Puzzle #160: Fillomino

This puzzle was written as a birthday present to Zuzana Hromcova. Matus Demiger contacted numerous authors to make a puzzle for her birthday to create a set of 18 puzzles for her 18th birthday. This is my puzzle. It's a standard Fillomino. I think the theming should be clear to everyone. The red numbers have no special meaning for the solve, but you can probably figure out why they are red. I really like how the solve turned out. I hope Zuzana enjoyed it.

Rules for Fillomino

Click to enlarge

Daily League Sudoku #13: Consecutive Clone Sudoku

Another week, another Sudoku. This week a small twist on the Clone Sudoku genre. Normally the Clone Sudoku has the same digits in the same places for equal shapes. For this one the digits are consecutive in the same places instead. I think it makes the solve a bit trickier than normal. It definitely made the construction a bit more confusing. It took me a few tries to get a puzzles out with valid solutions, after which a few of those ended up not being unique because I had eliminated digits I shouldn't have.
I find designing Sudokus like these harder in general. I'm usually better with a more influential rule, which I can then exploit. That's why I generally prefer designing Sudokus that require no or only little givens in the grid. That's why in these types of Sudokus, I usually give it many tries, till I get a puzzle I'm happy with. I tend to be a bit picky about my puzzles and often rewrite and edit already nice puzzles, because a part of it doesn't come out the way I had planned to. So I change them to highlight it. In this one I had started with two extra cloned shapes, but then I thought it would be nicer to just have the same shapes for givens as Cloned areas. The second try ended up with one extra digit in the center. I liked it and it solved nicely. But still I really wanted that middle digit gone too, so I gave it another go. And eventually this was the result. This solves nicely and is in my opinion the nicest of the three. It shouldn't be too hard, but of course there's always the challenge of adapting to a new rule set. My Quad Second Sudoku had some people struggling to overcome not solving it as a Quad Max, so here people might get stuck looking at it as a regular Clone Sudoku. So try not to do that. Enjoy.

For anyone interested, you are still free to join the Daily League Group or you can request access to the Google Spreadsheet from Rishi Puri. You can also solve all puzzles the day after at SudokuCup.

Recap of the last week:
Sunday: Non-Consecutive Sudoku by Seungjae Kwak
Monday: Double Extra Regions Sudoku by Fred Stalder
Tuesday: Outside or Skyscraper Sudoku by Prasanna Seshadri
Wednesday: 2 Even 2 Odd Sudoku by Bastien Vial-Jaime
Thursday: Killer Sudoku by Rishi Puri
Friday: Palindrome Sudoku by Tom Collyer

Daily League PDF:
Week 13

Lastly, if anyone is interested in contributing for the Daily League, now is the perfect time. Many of our regular authors are busy with their National Championships and other obligations. So anyone interested in jumping in and writing a Sudoku for the Daily League, give it a try.

Rules for Sudoku

In this Sudoku, digits in the same place in both grey figures have to be consecutive.

Daily League Sudoku #12: Frameless Sudoku

This week again one of my own ideas for the Daily League. I have posted a few of these already on my blog. I came up with this type as a response to the repetetiveness of Frame Sudokus. I always enjoyed solving Frame Sudokus, but after a while they get a bit the same. This rule set adds to the diversity of the solve as you now have more ways of creating openings and keeping the solving path narrower.
This puzzle is easier than the other Frameless Sudokus I have made, to make it more suitable for speedsolving. The path is solving path is still narrow, but you get a few easy digits to start off with. I think the equal sums on the left and right side are a nice touch. I was planning on making two sequences at the top and bottom too. Except the 16 and 18 clues wouldn't work in order with the other clues, but did work switched. So I figured that would be good enough. This puzzle can also be used as practise for the upcoming Serbian Round of the WPF Sudoku Gran Prix held from April 20th-April22nd, which features a Frameless Sudoku.

Recap of the last week:
Sunday: Prime Number Sudoku by Seungjae Kwak
Monday: Untouch diagonal Sudoku by Fred Stalder
Tuesday: XV Sudoku by Prasanna Seshadri
Wednesday: Sudokurve by Bastien Vial-Jaime
Thursday: Non-Consecutive Sudoku by Rishi Puri
Friday: Classic Sudoku by Tom Collyer

Daily League PDF:
Week 12

Rules for Sudoku

The numbers on the outside indicate the sum of the first digits encountered in that row or column from that side. The amount of digits can differ from sum to sum and can be only one digit.

Daily League Sudoku #11: Windoku

This week a Windoku. It will probably be one of the easiest puzzles I have made for the league. I like Windoku puzzles. I always prefer the puzzles that don't have any clues in the 4 extra windows. I had actually written this puzzle a while back, but I haven't used or posted it anywhere. As I like how it looks and solves, I'm using it for the league. I hope you enjoy it too.

Recap of last week:
Sunday's Little Addition or Multiplication Killer Sudoku by Seungjae Kwak
Monday's Knightly Non-Consecutive Sudoku by Fred Stalder
Tuesday's Disjoint Groups Sudoku by Prasanna Seshadri
Wednesday's Extra Regions with Mirrored Cells Sudoku by Bastien Vial-Jaime
Thursday's Diagonally Non-Consecutive Sudoku by Rishi Puri
Friday's Classic Sudoku by Tom Collyer

Sudoku Pdf:
Week 11

Rules for Sudoku

In this Sudoku, you also have to place digits 1~9 once in every grey 3x3 square.