Nordy here. Thanks for the feature! I wish Simon the best as he navigates his health. Mark - our brains seem to work in completely opposite ways 😅 some proof of this is that my first video on the channel (titled "You Won't Believe How Empty This Puzzle Is") took me WEEKS to prove, and you solved that puzzle in less than 2 minutes, which must be a record for the channel. And then here you completely bypassed the intended logic using deductions I would have NEVER considered. Incredibly fascinating. I continue to be astounded by both you and Simon! [Spoilers ahead] The intended path... At 13:30, after following the green cells around the grid, Mark finds the pink 46 and writes in the yellow 19s. Now, there are two positions for the remaining green cells, and you can prove that green cannot be in the R8C2 and R9C5 positions - as the green in R9C5 would need to be the yellow 19, but then R8C2 could not be the yellow 19 by Sudoku. So, green must be in R9C2 and R8C5, which Mark notes at 15 minutes using related logic. The intended step at 15:00 is to notice how many pinks/yellows are in rows 8/9. In row 8, there are already four yellow cells, so green can't be yellow. In row 9, there are already four pink cells, so green can't be pink. Therefore, the only remaining candidate for green is 5! This break-in is why I originally listed the puzzle at 2 stars.
i find it much simpler to simply ask where the pink 46 in r9c6 goes in box 9. the fact that the yellow 19 is already there forces it into row 7 (off the whispers), and sudoku in col 6 prevents it from being the same as the green digit, which immeidately places it in r7c9 and makes green 5 w/o anything complicated
All our brains work differently, and that’s one of the things I love about this channel is getting to see how Simon & Mark think, often in ways that I did not. But to that point, I find it interesting that for the placement of the last 2 greens you use the yellow 19, when in fact it is as simple as this: in box 9 green just isn’t yellow. For determining that green is 5, I did the same as @dwebb2805 outlined already. Regardless, I enjoyed this puzzle. Definitely not a 1 star difficulty.
I am wondering if the title indicates what the setter would do while watching Mark struggle to see the break-in once the puzzle got on CTC. The moral and the beauty of the puzzle is that it's easy to miss simplicity where normally we expect complexity!
Ever since all green lines were coloured we have green is 5 because: - green cannot be purple because of row 9 - green cannot be yellow because of box 9
That's exactly what I did, so I had green as a 5 within a couple minutes. Since I had the entire puzzle in 12:03, and I'm not a particularly fast solver, I would've definitely rated it as a 1* on LMD.
Yep me too, and I had to skip through some of the rest of the video because I was going to start shouting at the screen. But I'm not trying to solve it with a video camera on me and explaining what I'm doing! :)
Same! I was so proud that I figured that out within a minute or two of the start! Amazed that he still never used that logic but used some complex Simon-logic! :)
@@dannydavis1224 I wouldn't rate it 1* simply because the breakin is only easy if you already have experience with the properties of german whispers and know to look out for single cell segments on region sum lines. But other than that it's very simple, yes.
It's very weird that Mark, who frequently sees naked singles, hasn't seen that the Green can't be Yellow for box 9 or Purple for row 9, which prompts the region sum line to be 5. Interestingly, I think that the thought proccess that led to this increased difficulty for Mark was the intent to disprove the green cell as 5, sort of working against it's confirmation.
So interesting. I tried the puzzle myself before watching because a 1- or 2-star puzzle might be within my reach, though a 30+ minute video by you, Mark, might stretch me a bit. But I could not really get anywhere. So I watched you, and found that you were not getting anywhere in the same way I was. I watched with rapt attention as you figured out that the N for the long line was 5. But of course at that point it becomes much more straightforward. I will try the puzzle again at some point, I think. Thanks for this video, and of course my very best wishes to Simon for a speedy resolution to his trapped nerve issue. I know that it can be very discouraging and painful. (I think I only doubt your sincerity, Mark, when I know you are teasing. And also, feel free to go as fast as you like - I love to see how fast you can go, your mind is amazing!)
