I'm testing the Killer Sudoku rating. The puzzle below is supposed to be (very) difficult. Is it?

(puzzle removed, please see the new one 3 posts lower)

Maybe difficult but not very difficult.

Thanks :)

I tried it myself as well, made a mistake somewhere ,
but do agree it's not very difficult.

This one is supposed to be more difficult than the first one:



Is it?

I did the first (already removed), I think in fact it's easier than the typical everyday "medium".

Yes, it's more difficult and more interesting, doable, it takes some more time in the analysis, having increased the size of the cages (six 5-cell cages, two every three columns). The key for the solution is given, in my opinion, by the cage 20 (5-cell) located in d2.

The original one was very difficult for me as i tried a number of different combinations and continually got stopped about 1/2 way through the puzzle.......once you put in cages of 3 cells or more and multiples of these cages, I AM DONE.......I will probably not be able to do any with the 3 or more celled cages.....and here I thought my IQ was going to increase with the calcudoku (after all isn't that what the site tells us )

It looked like I was going to get it fairly quickly, based on how many cells I was able to determine in columns g, h, and i. The lower left 3x3 seemed fairly straightforward as well. But then I struggled with the rest of it--even after determining the value of cell e5 in the 20+ cage clm mentioned.

In the end, I got all the rows, columns, and 3x3 grids to add up to 45, but the 31+ cage starting at a1 only contained 29 (-2), and the 28+ cage starting at d2 contained 30 (+2). Can't figure out how to resolve that. So yeah. Pretty hard.

Great, thanks to all so far, this gives me a good idea
for various parameter settings for the generating algorithm

Now that you have the software adjusted (and even with colours! ) it's time for you to think in also publishing a new book with only "Killer's" (other people "outside" this wonderful Calcudoku world could be very interested). I give an initial idea: 50 easy, 50 medium and 101 difficult, with the same punctuation, 3, 5 and 7 for the solutions sent to this site.