Actually I spoted the discrepancies from Hop 3 or something and tracked them. So I had 263187945 fast and also spotted the sudoku and that 263187945 is also 1-9. But then things got out of hand. I thought also the orientation of the discrepancy would be relevant. So:
Tokyo - 2 right
Seoul - 6 up
Shanghai 3 right
…
San Francisco 5 left
So I spent quite some time to move around the sudoku to make it a valid sudoku again.
Ah that’s a shame! If it’s any consolation I also spent a long time trying to generate a second real sudoku, but there just weren’t enough good phrases of the form asclepius + a few letters.
Haha, yeah that helps.
@thewanderingeditor - btw. Why was the chess task changed? Is there another unsolved final final puzzle or am I getting paranoid?
Oh, sorry for the confusion there. I wanted to add a further explanation but the forum blocked me from editing. Some grumpy chess players pointed out that the puzzle didn’t quite work as set (Qd1 or Rh1 could be promoted and then a white knight could be anywhere). Removing those and adding to the black pawn captures fixed it. But the final answer was the same or course, and no-one who was submitting answers at the time seemed to have been confused by that particular issue, so I’m happy the prize for that one
is going to the right place still :)
OK, thanks for the explanation.