Isn’t the proof for green=5 as easy as that green can’t be purple because of row 9 and can’t be yellow because of box 9? That was the way for me to solve it but now I’m unsure if I jumped to a wrong conclusion because it seems too obvious for Mark to miss it? 🙃😅
No, you are right. I am pretty sure Mark will have a facepalm moment after he realizes he missed that 😅. It's all part of live solving though, sometimes they can miss obvious things 🙂
Yes, or not yellow due to row 8. He had it sitting in front of him for the longest time. I may have gotten this one faster than him but he's still a better solver.
@17:00 He even says "Unless I can find somewhere where green cannot be purple...". Arghh. I imagine there was a fair bit of shouting at the screen at that point. 😂
I am not a good solver and I've never been able to solve 4 or 5 star difficulty puzzles before. I even sometimes fail 3-star puzzles. This puzzle took me only 13 minutes. I think that qualifies as 1-star. I think Mark overcomplicated the start of this puzzles by thinking about german whisper digits.. You can actually get the 5 into the blue line WITHOUT using any numbers, just by colors. I am going by Mark's coloring here: Once you color the german whispers lines, you can see that R7C7 sees 4 yellows in the box, that means it's not yellow digit. That allows you to solve last x-wing and put that digit into R9C2 and R8C5. Now that digit also sees 4 purple's in row 9. That means it's 5. After that you can just color all the blue line as low digits, then you can disambiguate german whisper colors by box 7 (yellow colored ones can't be low because there are already 3 yellows in the box other than the blue line). Rest is just sudoku and filling digits.
Thanks fir the explanation. I actually tried to prove it can't be 5, which looked very constraint with all these small digits, and ended up with the solution 😂
I solved in 20:19 and I rarely beat either Simon or Mark. So I understand how some jaded solvers might downgrade this to one star, but a true one star should not require experience with the rule set. I would never have solved this so quickly without extensive experience with region sums and German whispers, and likely would not have proceeded so confidently if the video title didn't tell me some people found it easy.
Agreed. 12:21 for me, but I also got "lucky" in that I spotted the need for the "green" tiles to be 5 or 6 pretty much immediately. I could see this one being much more of a head-scratcher for folks who don't spot the clean opening. I'd give it 2 stars.
+1 The break in was clever enough that I would call it 2 stars. But I never really got stuck after that. The logic flowed fairly smoothly for me. I'm slow so it took me almost 30 min, but it was a comfortable solve throughout.
13 minutes exactly for me. I am not sure whether it's a 1 star, as you need to know both the German Whisper colouring trick and 1 cell on a region sum trick (though those are quite basic...), but would not give it more than 2 stars. It was a fun 13 minutes, though ^^
Wow, Mark really over complicated that. As soon as you had that green digit in r7c7 and in r9c2 you then have green able to see 4 yellows in box 9 and 4 purples in row 9. So it's none of those and has to be 5.
If you know your ins and outs of region sum lines and whispers, then yes, one star. But for people new to this type of rulesets, definitely two stars, at the minimum. I'm quite experienced with both rulesets and it was not easy to find the break-in. That said, a very nice puzzle all in all, and a joy to eventually solve. :)
I’m surprised he hasn’t had shoulder pain before, as I have it with extended computer use. I was directed to put both feet on the floor, use a keyboard tray at a proper height and take breaks. Now I feel no pain. I hope Simon recuperates soon.
Interesting puzzle, 23:51. I grasped pretty early that the Region Sum had to have a sum of 5. To use the color scheme from about 11:20 or so: in box 9, Green can't be Yellow since it sees 4 yellows, but in row 9, Green can't be Purple since it sees 4 purples.
Here's my hint to getting unstuck from where Mark got stuck: You've found where all the green squares should be. They will either be high, low, or a 5. Can they all be the same polarity in boxes 7-9? Much easier to see than the mental math Mark was doing to find that 4. I would still say this is a medium puzzle. I did it right around 30 min.
This is pretty straightforward. Row 8 means green cannot be yellow, and row 9 means it cannot be purple. So it cannot be low or high and is therefore 5, and all the purples and all cells on the region sum line become low. Finished in 13 minutes here.
16:10 finish. The way I started was to ask where the purple 4-6 went in box 9 (it makes a pair with the 5). Therefore it is also in r8c3, and this differentiates the pair in box 9. Since the total is now 5, purple must be low.
