Thursday, 24 March 2022

Freddie Hand

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday, dear Madeyalook
Happy birthday to you!

Time to blow out the Candles on the birthday cake! Except this genre is more like 'that-one-candle-that-never-goes-out-no-matter-how-hard-you-huff-and-puff'. Seriously, it can get devilishly tricky. Fortunately, this puzzle has been designed to be approachable!

Rules: Place candles (essentially, digits from 1 to 4) into some empty cells. By default, the height of a candle is 4, but each orthogonally adjacent candle melts it down by 1. Each candle must have a height greater than 0. Numbers indicate the sum of the heights of the candles in the (up to) eight surrounding cells.

Penpa notes:
-While, strictly speaking, determining the location of the candles entirely determines the solution, the answer checker requires all numbers (heights) to be inputted here.

-The recommended notation is tabbing between sudoku mode to mark heights and using grey/green to mark absence/presence of a candle.

Example (penpa): https://tinyurl.com/ydc2jur7

Acquire a Speedy Sloth 🦥 by solving the puzzle in 2:45 or less!
Obtain a Quick Crab 🦀 by solving the puzzle in 6:15 or less!
And all solvers who complete the puzzle will be rewarded with a Candelabrum Canyon Canastero 🐦

Puzzle (penpa): https://tinyurl.com/2p9etwmd