Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Extra Word Sudoku (Qudoku!) Puzzles for Tuesday, 4/14/2009

Extra Word Sudoku (Qudoku!) Puzzles for Tuesday, 4/14/2009

These extra puzzles continue and complete the theme I began yesterday, based on a fun puzzle posed last week on another puzzle blog, http://puzzlebits.wordpress.com/. There Karen Richards, a former puzzle magazine editor, posed the question: How many two-word combinations can you think of that begin with p and s: p__ s__? Yesterday I presented Word Sudoku puzzles that spelled out the longest and shortest answers I found to Karen’s puzzle. Today I will use four more answers to her puzzle to explore how different my puzzles can appear. Each of the four p-s word pairs that are the basis of the following Word Sudoku puzzles has 10 distinct letters.

The first puzzle is the simplest: it’s a fairly common Hidden Word Sudoku puzzle. But its grid size may throw you a bit: 10x10, not the normal 9x9.

SPOKEN TAIL
10x10 Hidden Word Sudoku Puzzle
Each row, column, 2x5 rectangle and the top-left to bottom-right diagonal contains the letters in the anagram exactly once
The hidden p-s word pair is spelled down the diagonal

The remaining puzzles are all Qudoku puzzle sets—one or more Word Sudoku puzzles of various grid sizes that feed letters to a quote grid—hence the “Qu” to go with the “Doku.”

This next Word Sudoku puzzle also sports a 10x10 grid.

CHIPS LEARN
10x10 Word Sudoku Puzzle
Each row, column, 2x5 rectangle and set of circled cells contains the letters in the respective word exactly once
Copy the circled letters into their corresponding numbered cells in the answer grid to spell out the p-s word pair

The third extra puzzle for this day is the most elaborate, but also probably the easiest to solve: two 6x6 Word Sudoku puzzles feed letters to spell out the p-s word pair. Beware! Some letters are duplicated in the two puzzles. That’s the easiest way to get two 6-word puzzles from 10 distinct letters, after all: use two of them again!

APRONS
6x6 Word Sudoku Puzzle

HEROIC
6x6 Word Sudoku Puzzle
In each puzzle, each row, column, 2x3 rectangle and set of circled cells contains the letters in the respective word exactly once
Copy the circled letters into their corresponding numbered cells in the answer grid to spell out the p-s word pair

And finally, the fourth puzzle uses a 9x9 Word Sudoku puzzle to feed letters to the p-s word pair answer. Since the answer contains 10 distinct letters, not 9, you get the tenth letter for free: it’s already in the answer grid.

RIVET CAPS
9x9 Word Sudoku Puzzle
Each row, column, 3x3 square and set of circled cells contains the letters in the respective word exactly once
Copy the circled letters into their corresponding numbered cells in the answer grid to spell out the p-s word pair

Thanks to Karen Richards for another fun puzzle! Please visit her blog, http://puzzlebits.wordpress.com/, for more.

Solutions to the puzzles presented here, first thing tomorrow morning.

Thanks,
--Dave

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