22:23 for me. I think maybe its rating suffers from it being a front-loaded puzzle, where the hardest logic is at the start. People are maybe flying through the back half going, “that’s not bad” and discounting the starting logic. IMO that’s not a 1-star break-in. Thoroughly enjoyable, of course, but if I gave that to my dad or my son (who both do vanilla sudoku and pencil puzzles), I think they’d be lost and frustrated.
This was incredibly difficult for me because I kept messing up the rules for the lines. My brain went on autopilot like 5 times, assuming the top row equal sum line was a whisper line.
@15:00 Mark placed the greens in rows 8 and 9, seeing four yellows in row 8 and four purples in row 9, making green 5. 13 minutes later, @28:15, greens are finally entered as a 5. Also, earlier, Mark missed that there was only one purple digit in row 9 that could be the monogamous digit from 6:25 to 13:20. That's another 7 minutes that could have been shaved off. This could have been closer to a ten minute solve but for those two oversights. I'd say a 1* rating would be about right.
I finished in 30:06 minutes. This was a fun puzzle that had a satisfying interaction between the two rulesets. That break-in was so satisfying to spot using column 5 of box 8 to see that no matter which cell was chosen, the color in r9c5 always resulted in being high. That disambiguated everything very fast and was my favorite part. The rest was a satisfying blitz of coloring. As always, it feels good to beat Mark's time. Great Puzzle!
A very nice puzzle. The rating is correct. By colouring the green lines it and looking at the singel digit on the blue line, it follows straight forward that the single digit is a 5 and the rest is just a fill in job. Simple but very sofisticated construction. Perfect to start of the day with a cup of coffee and a smile 🙂
I solved this in a low 2/5 time for me, but saw the logic quickly. I would not expect newer solvers to find this nearly so approachable - I would have struggled when I was first solving puzzles. The break-in is a sophisticated piece of logic - not hugely hard but takes some experience to spot, I would suggest.
29.51. Anything I can solve in under half an hour cannot be accused of being difficult. After the initial colouring of the long green line, no other colouring needed and I'm grateful for that. Good fun!
One star? That seems a bit too easy, but anything that took me a mere 23 minutes (as this lovely puzzle did) is not hard. Thanks to Nordy for he puzzle!
At 8:00 Mark gets 4 yellow in box 9 and already has 4 purple in row 9 independent of green which he hadn't colored yet. At 28:00 he fills in 5's. This ought to have been a seventeen minute video. It's nice to know that Mark is human too. I'd vote for a 1 star rating on this puzzle.
I'm very new to solving and managed this one in under 12 minutes - am now starting to wonder if I somehow lucked into it, rather than actually being logical, based on watching Mark struggle with the break in!
It's simpler than you make it. Even before thinking of 46 and 19 on the German whisper lines: Once you have all green cells and the German whispers coloured, the greens can only be 5 or join the purple (especially because of box 9 colurs). But in boxes 7 and 8 the potentially green cells on whispers are yellow, not purple. So there they can't be on the whispers, as they are either purple or 5 and that contradicts the colour. So all greens are off whisper lines. That doesn't make them 5s, but that colouring is simpler done that way. Finding out whether the green cells are 5s or purple is a case testing/colouring exercise in boxes 7 and 8, and then it get's simpler, though there is some end game for low digits that's decided in box1, that's worth mentioning as a hurdle. I even swapped 2s and 3s in one case and did only notice later, the damage was small, though. I'd give it 2 stars. ...and after your explanation in your next video it's even simpler to see by the green cells in row 8 and 9 seeing both 4 yellow and 4 purple. If you coloured the german whisper the typical preliminary purple green combination and the single region sum line cells in red, for example, that wouldn't change a iota for the logic, but maby have been easier to see, anyway.
I finished in 14:31. If you colour code big and small digits on the whispers immediately and focus on where the 5s go in the bottom 3 boxes, you figure it out fairly quickly. I very rarely beat Simon and Mark (let alone finish the puzzles) but I've done it 4 times in the last week - must be something in the water!
