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I believe I have invented a new type of puzzle...

What is its name?

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Begin by solving the 16x16 sudoku; each of the digits 1-16 must appear exactly once in each row, column and thick-bordered 4x4 box. Then apply some (!) and discover its name!

Hint 1:

Notice that in the second-step grid-deduction puzzle (solved by @athin) there were several trivial 1's that could be resolved immediately. Clearly they were not that important to resolving the rest of the grid - but they must have been included for another reason, right??

Hint 2:

The message that has been encoded in the final solved puzzle is 16 letters long.

Hint 3:

Consider the trivial 1 in the bottom row of the second-step grid-deduction puzzle... If this had been omitted, 2 letters in the hidden message would have been corrupted and unreadable.

Other puzzles in the 'This new puzzle type needs a name' theme: 01, 02, 03

Stiv
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1 Answers1

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Here is the solution for the Sudoku, H is 'H'ighlighted with yellow color.

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As pointed by Deusovi, this is:

Herugolf puzzle

And here is the solution.

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Thanks to Johnson, to extract the final answer:

For each row, mark all cells with no line passing them. You will see that sometimes it is just a single marked cell or two adjacent marked cells. We can then treat them as Morse code!

-- -.-- -. .- -- . .. ... ... ..- -.. --- --. --- .-.. ..-.

Resulting "my name is sudogolf".

athin
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    I believe now it should be a Herugolf? – Deusovi Feb 04 '20 at 09:56
  • @Deusovi Ah that must be it! I just know about that puzzle tho – athin Feb 04 '20 at 10:15
  • Well done athin - all correct so far! +1 Find how I've encoded the name and the checkmark is yours... – Stiv Feb 04 '20 at 11:00
  • @athin Perhaps A1Z26? – Krad Cigol Feb 04 '20 at 11:43
  • As a hint, I chose my words in my previous comment very carefully and deliberately. One of them could be italicised for emphasis... If still unsolved in 24 hours I'll post a hint more widely... – Stiv Feb 05 '20 at 10:58
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    You've done all the heavy lifting - I believe the final answer is extracted by rot13(gerngvat rnpu yvar nf n zbefr-rapbqrq yrggre, sbphffvat ba gur erznvavat fdhnerf. Gjb gbtrgure vf n qnfu, bar ol vgfrys n qbg.) When you do that, the name makes a lot of sense. – Johnson Feb 13 '20 at 01:10
  • Just beat me to it! Nice solve athin and Johnson, and great puzzle Stiv! – mbingo Feb 13 '20 at 01:18
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    @Johnson wow very great spot there! I'm devastated by the encoding, I've gone too far and totally missed that – athin Feb 13 '20 at 02:18
  • Well done @Johnson, and well done athin - it is finished! Here's that checkmark! – Stiv Feb 13 '20 at 06:35