Posted 18th Apr 2019 at 07:57such huge all encompassing clues of 144x 60x 14+ 10+ spanning 4 cells in a 2x3 puzzles steal away the fun part.

Posted 18th Apr 2019 at 08:56I didn't use the 144 square at all. Not even to eliminate a 5. The fun part could be to work around it. But I used the 60 when a 3 was somewhere else.

Posted 18th Apr 2019 at 09:05I solved it by adding the top 2 lines knowing they must equal 42. It was easy after that

Posted 19th Apr 2019 at 07:32@JoergWausW exactly, when a puzzle could be solved without utilizing a clue, it is better not to give that clue at all.

it is a practice to give clues for all cells, so puzzle deverlopers end up adding clues everywhere even where none is required.

Posted 19th Apr 2019 at 10:42@vsrawat I have to disagree.
You ask for all unnecessary clues to be eliminated. If this was possible at all, the puzzle most likely would be beyond tricky or at least very unpleasant. The reason is this: There would be only one single unique way to solve the puzzle.
At least two things might happen:
1) if you happen to miss this one only possible next step, you'll be stuck for a long time. So it's nice to have more than one way to get to the solution. To make a puzzle hard to a certain degree, there should be one moment in the solving path where several steps are possible that have a equally high difficulty.
2) The more clues you have, the easier the puzzle is. But on the other hand the puzzle might become almost unsolvable without using try and error. For a puzzle hunt I had to solve a couple sudokus from a different source. I got terribly stuck with one of those. I found a website with a solver software that shows you what the next logical step is. Nice thing is: This solver is built like a human would do it: it tries the easy steps first, then the more advanced, ending with logical methods that are mathematically provable, but very hard to perform as a human being without a lot of training. - I think almost all known techniques are included there. The last thing it does is: guessing and backtracking. If that solver doesn't find any next step before backtracking, then the puzzle might have a unique solution, but is definitely no fun. My opinion.

As far as I understood it, the goal of this page is to offer puzzles with a variety of difficulty levels, that are completely logical to solve.
My guess is that gareth has some kind of software that works similar to that solver that I described. I guess he has a list of techniques required to find the solution. If that program fails with its methods, clues are added. He mentioned once that he observes a descrepancy between the rated difficulty by users and the actual difficulty of a puzzle. So I concluded that the actual difficulty of a puzzle could be determined by what technique you have to use to solve the puzzle. If there is a state where only one step is possible and that one is pretty low in the chart of the easiest solution techniques, then it should be rated harder as if there are several easy steps all the time.

One other thing: A certain puzzle type requires a certain set of clues. "Killer Pro" means: All boxes have numbers and operators given. Plus: here on this site most of the puzzles happen to be "kind of symmetric". So within these boundaries this one was a nice regular puzzle with several possible ways to solve it.

BTW: Did you use the 42-trick that Penelope mentioned? Not that easy to see, I did this, too. I didn't check wether it is solvable without using both methods (first two rows and/or the 144 box)

Posted 19th Apr 2019 at 12:41
Last edited by Elisabeth 19th Apr 2019 at 17:16An interesting puzzle particularly for a 6x6. I managed to solve without using the 42 idea but think I probably realised 5 could not be in the 144! Enjoyable to see what different ways there are to solve the puzzle. I liked your analysis JoergWausW!

Just tried again and I did not use 42 for 2 bottom rows, nor the digits for 144 and it came out the quickest of my 3 tries!!

Posted 19th Apr 2019 at 21:03Thank you, Elisabeth.

I just played it again and I did not use:
- top two rows sum up to 42
- factors of neither 144 nor 60

I used 1+2+3+4=10 - that should be open source knowledge (yes, 4 squares...)

In the end: No fun is spoiled in this puzzle when you just ignore the big numbers. According to Elisabeth it's even faster.
(and when there is something like 1080 in some Pro-Puzzles, I tend to not use it until I have to...)

Posted 20th Apr 2019 at 05:39I didn't ever think of tottalling two lines' total. 123456 totals to 21, so two lines would have a total of 42. I think it will make it even more complicated, I wanted smaller clues.

That is new thought for me, May be, in some next puzzle I would apply this trick.

my thing started with 30x having 5x6, then top row 15+ in 3 cells has many possibilities of
15: 159 168 249 258 267 348 357 456
but you would see that only last one 456 is within 1-6, so that eliminates all others,

As lower vertical 30x has 5x6, this gives clear 4 from 456 in 15+ and 56 for remaining two cells,

now, as lower set's 30x has 5x6, 5 should come above only in left column, but 2division cannot have any combination having 5, 5 would come only in top row, so 15+ gives 5+4+6 in 3 cells.

This also leaves 123 for remaining 3 cells in top row.

And 2 division in top middle set surely has 6, so it can only be 6/3.
this gives 6x in top middle set also as 123, as 1x6x1 cannot be there as all 6 are already elsewhere.

so on. I didn't have to use 144x, 60x nor did I know about two rows totalling 42.

Thanks.

Posted 20th Apr 2019 at 10:15Amazing how many ways have come up for solving such a small puzzle!!

I cut out 144; 60; 42 on 2 lower rows and again solved in record time, although I must admit I am becoming familiar with this one by now! Yes 456 for 15 and 4 fixed, 1234 in 4 cells top right so 56 in the other two. Then I went to top left where bottom two cells have to total 7 (14+7= 21) with a 4, hence 34 fixed and then all fell into place thereafter.

I wonder whether we ever have a puzzle here which can only be solved in one way? Presumably it would have to be a 'zero' type and hopefully only 6x6 otherwise it would be too difficult!??