My only choice in the beginning was, if 5 was on the line or not in box 9. I went with yes and waited until I would find an error. The grid filled itself with "whisper-parity" quickly and the whisper did the rest. With my method this was one star in deed, because it filled itself. It was a pencilmarking exercise than anything else most of the time, due to the limitations on the blue line. Fun none the less for me.
I would give it two stars. It is very approachable but not very easy if it doesn't click with your brains logic by chance. There're multiple errors to be made and you have to earn each digit right to the end, which makes it such a good and enjoyable puzzle i think.
I would agree with 1/5 difficulty. I am a mediocre solver who usually takes twice as long as Mark and Simon. I managed this one in 15 minutes, straightforward solve with no real difficult points. Loved the puzzle, though. Very nice. 👍
2 easier ways to prove the 5: At 13:30 - with the yellow 19 placed in box 9, none of the marked purple squares can be 46, which means 46 is in the same squares as 5. So either green is a purple 6, or green is 5. But the purple 6 doesn't work, because there's 3 region sum cells in column 8 which already contains 3 yellow cells, so you'd have 6 cells containing 1-5. Second: At 15:00, when the green cells are marked, Row 9 now means green can't be purple, but box 9 already means green can't be yellow. Tangentially - one of the few times I regret using orange/blue for coloring high/low, the blue hid the region sum lines rather well and I took longer cleaning up the puzzle than I should have.
Rules: 04:01 Let's Get Cracking: 04:55 Mark's time: 30m20s Puzzle Solved: 35:15 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Construction Work: 3x (07:24, 07:34, 09:50) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Ah: 7x (14:24, 17:14, 19:40, 25:05, 25:19, 27:32, 32:55) Obviously: 6x (10:27, 13:30, 15:30, 22:38, 25:36, 27:17) Approachable: 3x (00:43, 01:14, 02:19) Lovely: 2x (03:35, 35:39) In Fact: 2x (17:23, 34:21) Progress: 2x (08:42, 23:38) Goodness: 1x (13:00) Sorry: 1x (07:21) Clever: 1x (19:53) Stuck: 1x (24:24) Come on Mark: 1x (20:01) By Sudoku: 1x (33:09) Hang On: 1x (10:57) Box Thingy: 1x (29:03) Intriguing: 1x (04:39) Wow: 1x (28:20) Pencil Mark/mark: 1x (06:27) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Thirteen (7 mentions) Four (58 mentions) Green (59 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Low (27) - High (15) Even (5) - Odd (0) Higher (5) - Lower (1) Row (17) - Column (8) FAQ: Q1: You missed something! A1: That could very well be the case! Human speech can be hard to understand for computers like me! Point out the ones that I missed and maybe I'll learn! Q2: Can you do this for another channel? A2: I've been thinking about that and wrote some code to make that possible. Let me know which channel you think would be a good fit!
This feels like a case where the LMD difficulty rating is probably affected by an artifact of their insistence on having equal bin size for the star values. Essentially, any puzzle with an average difficulty rating of 1-1.8 stars is shown as 1*, 1.8-2.6 is shown as 2*, 2.6-3.4 as 3*, 3.4-4.2 as 4* and anything above 4.2 as 5*.
10:30 for me. Definitely a 2-star imo. I did miss a couple obvious things as Mark did, but even then the puzzle is not trivial. Very fun one, regardless!
As far as this channel goes I would say, 1 or 2 stars. My logic being that I finished it. I struggled figuring out the 5 , more than most people in the comments. But after that it, was fairly approachable Sudoku for me.
13 minutes. Greens placed in rows 8 and 9 at 15:00. Green entered as a 5 at 28:15. This would change his 30 minute solve time to a 17 minute solve time. I think that could qualify it as a 1 star difficulty rating.
Lovely puzzle. If you found the intended break in (I did) I think I would've said a hard 1 star or easy 2 star on LMD. The difficulty ratings there tend to be harder then you think even for a 2-star puzzle - at least that's my experience.
10:00 in box 7,8 you determined that green is either yellow or 5. So then that should mean green is not purple making green 5. I didn't see it till you said this but it is cool and gives you first digits🎉🎉🎉
How could he miss that row 8 had 4 yellow, and row 8 had 4 purple, so green could not be low or high so must be 5. So obvious, that’s why it’s 1* puzzle!
