Thursday, April 16, 2009

Extra Word Sudoku (Qudoku!) Puzzles for Thursday, 4/16/2009

Extra Word Sudoku (Qudoku!) Puzzles for Thursday, 4/16/2009

Today’s extra puzzles are again based on a ‘Constant Consonants’ puzzle posed last Monday by Karen Richards at her blog, http://puzzlebits.wordpress.com/. She asked: How many words can you think of that use the consonants PLT in that order, and no others?

I came up with almost two dozen. (I seem to have trouble with one of Karen’s rules—that any one consonant can repeat, as long as the repetitions are together and not separated by vowels. I once again came up with some doozies--pullulate and pupillate, for example--only to belatedly remember that I was still missing that rule! Neither of these two otherwise fabulous words qualifies.)

Today I’ll give you four pretty easy challenges with Hidden Word Sudoku and Qudoku puzzle sets based on the longest and the shortest plt words I found, as well as some others. Some even have sets of distinct letters that ALSO form words that fit Karen’s pattern!

I’ll begin with the longest plt word I found, only 9 letters, and only 5 distinct. I give you one—‘t’—and an easy 4x4 Word Sudoku Puzzle

PALE
Constant Consonants: 4x4 Word Sudoku Puzzle
Each row, column, 2x2 square and set of circled cells contains the letters in the anagram exactly once
Copy the circled letters into their corresponding numbered cells in the answer grid to spell out the plt word

Now let’s go for the shortest answer I found. I’ll give it to you: PELT. That’s the anagram of the distinct letters of the 6-letter PLT-word answer to this Qudoku puzzle.

PELT
Constant Consonants: 4x4 Word Sudoku Puzzle
Each row, column, 2x2 square and set of circled cells contains the letters in the anagram exactly once
Copy the circled letters into their corresponding numbered cells in the answer grid to spell out the plt word

This time it’s a 6x6 Hidden Word Sudoku puzzle.

TOP LIE
Constant Consonants: 6x6 Hidden Word Sudoku Puzzle
Each row, column, 2x3 rectangle and the gray diagonal contains the letters in the anagram exactly once
The hidden plt word is spelled down the diagonal

Finally, one more, simply because I think it’s cool: the 8-letter answer to this Qudoku puzzle contains 6 distinct letters, which form a word that also meets Karen’s plt-word requirements!

APLITE
Constant Consonants: 6x6 Word Sudoku Puzzle
Each row, column, 2x3 rectangle and set of circled cells contains the letters in the anagram exactly once
Copy the circled letters into their corresponding numbered cells in the answer grid to spell out the plt word

Solutions tomorrow. Karen Richards’ blog, containing many more ‘Constant Consonant’ puzzles and lots of others as well, is http://puzzlebits.wordpress.com/. My thanks to her for her graciousness, letting me play off her puzzles to make new ones!

Thanks,
--Dave

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