Killer cages spelling words

[unthinkable_spacewalk]

Hello all,

I'm a first timer. Apologies, I'll have to speak English, and apologies for the English-centric nature of my puzzle.

Is anyone familiar with puzzles that combine killer cages and words (say, if each digit maps to a letter)? I have seen puzzles where each digit maps to a letter, and highlighted cells spell out words, but not killer cages.

I tried my hand at it (CTC link), but not sure if the instructions are clear or if the puzzle is any good!

Some downsides I've noticed: 

1. Have to choose one language, which excludes some players. I chose English
   
2. Have to limit possible words to a constrained standard vocabulary that everyone can (maybe) agree on. I chose words/phrases for integers, removing punctuation and spaces (like SEVEN, THIRTYTHREE, ONEHUNDRED)
   
3. Very difficult to make an aesthetically pleasing puzzle, as language is messy
   
4. Difficult to play -- is there a site that lets you enter any letter into sudoku squares?
   

[CHalb]

"language is messy"   , yes you're right. I think you've given yourself quite a challenging task with this rule set and your instruction is clear except for one detail: Does the spelling always start in the cage sum cell? Besides I have two hints, that might be interesting or useful for you:

To your last question: Penpa offers settings for a lot of puzzle types and it's possible to enter letters into a Sudoku grid. I myself didn't manage to find the way to do this, but glum_hippo was kind and created this setting for me: https://tinyurl.com/ImXHerford

In one of my puzzles I combined German number words in Renban areas with the constraint, that the entered numbers have to contain the given letters: S wie Sudoku mit Renban-Gruppen

[BenTen]

Hello all,

I'm a first timer. Apologies, I'll have to speak English, and apologies for the English-centric nature of my puzzle.

Is anyone familiar with puzzles that combine killer cages and words (say, if each digit maps to a letter)? I have seen puzzles where each digit maps to a letter, and highlighted cells spell out words, but not killer cages.

I tried my hand at it (CTC link), but not sure if the instructions are clear or if the puzzle is any good!

Some downsides I've noticed: 

1. Have to choose one language, which excludes some players. I chose English
   
2. Have to limit possible words to a constrained standard vocabulary that everyone can (maybe) agree on. I chose words/phrases for integers, removing punctuation and spaces (like SEVEN, THIRTYTHREE, ONEHUNDRED)
   
3. Very difficult to make an aesthetically pleasing puzzle, as language is messy
   
4. Difficult to play -- is there a site that lets you enter any letter into sudoku squares?
   

I, too, had the same dilemma on whether I should publish an English-centric puzzle on this site, especially as the words used in my puzzle were not so common and may not be known by a non-native speaker, but I decided to publish it in the end. Only five people have solved it to date, but I’m glad that it at least got some recognition.

With your puzzle though, the spelling of numbers would be pretty much known by most average speakers, and if not could be looked up online very easily.

I tried your puzzle using the CTC link and managed to complete it on my second attempt! I found the instructions very clear and it was just the right amount of difficult, but possible, in my opinion, and very rewarding. (I would say between 3-4 stars difficulty on this site – 4 for me though!).

I can confirm when using a computer keyboard you are able to write the whole alphabet into the grid using the letter tool feature within the CTC app. I couldn’t do this using my mobile phone however – I could only input the given letters A-I – but there may be a way of doing it that I haven’t found.

It is a very good puzzle and hoping to see more from you soon!

[unthinkable_spacewalk]

Thank you all. Interesting to see the different ways people have combined words and sudoku  

Good suggestion to clarify starting point CHalb, and happy to see some Plattdeutsch in a puzzle!

BenTen, you're referring to Knights of the Round Table, right? I notice that both of our puzzles use the instructions in sly ways to constrain the puzzle -- maybe that's necessary for puzzles with a large word list. I tried to make a sudoku where cages spelled out "any common English word", but I needed so many hints that it became unwieldy (e.g. the puzzle only works if VIA is considered a common word, but not AI, SAI, or RIA).

[Jrosas]

I came up with the puzzle “3-letter word sudoku”:
https://logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/R...?id=000HMV
I posted it 5 months ago and it has only had 10 solves on LM. 13 on CTC, but at least one of those is me solving it.
It got off to a rocky start because I expressed the negative constraint awkwardly. I changed the explanation of the rule and it got some solves, but it’s still a bit of a wallflower on LM.
I think it is an interesting puzzle. I have a couple fun break-ins that work. Maybe there are others. Mainly I think it is fun to solve a puzzle with letters, after solving so many with numbers that you get to the point where you can scan a row or column and see the missing digits.
I wish Sven’s Sudokupad would recognize letters in the solve so I could take out the final step of converting letters to numbers.