Chapter Text
The devil looked up from the page and stuck his pencil behind his ear as he heard the high-pitched whine of the propeller coming in for a moonlit landing. He smiled to himself. It wouldn’t be long now. A moment later, the plane landed neatly on the tiny airstrip just next to the unnumbered side road, just off the M23.
The devil always meets you on a narrow country road in the bleak December, even in Surrey. It’s just the done thing when your soul is on the line.
A man climbed out from the plane. He was of middling years and wearing a leather jacket a shade too thin for the season. He looked around for a moment before spying his goal, and then walked over to the roadside where the devil stood, waiting next to a flaming torch that had been stuck into the verge.
“Good evening, Mister Maverick,” said the devil.
Maverick approached and for the first time looked upon the demon’s visage in the flame. In horror he stepped back, momentarily alarmed. “Ah, I apologize. I was startled by your appearance. I didn’t expect … this. ” Maverick waved his arm at the creature before him.
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Ahh, what should I call you?”
“I am known by many names. Some know me as the mighty Phistomefel. That will do, if you like. But my true identity is a secret , shared only with a very select audience … any hints, moon? ” The devil looked up at the full moon shining down on the pair as they stood on the lonely road in the English countryside.
“In any case, what you call me is not of any concern. But I am, as you surmise, the Sudoku Devil.”
“So you’re actually real. I wondered.”
“Oh yes, Maverick, I am real enough. Whenever a pencil is broken in frustration, whenever a snake touches itself, whenever a solver commits an ineffable act of bifurcation, you can be sure my hand was in it.”
“When I sent my request, I hardly expected - well, I didn’t know what to expect. I felt like a child writing to Father Christmas.” Maverick squirmed visibly, still staring at the devil’s face as if wanting to ask a question to which he did not really want to know the answer.
“I was very intrigued to receive your petition. You are, perhaps, the last person I might expect to beg for my aid.”
“I think maybe there’s been a misunderstanding. He thinks I don’t like sudoku. Truly, Your Infernal Numberyness, nothing could be further from the truth.” Maverick paused. “Rather, it’s envy. I want nothing more than to be able to have his gifts.”
“And so the flights are …?”
“Distraction, or an attempt at it. If I can’t defeat Him with sudoku, perhaps I can prevent him from solving using my own gifts. Spiteful, I know.”
“How’s that working out for you? Does it annoy him tons? ”
“Not well, I’m afraid. And that’s why I’ve come to you today. You see, for years now, I have wanted nothing more than to be able to set a sudoku such that I could best Him, once and for all. For such power, I would trade … anything.”
“Anything, you say? Well, that’s interesting. But I’m not sure you have anything I want to trade for.”
Maverick looked up at the devil, despairing. “Then all is lost?”
“Not at all. Instead of a trade, I propose a competition.”
“A competition? Like where we each take turns playing the fiddle, or maybe the guitar?” Maverick started to look really worried.
“A challenge, rather, let us say. I will present you with three sudokus, each more fiendish than the last. Complete all three of them correctly in one hour, and you shall have the power you seek. A shiny pencil made of gold, to grant you the powers of the most accurate and rapid solver, perhaps even as great as Him. And to become a setter of such uniqueness that all would fall before your nimble intellect.”
“And if I fail?”
“Fail, and that which is most precious to you becomes mine forever. Your soul, one might say.”
“You torment me, fiend Phistomefel. What sort of cruel trick is this? To master sudoku, I must first have mastered sudoku?”
“They don’t call me the Sudoku Devil because of my benevolence,” the fiend smirked. “But I insist that my terms are fair. Sign, or do not sign, it does not matter to me.”
“Very well. What happens now?”
“Well, now you sign the contract, of course. Or you walk away and we never see one another again. My offer expires this very night.”
“All right. Let me see it, then.”
“Bobbins!”
Maverick started, wondering what was wrong. Then, as from nowhere, a warty winged orange imp, the size of a basketball, emerged from the underbrush. He flitted over to the devil, his long spiked tail behind him. “Yes, master?”
“My bag, Bobbins, if you please.”
“Here you are, sire!” Bobbins announced, clearly pleased to have some small role in this affair, as he handed the bag to his infernal master before retreating into shadow.
“Thank you, Bobbins.”
Phistomefel rummaged around in the bag for a bit. “I knew I should have left my Scrabble tiles at home … now, where is it … aha!” And at last, the devil drew forth from the bag a single sheet of vellum covered in minuscule green-black ink written in a practised hand. He presented it to Maverick. “The contract.”
Maverick looked over the ancient-seeming leaf with a mixture of curiosity and concern. "Normal midnight duel rules apply? Dare I ask?"
"Probably best that you don't," the devil admitted.
But scanning down the page, the terms were strictly logical, and Maverick had to admire the demon's rationality. Still, this was all a bit much. He continued reading.
“What’s that three in the corner?”
“Oh, you’re looking at version three of the document. I’ve had it revised. Why, what did you think?”
“Never mind.” Maverick took a look over the contract, squinting in the moonlight as the devil helpfully pulled out a thin spotlight, seemingly out of nowhere, to shine upon the pages.
“I do appreciate that you are looking it over carefully. Wise. In version two, I forgot to specify the negative constraint. It took months to extricate myself from that one.”
“Mmm.” Maverick thought it best to be noncommittal about that. He continued to read. The devil wasn’t wrong. He may be cruel, but the terms were all laid out in detail. To win what he most desired, he must risk what he treasured most.
“All right. I’ll do it.”
The devil pulled out a quill and ink from the bag. “We do our sudokus in pencil in hell, but our contracts are signed in ink, I’m afraid.”