Easy to find the break in for experienced solvers, not so simple for beginners. Even Mark struggled a bit. On the other hand, finding the break in is all you need to do, then you are basically done. An easy 2 stars imo.
Looki g at the comments the region sum was 5 was my very first step and inwas slow on that. Probably because some rules that were word fornword the same as this puzzle were infact region in box and not segment but thats bad rules on thebother puzzles.
This is the first time i beat it faster then Simon or Mark. Mostly because mark missed one simple logic with the 5 but still. I BEAT HIM!!!!! MOuhahahahaha
Seems like a 4 or 5 star to me, I don't see any way to logically get through it, it still seems like you guessed and happened to be right but that's not logical deduction.
Looki g at the comments the region sum was 5 was my very first step and inwas slow on that. Probably because some rules that were word fornword the same as this puzzle were infact region in box and not segment but thats bad rules on thebother puzzles.
Nordy here. Thanks for the feature! I wish Simon the best as he navigates his health. Mark - our brains seem to work in completely opposite ways 😅 some proof of this is that my first video on the channel (titled "You Won't Believe How Empty This Puzzle Is") took me WEEKS to prove, and you solved that puzzle in less than 2 minutes, which must be a record for the channel. And then here you completely bypassed the intended logic using deductions I would have NEVER considered. Incredibly fascinating. I continue to be astounded by both you and Simon!
[Spoilers ahead] The intended path...
At 13:30, after following the green cells around the grid, Mark finds the pink 46 and writes in the yellow 19s. Now, there are two positions for the remaining green cells, and you can prove that green cannot be in the R8C2 and R9C5 positions - as the green in R9C5 would need to be the yellow 19, but then R8C2 could not be the yellow 19 by Sudoku. So, green must be in R9C2 and R8C5, which Mark notes at 15 minutes using related logic.
The intended step at 15:00 is to notice how many pinks/yellows are in rows 8/9. In row 8, there are already four yellow cells, so green can't be yellow. In row 9, there are already four pink cells, so green can't be pink. Therefore, the only remaining candidate for green is 5! This break-in is why I originally listed the puzzle at 2 stars.
The MN Wild should sue you their Mascot is called Nordy.
i find it much simpler to simply ask where the pink 46 in r9c6 goes in box 9. the fact that the yellow 19 is already there forces it into row 7 (off the whispers), and sudoku in col 6 prevents it from being the same as the green digit, which immeidately places it in r7c9 and makes green 5 w/o anything complicated
All our brains work differently, and that’s one of the things I love about this channel is getting to see how Simon & Mark think, often in ways that I did not. But to that point, I find it interesting that for the placement of the last 2 greens you use the yellow 19, when in fact it is as simple as this: in box 9 green just isn’t yellow. For determining that green is 5, I did the same as @dwebb2805 outlined already.
Regardless, I enjoyed this puzzle. Definitely not a 1 star difficulty.
I am wondering if the title indicates what the setter would do while watching Mark struggle to see the break-in once the puzzle got on CTC. The moral and the beauty of the puzzle is that it's easy to miss simplicity where normally we expect complexity!
drax: i can go one better.
at 12:00, in box 9, green is NOT yellow. then you can apply row 9.
Ever since all green lines were coloured we have green is 5 because:
- green cannot be purple because of row 9
- green cannot be yellow because of box 9
That's exactly what I did, so I had green as a 5 within a couple minutes. Since I had the entire puzzle in 12:03, and I'm not a particularly fast solver, I would've definitely rated it as a 1* on LMD.
Yep me too, and I had to skip through some of the rest of the video because I was going to start shouting at the screen. But I'm not trying to solve it with a video camera on me and explaining what I'm doing! :)
That's how I did it and that's give the fine Scrhodinger sudoku logic: green is 5 or yellow, but green is also 5 or purple.
Same! I was so proud that I figured that out within a minute or two of the start! Amazed that he still never used that logic but used some complex Simon-logic! :)
@@dannydavis1224 I wouldn't rate it 1* simply because the breakin is only easy if you already have experience with the properties of german whispers and know to look out for single cell segments on region sum lines. But other than that it's very simple, yes.
