Cylindrical Sudoku 1

I’ve been threatening to do this for some time, and I finally got around to it. Here’s how it works.

This isn’t exactly a cylinder; it’s a regular nonagonal prism. That means the cross section is a regular nonagon, a nine sided polygon with equal sides and equal angles. The above picture shows 5 of the 9 columns. The other 4 are on the other side of the prism, hidden from view.

“How can I possibly solve the puzzle when I can’t see four of the columns?”

Here are the other four columns, the other side of the prism.

“Why is the prism colored red, green and blue?”

If the prism was colored white and gray like a normal Sudoku grid, then there would be two gray 3 X 3 boxes touching each other, or two white 3 X 3 boxes touching each other, and that wouldn’t look pretty.

“Why is the back different from the front?”

Because nine is an odd number, and if I’m going to show all the columns, one side has to have 5 columns, and the other side has to have four.

“Why are some of the columns horizontally squished?”

The only column that you see straight on (perpendicular to your line of sight) is the center column of the front view. All the other columns appear to be squished because they are slanted away from you, some of them a little bit, some of them a lot.

Other than that, it’s a normal Sudoku puzzle. Fill in the grid with the numbers 1 through nine so that there is no duplication in a row, column or 3 X 3 box. You can tell what’s coming next, can’t you? Yes, cylindrical Sudoku in Chinese!

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