5 hours ago
- Sunflowers puzzle difficulty is tiered into Easy, Medium, Hard, Extreme, and Insane, based on the hardest logical technique required.
- Five core techniques: Basic (single clue), Subset (two clues where one sees all unknowns of another), Overlap (two clues sharing squares), What-if (hypothetical leading to contradiction), and Either-way (both hypotheses agree on a square).
- Each tier has specific requirements: Medium needs subset moves, Hard needs overlap plus subset, Extreme needs what-if chains with a minimum step length, and Insane exceeds the chain cap and uses either-way moves.
- Scoring ranges from 0 to 100, with each difficulty tier having a non-overlapping band; sub-metrics refine placement within the band.
- Estimated solve time is calculated by summing weighted times for each technique (e.g., ~14s per subset, ~26s per overlap, ~15s + ~10s per step for what-if).
- Zero clue rules: Easy/Medium carry 1-2 zero tiles, Hard exactly one, Extreme/Insane none; generator protects required zeros and injects if needed.
- Sliders tighten generation requirements; if no candidate matches within 90 tries, the closest match is flagged under the board.