In this new Sudoku variant, your goal is to solve the puzzle on the left following the standard rules: each letter from the word "THANKS" must appear exactly once in every row, column, and outlined region, without repeating. You’ll notice that not many cells are prefilled. This is where the clue diagram on the right comes into play: the numbers outside the diagram indicate how many letters in the corresponding row or column will match the solved Sudoku on the left. Happy Thanksgiving!
Solution:
Partial explanation:
I first started by noting which cells in the right-hand grid could be removed. If a cell can't be in the solution due to normal sudoku rules, just cross it out. If a cell IS in the solution, cross it out and remove one of the dot markers from its column and row. (We can also remove all letters on the main diagonal which are wrong because another letter is already given there.) We then reach the following state of the right-hand grid:
We note that in R4C3, two corrects in the row means H must be correct. We can also see from C2 and C5 that the correct letter in both columns must be an A, and from R4 we know one must reside in that row. Some more pencil marking (mostly for A's) gives us:
If you try to place an A in R2C5, you can't place an A in R4, so that's removable.
This was a very neat puzzle, thanks.
