Samurai Consecutive Sudoku

I thought it would be a nice idea to create a large Consecutive Sudoku for the weekend!  And so here one is: a 5-grid Samurai Consecutive Sudoku.  As you can see, there are very few givens to start with, so it will hopefully be at least a bit of a challenge!  (It shouldn’t be as tricky as the Skyscraper version, at least once you get going!).

I’ve also decided to make Consecutive Sudoku the ‘puzzle of the month’ (”Masterclass”) puzzle in Sudoku Pro issue 45, which should be out in just under 2 months I think.  Hopefully I’ll also make a book of them available online soon(ish!).

The rules for this Consecutive Samurai are simple: place 1 to 9 into each row, column and bold-lined 3×3 box of each of the 5 Sudoku grids, whilst also obeying the consecutive constraints – numbers with a white bar between are consecutive, whilst those without a white bar between are not consecutive.  ”Consecutive” means that the difference between the values in the two squares is exactly 1: i.e. 1&2, 2&3, 3&4, 4&5, 5&6, 6&7, 7&8 or 8&9.

Good luck!