Wednesday 27 May 2020

Hidoku no 4 (5 by 5)

In previous hidoku puzzles I have created the grids in a Google Docs document. Then I have used the snipping tool from my browser to cut out the puzzle and answer as images. This produces quite a pleasing effect but it runs the risk that I could copy the puzzle incorrectly and publish one with zero or multiple solutions. I need to avoid that so for this puzzle I am trying a different approach. Here is the puzzle as I created it on my Lubuntu laptop:

andrew@LUBUNTU-Laptop:~/Hidoku$ cat nxnpuzzle.txt
__,__,__,19,__
__,25,__,__,__
__,15,__,__,__
__,__,01,__,03
__,__,__,__,__
andrew@LUBUNTU-Laptop:~/Hidoku$


I keyed it into a hidoku solver I found here and produced the image below. Then I pressed the Solve button and checked that the answer matched the one I had on my laptop. This confirmed that I had entered the puzzle correctly.

Here is a reminder of the rules. I arranged the numbers 1 through 25 in ascending order on the grid below before removing some of them at random. Your job is to replace the numbers I have removed. When you have finished, the grid must contain all the numbers 1 through 25 exactly once and cells with consecutive numbers must be joined horizontally, vertically or diagonally:



See answer