#rat run

"Second Life is still around??"

Yes, yes it is.

Okay backstory: I heard about these cool puzzles that take sudoku and add in more features and rules, in the series I decided to try out the grid is also a maze you need to guide a rat through by drawing a path where the path has rules governing what numbers it can go through, and also there are walls of course because it's a maze.

In the second maze, which has boxes with eight squares (meaning you only use 1-8, no 9, this is important), the values of each adjacent square on the rat's path must sum to a value of 10 or greater. Now part of the trick is that one can't be on the path ever because without nine it is impossible to make ten, and two needs an eight on either side so it can only be used in very specific positions. I know that, I understand that.

But 3, 3 is at the level of utility where it's not outright a special use case only like 2, but the fact that it can only be placed adjacent to 7s or 8s makes it just flexible enough to require more work to deduce adjacent values while being rigid enough to throw off hypothetical solutions.

And after having finally seemingly deduced the values for a section of the path by trying out different possible outcomes until one didn't throw up any errors I could see, I began to fill in the rest of the grid based on it, drawing near to the complete solution.

Then I realized the deduction was wrong because according to what I had there had to be a 3 in a spot on the line where it was impossible to give it adjacent 7s or 8s, which goes against the rules of the puzzle. And by that point I had done so much based on the deduction that I needed to restart the puzzle. Well technically I could have tested how far the undo button went, but that revelation made me need a break before trying again.

The jump button didn't activate at the end there. Shame because it was a great run.

Wonder if the leaderboards are real lol. If so I'm number 4 for now.

This is above the water line.

The Lane Cove North Rat Run Dispute Turns Nasty

Residents of Karilla Avenue, Parklands Avenue, Kurri Street, Kyong Street and Landers Road in Lane Cove North have long complained that their streets are being used as a rat run.  The streets are regularly used by motorists to bypass traffic on the major roads at peak times.

The Arguments Against the Rat Run

At the August Lane Cove Council meeting, several Lane Cove North residents expressed…