Bridge Sudoku

 

Rules

  • Normal Sudoku rules applied.
  • Each cage is the record of n-th trick in a contract bridge game, where n is the number in the top left corner of the cage.
  • 10, J, Q, K, A are recorded as 10, J, Q, K, A, but are treated as 12345 respectively when considering Sudoku rules. 2~9 are recorded as 2~9.
  • For some cards, the suit of that card is given in the top right corner.
  • Each cage contains the card played by West, North, East and South, from left to right or top to bottom.
  • Dotted circles indicates the lead / first player of each trick.
  • The up arrows indicate the cell must contain a J, Q, K, or A.
  • The game result is recorded as 3NT/W +2, that is,
    • No trump suits.
    • West and East won 11 of the 13 tricks in total.
    • North led the first trick.
  • If you are unfamiliar with contract bridge, here are rules that each trick must follow (in this particular game):
    • The lead player can play any card from their hand.
    • Other players must follow the suit of the leading card if they can.
      • For example, if lead player played a ♦️ in this trick, and West has ♦️2, ♦️5 and ♠️3 in their hand. Then West must play either ♦️2 or ♦️5, but not ♠️3.
      • Otherwise, if a player doesn't have any card of the same suit, they can play any card from their hand.
    • The winner of a trick is determined by "the card with the highest rank and has the same suit as the leading card".
      • The ranking is 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A (low to high).
      • For example, if a trick has the following card: ♠️5, ♠️3, ♠️2, ♥️K, and North (or ♠️3) leads the trick. Then West (or ♠️5) wins the trick.  (♥️K doesn't matter, because it is not a ♠️)
      • The winner of the current trick leads the next trick.

Links

A Small Example

Since the 4x4 grid cannot record entire game (the entire game has 52 cards played), this grid only records the last 2 tricks of a game.
  • No trump (same as the puzzle)
  • The starting hand is shown in the right boxes, where digit "1"s represent 10, digit "2", "3", "4" represent 2, 3, 4.
  • The green digits in the grid are answers to the puzzle.

Solving the Example

  1. Since the first card played in 12th trick is a spade, and there is a 3 of spade in West's hand, they must play this card in 12th trick, instead of 2 of hearts.  Therefore, we can put 3 in r1c1.
  2. Since 13th trick is led by West, West must win 12th trick. This means East played 2 of spades in 12th trick.  We can put 2 in r1c3.
    • North player cannot win 12th trick because they can only play 10 of hearts or 3 of diamonds, neither of them are spades.
  3. In 13th trick, there is only one card in each player's hand, so we can put 2 and 4 in row 4.  They are the only cards West and East can play.
  4. We cannot put another 4 in row 4, so South must play 4 of diamonds in 12th trick, and 10 of diamonds in 13th trick.
  5. For the same reason, North played 10 of hearts in 12th trick, and 3 of diamonds in 13th trick.
  6. The remaining digits can be solved by normal Sudoku rules.
  7. Though it doesn't matter for this small example, West won 13th trick.
    • Because the first card played is 2 of hearts, and no other players played a card of hearts, 2 of hearts won.

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