Tips for solving gold cell puzzles faster?

[Zixx]

I've seen a few of these sorts of puzzles lately; this one took me an hour? What are some tips to speed things up?

Thanks!

[CHalb]

Hallo Zixx,

first: Your post appears to me in a tiny font not readable. That's strange.

To the puzzle: I'm pretty sure this Sudoku is strictly speaking not solvable because it is incorrect in its hints. The three gold cells in box 5 do not work. I might ignore this and start with what I see in box 9; maybe I try this.

And to your general question: I think besides putting in the up to three candidates for the gold cells there is nothing special you might do besides of course in this special case looking at the equal sum line.

[Zixx]

Sorry about the tiny font, hopefully it's fixed now. And thanks for taking a look at it; I totally missed that some cells were off.

[uvo]

If I understand the rules correctly, gold cells are a special case of Pencilmark Sudoku (here is an example). Basically, each gold cell has up to three candidates; if every gold cell is given, then each non-gold cell has 6-8 possible candidates.

About box 5 in the linked puzzle, there is nothing obviously wrong, the three gold cells have candidates 56, 568, 69. Note that the third candidate is not "number of the box it is in", but "position within its box".