@24:25
Mark: "There must be a simple way through this"
Viewers: (Vigorous head nodding)
It's very weird that Mark, who frequently sees naked singles, hasn't seen that the Green can't be Yellow for box 9 or Purple for row 9, which prompts the region sum line to be 5. Interestingly, I think that the thought proccess that led to this increased difficulty for Mark was the intent to disprove the green cell as 5, sort of working against it's confirmation.
So interesting. I tried the puzzle myself before watching because a 1- or 2-star puzzle might be within my reach, though a 30+ minute video by you, Mark, might stretch me a bit. But I could not really get anywhere. So I watched you, and found that you were not getting anywhere in the same way I was. I watched with rapt attention as you figured out that the N for the long line was 5. But of course at that point it becomes much more straightforward. I will try the puzzle again at some point, I think. Thanks for this video, and of course my very best wishes to Simon for a speedy resolution to his trapped nerve issue. I know that it can be very discouraging and painful. (I think I only doubt your sincerity, Mark, when I know you are teasing. And also, feel free to go as fast as you like - I love to see how fast you can go, your mind is amazing!)
Isn’t the proof for green=5 as easy as that green can’t be purple because of row 9 and can’t be yellow because of box 9?
That was the way for me to solve it but now I’m unsure if I jumped to a wrong conclusion because it seems too obvious for Mark to miss it? 🙃😅
Yes that’s how I saw it. If green was not 5, it would have been purple, and you couldn’t put it in box 7. Therefore green is 5.
No, you are right. I am pretty sure Mark will have a facepalm moment after he realizes he missed that 😅. It's all part of live solving though, sometimes they can miss obvious things 🙂
Yes, or not yellow due to row 8. He had it sitting in front of him for the longest time. I may have gotten this one faster than him but he's still a better solver.
@17:00 He even says "Unless I can find somewhere where green cannot be purple...". Arghh.
I imagine there was a fair bit of shouting at the screen at that point. 😂
I am not a good solver and I've never been able to solve 4 or 5 star difficulty puzzles before. I even sometimes fail 3-star puzzles. This puzzle took me only 13 minutes. I think that qualifies as 1-star.
I think Mark overcomplicated the start of this puzzles by thinking about german whisper digits.. You can actually get the 5 into the blue line WITHOUT using any numbers, just by colors. I am going by Mark's coloring here: Once you color the german whispers lines, you can see that R7C7 sees 4 yellows in the box, that means it's not yellow digit. That allows you to solve last x-wing and put that digit into R9C2 and R8C5. Now that digit also sees 4 purple's in row 9. That means it's 5.
After that you can just color all the blue line as low digits, then you can disambiguate german whisper colors by box 7 (yellow colored ones can't be low because there are already 3 yellows in the box other than the blue line). Rest is just sudoku and filling digits.
Thanks fir the explanation. I actually tried to prove it can't be 5, which looked very constraint with all these small digits, and ended up with the solution 😂
Took me forever to see that there were four cells of the same high/low parity in row 9 thanks to that one German whispers line.
thanks... I was getting dizzy trying to follow Mark.
I solved in 20:19 and I rarely beat either Simon or Mark. So I understand how some jaded solvers might downgrade this to one star, but a true one star should not require experience with the rule set. I would never have solved this so quickly without extensive experience with region sums and German whispers, and likely would not have proceeded so confidently if the video title didn't tell me some people found it easy.
Agreed. 12:21 for me, but I also got "lucky" in that I spotted the need for the "green" tiles to be 5 or 6 pretty much immediately. I could see this one being much more of a head-scratcher for folks who don't spot the clean opening. I'd give it 2 stars.
+1 The break in was clever enough that I would call it 2 stars. But I never really got stuck after that. The logic flowed fairly smoothly for me. I'm slow so it took me almost 30 min, but it was a comfortable solve throughout.
13 minutes exactly for me. I am not sure whether it's a 1 star, as you need to know both the German Whisper colouring trick and 1 cell on a region sum trick (though those are quite basic...), but would not give it more than 2 stars. It was a fun 13 minutes, though ^^
Wow, Mark really over complicated that. As soon as you had that green digit in r7c7 and in r9c2 you then have green able to see 4 yellows in box 9 and 4 purples in row 9. So it's none of those and has to be 5.