“Right. Well, give it here.” Maverick took the pen and with a flourish, signed his name at the bottom. He could swear it glowed for a moment as he signed it, but perhaps that was just a reflection of the torchlight.
The devil took it back and stored it away safely. “Very well, now that we have dealt with the preliminaries, the puzzles.”
Smiling, the devil pulled three thin pieces of paper out of the bag and handed them to Maverick, followed by a sheaf of sharpened pencils and a tall brass hourglass. “Per our contract, you have one hour to correctly complete the three sudokus. Succeed, and you shall have what you most desire. Fail, and all that is most precious to you belongs to me. Now you get to play. Let’s get cracking!”
As if out of nowhere, the sound of a whip cracked in the chill December air. Maverick looked about only to see Bobbins with his long pointed tail. Then the devil turned the glass over, laughing, and Maverick began to work as the sands began to fall.
Puzzle The First: Der Falschring
Normal sudoku rules apply.
https://f-puzzles.com/?id=yydkxgua
Maverick looked up at the first page, then turned to the devil. “The false ring? Surely you don’t mean your ring?”
The devil smiled. “My ring is known even to you, is it? Let us see whether it helps you in this, the first of my three puzzles. For as you will see, this is nothing of the sort, but rather, a distortion of that pure thing, a shifting.”
The pilot scanned the page. “I was hoping for something more … well, perhaps a Generally Approachable Sudoku to start?”
But Phistomefel cackled loudly in the moonlight. “The only GAS you’ll need to worry about is the fumes of brimstone, if you carry on like that!”
Maverick, alarmed at that, directed his attention to the grid, his eyes scanning across the boxes. “A naked single?”
“Naturally. Sudoku hell is full of naked singles, but I’m afraid their existence is rather more tortured and less erotic you may traditionally have imagined.”
Maverick tried not to think about that, and got to work. Come on, now, this is a normal sudoku. How hard can it be? To win this, I have an hour. Loads of time. There’s another. And another. Falling one after another into place, so that the devil’s craft becomes apparent.
At last, he put his pencil down and looked it over, satisfied. “One down, two to go.” And then onward …
Puzzle The Second: Bifurcatus
Normal sudoku rules apply. In the cage, digits sum to the number in the top left. Digits may not repeat within the cage. Along arrows, digits sum to the total in the circle. Digits may repeat along arrows if otherwise permitted. Along diagonals, digits may not repeat. V and X indicate cells whose digits sum to 5 and 10 respectively. Not all Vs and Xs are given.
No bifurcation!
https://f-puzzles.com/?id=y5z67sk6
Maverick examined the puzzle with concern. “Bifurcatus … surely you don’t mean …?”
“Indeed. We’re nontraditionalists in Sudoku Hell - we only use two-pointed forks. You might say we’re fully bifurcated.” The devil pointed to his own bident, lying on the ground beside him. “But don’t take that as license to misbehave. We are also strictly logical down below, as above. No funny business, Maverick.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He continued to look at the page. “There are four different variants here, all interacting. I don’t understand it yet.”
And with that, he turned his attention to the second of the devil’s puzzles, trying not to pay attention to the trickling sands of the glass beside him. Back into the flow. Try to avoid the temptation to simply hack it out, make a choice, and see where it goes. The patterns come together quickly at first, and confidence grows. But then this is shattered as everything slows to a crawl. Come on, man! You can do this, you dummy! There. There.
The second puzzle done, Maverick turned it over, trying hard not to look at the hourglass as he moved on to the third.
Puzzle The Third: Damien
Normal sudoku rules apply. In cages, digits sum to the number in the upper left corner of the cage. Digits may not repeat within cages. Along diagonals, digits sum to the number given outside the grid. Digits may repeat along diagonals if otherwise permitted.
No spiritual intervention permitted!
https://f-puzzles.com/?id=y6h8devy
Maverick looked at the puzzle with alarm. “Only three given digits? I hope you don’t expect me to thank you for that. And they’re all sixes!”
“But of course! What else would you imagine, with your very soul on the line?”
“I think you’re obsessed with numbers, devil.”
“Not at all. We don’t merely trade in numbers in Sudoku Hell – we are aficionados of all puzzles. In fact, I work in anagrams, in pangrams, in rebus, in palindromes … oh, in antonyms. In fact, I solved the Listener in 66.6 seconds last week.”
Maverick scanned the puzzle. “This is monstrous! Although … yes, following it along, I see the first step.” He shook his head. “And there it is again, right where you’d expect it. Numbers, I tell you, you’re obsessed, Phistomefel.”
“The only number you should be worrying about is the number of minutes until your soul is mine.”
Maverick heeded the instruction. He fell back to work, and into a reverie.
All these cages, all these sixes. How to work it out? From nothingness, a speck of an idea, which then grows, like a concretion, into something more solid, a pair, a line, a set of possibilities. A pearl in an oyster, form among void. Then chip those potentialities away to singularities - exclude the impossible, embrace the improbable. The beauty of that struggle … that is what sudoku is about. Not winning or losing, but sharing in the beauty of it all coming together. To forget that is to miss the point. That’s what He has always known about these puzzles. To finish is not to win, but to find beauty in pattern, rapture in a design that builds an intimate connection between setter and solver. And as the last digit goes in, your best hope at transcendence is to hang onto that connection as long as you can.
And then click tick …
If Maverick has succeeded in completing all three puzzles within 60 minutes total, proceed to chapter 2.
If Maverick has failed in his endeavour, proceed to chapter 3.