By Henry Kwok
Twin A Twin B
Twin A Twin B
Here is a Word document with the two Sudoko grids that you can download for printing.

Rules of Twin Equivalent Sudoku

This Sudoku consists of a pair of linked standard Sudoku puzzles each with some starting digits. As usual, the object of this Sudoku is to fill in the whole of each 9x9 grid with digits 1 through 9 so that each row, each column and each block contain all the digits 1 through 9.

Twin B is related to twin A in the following ways:
1. Given that twin A is the original puzzle, we can create an equivalent puzzle from twin A by swapping a horizontal/vertical chute or band of 3 blocks with another horizontal/vertical chute or band of 3 blocks.

For example, an equivalent puzzle (fig 2) is created from fig 1 by swapping the left vertical chute of 3 blocks with the middle vertical chute of 3 blocks.
Fig 2Fig 1
Similarly an equivalent puzzle (fig 3) can be created from fig 1 by swapping the top horizontal chute of 3 blocks with the middle horizontal chute of 3 blocks.
Fig 3

2. After swapping the chutes, we can create a third equivalent puzzle (twin B) by renaming all the elements of second equivalent puzzle.

For example, we create an equivalent puzzle (fig 4) by renaming the elements of fig 3 in the following way:
fig 3 ® fig 4

1 ®7

2 ® 6

3® 1

4 ® 9

5 ® 3

6 ® 2

7 ® 8

8 ® 5

9 ® 4

Fig 4
The four puzzles (fig 1 to fig 4) are equivalent to one another. Equivalent puzzles can also be created from fig 1 and fig 2 by renaming the elements in the respective grids. Instead of calling fig 1 and fig 4 by the clumsy name of 'twin element-renaming chute-swapping sudoku', we can simply call them 'twin equivalent sudoku'.