If you know your ins and outs of region sum lines and whispers, then yes, one star. But for people new to this type of rulesets, definitely two stars, at the minimum. I'm quite experienced with both rulesets and it was not easy to find the break-in. That said, a very nice puzzle all in all, and a joy to eventually solve. :)
I knew Simon had some sort of problem with his shoulder, but commendably he has retained his characteristic cheerfulness during solves.
I’m surprised he hasn’t had shoulder pain before, as I have it with extended computer use. I was directed to put both feet on the floor, use a keyboard tray at a proper height and take breaks. Now I feel no pain. I hope Simon recuperates soon.
24:32 ... perhaps more than one-star, but I fared well enough on this one
Nice puzzle!
19:57 for me. That was pretty easy, but I wouldn't say that that was a 1 star.
Interesting puzzle, 23:51. I grasped pretty early that the Region Sum had to have a sum of 5. To use the color scheme from about 11:20 or so: in box 9, Green can't be Yellow since it sees 4 yellows, but in row 9, Green can't be Purple since it sees 4 purples.
Here's my hint to getting unstuck from where Mark got stuck: You've found where all the green squares should be. They will either be high, low, or a 5. Can they all be the same polarity in boxes 7-9? Much easier to see than the mental math Mark was doing to find that 4. I would still say this is a medium puzzle. I did it right around 30 min.
This is pretty straightforward. Row 8 means green cannot be yellow, and row 9 means it cannot be purple. So it cannot be low or high and is therefore 5, and all the purples and all cells on the region sum line become low. Finished in 13 minutes here.
16:10 finish. The way I started was to ask where the purple 4-6 went in box 9 (it makes a pair with the 5). Therefore it is also in r8c3, and this differentiates the pair in box 9. Since the total is now 5, purple must be low.
It must be a one star - I could finish it without a sneak peek at Mark's solution. Thanks for a lovely puzzle❤
22:23 for me. I think maybe its rating suffers from it being a front-loaded puzzle, where the hardest logic is at the start. People are maybe flying through the back half going, “that’s not bad” and discounting the starting logic. IMO that’s not a 1-star break-in. Thoroughly enjoyable, of course, but if I gave that to my dad or my son (who both do vanilla sudoku and pencil puzzles), I think they’d be lost and frustrated.
This was incredibly difficult for me because I kept messing up the rules for the lines. My brain went on autopilot like 5 times, assuming the top row equal sum line was a whisper line.
@15:00 Mark placed the greens in rows 8 and 9, seeing four yellows in row 8 and four purples in row 9, making green 5.
13 minutes later, @28:15, greens are finally entered as a 5.
Also, earlier, Mark missed that there was only one purple digit in row 9 that could be the monogamous digit from 6:25 to 13:20. That's another 7 minutes that could have been shaved off.
This could have been closer to a ten minute solve but for those two oversights. I'd say a 1* rating would be about right.
I finished in 30:06 minutes. This was a fun puzzle that had a satisfying interaction between the two rulesets. That break-in was so satisfying to spot using column 5 of box 8 to see that no matter which cell was chosen, the color in r9c5 always resulted in being high. That disambiguated everything very fast and was my favorite part. The rest was a satisfying blitz of coloring. As always, it feels good to beat Mark's time. Great Puzzle!
A very nice puzzle. The rating is correct. By colouring the green lines it and looking at the singel digit on the blue line, it follows straight forward that the single digit is a 5 and the rest is just a fill in job. Simple but very sofisticated construction. Perfect to start of the day with a cup of coffee and a smile 🙂
I solved this in a low 2/5 time for me, but saw the logic quickly. I would not expect newer solvers to find this nearly so approachable - I would have struggled when I was first solving puzzles. The break-in is a sophisticated piece of logic - not hugely hard but takes some experience to spot, I would suggest.
