The Doppit Almanac · No. 13

Plotit, a daily sums puzzle

Fill plots to sum to their numbers

What it is

Plotit keeps the almanac's allotment book at No. 13. The board is parcelled into outlined plots, each with a small number in its corner, and rent falls due in digits: sow a figure in every square until each plot pays its number exactly.

Whatever the size of the field, the seed drawer holds only 1 to 5. The pinch is the company a digit keeps: identical figures refuse to touch, so the sums and the neighbours squeeze each other until one sowing alone is left. The digits are small; the squeeze is not.

How it plays

Terms of tenancy, in full.

• Every square grows one digit from 1 to 5, whatever the grid size.
• The digits inside a plot must total the number in its corner, to the digit.
• Identical digits never touch, not even diagonally. Twins flag red until you part them.
• Soft digits were sown before you arrived and cannot be lifted.
• A plot's number turns gold the moment it pays.

The difficulties

Rent is collected at four rates. Easy settles in thirty seconds to a minute. Medium wants one to three minutes of adding and crossing off. Hard holds out for three to six. A fresh board is surveyed every day, and the game itself charges no rent.

Expert is a fourth weight, kept for practice play. It is the same seven by seven field as hard, but adding up one plot at a time will not close it. The four squares of any two-by-two block all touch each other, so they hold four different digits. Set that against the ways a plot can still reach its number, cross off the digits neither allows, and a square that had four candidates comes down to one. Six to ten minutes.

Nearby in the almanac: Summit, Dominit and Nonit