied unless stated otherwise. But this is the sort of puzzle that *seems* like it might have a negative constraint, so, just thought I’d get ahead of it.

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Some other puzzles I enjoyed this week:

• Ketchup, by Timotab

• X-Nabners, by Scojo

• Roman Architecture, by Scruffamudda

I also wanted to mention one of mine, because it’s really only half-mine. I worked with Tallcat—an enormously talented constructor who is especially good at making difficult puzzles with clean, elegant logic—on a new chaos construction sudoku that we published a few days ago. It’s very tough, but we’re both quite happy with how it turned out.

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This week’s meta-description:
I’ll say it as many times as I can: make sure you read the rules for the first puzzle. (And, if you’re a premium subscriber, also the fourth one.)

For premium subscribers, hints and two more bonus puzzles are below. If you were disappointed that there wasn’t actually a negative constraint above, you might like the first bonus puzzle. (And if you don’t like negative constraints, sorry! I know it’s been two weeks in a row, I’ll try to wait a little bit before the next one…)