Samurai 5-grid Skyscraper puzzle

I thought I’d try one more Skyscraper Samurai Sudoku puzzle – this time a 5-grid variety, or what I think of as the ‘traditional’ Samurai Sudoku format (some people also call this Gattai-5, but I’ve not seen that in print anywhere).

The aim is to place 1 to 9 into each row, column and 3×3 bold-lined box of each of the 5 9×9 Sudoku grids, whilst also obeying the Skyscraper constraints.  These tell you the number of digits that can be ’seen’ from the edge of the grid looking in along the adjacent row/column, where higher numbers obscure lower ones.  Take a look at a couple of last week’s puzzles if you need more detailed instructions for this constraint.

As has been pointed out in the comments elsewhere, it doesn’t matter whether you consider that the Skyscraper clues apply to the nearest 9×9 grid or to the entire width/height of the row/column they attach to – once the first ‘9′ is reached then there are no higher numbers, and that’s guaranteed to happen within the first 9 squares.

I think this is probably about as large as you want to go with a relatively complex constraint such as Skyscraper, which is why I’ve included quite a few given numbers too – including some which clearly aren’t needed to give the puzzle a unique solution.  (But please tell me if I’m wrong about this being big enough – I could always make a much larger one still just to prove that it’s possible!)

This week I plan to try out some other types of consecutive Sudoku variant – there are a couple of moderately-well-known types where you specify certain relationships between adjacent squares, such as ‘x2′ (where one number is twice the adjacent one – a bit like a slightly less-constrained version of consecutive sudoku!).  If you have any ideas for other variants,  feel free to let me know – I might try them out!

Good luck!