I did it by an audit of which "purple"s are seen by "green" - 46 in box 8 and the other three in box 9
29.51. Anything I can solve in under half an hour cannot be accused of being difficult. After the initial colouring of the long green line, no other colouring needed and I'm grateful for that. Good fun!
20:59, took me a bit to narrow down the sum of the long blue line down to 5, but quick from there.
One star? That seems a bit too easy, but anything that took me a mere 23 minutes (as this lovely puzzle did) is not hard. Thanks to Nordy for he puzzle!
The break-in is really clever but I don't think it's 1* easy. Maybe 2*? 17:00 flat for me. Really nice puzzle!
At 8:00 Mark gets 4 yellow in box 9 and already has 4 purple in row 9 independent of green which he hadn't colored yet. At 28:00 he fills in 5's. This ought to have been a seventeen minute video. It's nice to know that Mark is human too. I'd vote for a 1 star rating on this puzzle.
I'm very new to solving and managed this one in under 12 minutes - am now starting to wonder if I somehow lucked into it, rather than actually being logical, based on watching Mark struggle with the break in!
It's simpler than you make it. Even before thinking of 46 and 19 on the German whisper lines: Once you have all green cells and the German whispers coloured, the greens can only be 5 or join the purple (especially because of box 9 colurs). But in boxes 7 and 8 the potentially green cells on whispers are yellow, not purple. So there they can't be on the whispers, as they are either purple or 5 and that contradicts the colour. So all greens are off whisper lines. That doesn't make them 5s, but that colouring is simpler done that way.
Finding out whether the green cells are 5s or purple is a case testing/colouring exercise in boxes 7 and 8, and then it get's simpler, though there is some end game for low digits that's decided in box1, that's worth mentioning as a hurdle. I even swapped 2s and 3s in one case and did only notice later, the damage was small, though. I'd give it 2 stars.
...and after your explanation in your next video it's even simpler to see by the green cells in row 8 and 9 seeing both 4 yellow and 4 purple. If you coloured the german whisper the typical preliminary purple green combination and the single region sum line cells in red, for example, that wouldn't change a iota for the logic, but maby have been easier to see, anyway.
I finished in 14:31. If you colour code big and small digits on the whispers immediately and focus on where the 5s go in the bottom 3 boxes, you figure it out fairly quickly. I very rarely beat Simon and Mark (let alone finish the puzzles) but I've done it 4 times in the last week - must be something in the water!
I give it 2/5 for difficulty. It doesn't fill itself (so not 1-star), but it's not gonna stump many people with some experience with the rules.
21:28 finish while half asleep, definitely a 1-star, 1.5 if we’re pushing it
My only choice in the beginning was, if 5 was on the line or not in box 9. I went with yes and waited until I would find an error. The grid filled itself with "whisper-parity" quickly and the whisper did the rest. With my method this was one star in deed, because it filled itself. It was a pencilmarking exercise than anything else most of the time, due to the limitations on the blue line. Fun none the less for me.
Definitely not 1*, the logic required is beyond a 1* level
Thank you! Fun puzzle! Love the frolicking dog (or cat?).
I would give it two stars. It is very approachable but not very easy if it doesn't click with your brains logic by chance. There're multiple errors to be made and you have to earn each digit right to the end, which makes it such a good and enjoyable puzzle i think.
I would agree with 1/5 difficulty. I am a mediocre solver who usually takes twice as long as Mark and Simon. I managed this one in 15 minutes, straightforward solve with no real difficult points.
Loved the puzzle, though. Very nice. 👍
I'd rate it 2 star. It wasn't hard at all but required some thought.
Finished in 11:50. Wonderful puzzle!
2 easier ways to prove the 5:
At 13:30 - with the yellow 19 placed in box 9, none of the marked purple squares can be 46, which means 46 is in the same squares as 5. So either green is a purple 6, or green is 5.
But the purple 6 doesn't work, because there's 3 region sum cells in column 8 which already contains 3 yellow cells, so you'd have 6 cells containing 1-5.
Second: At 15:00, when the green cells are marked, Row 9 now means green can't be purple, but box 9 already means green can't be yellow.
Tangentially - one of the few times I regret using orange/blue for coloring high/low, the blue hid the region sum lines rather well and I took longer cleaning up the puzzle than I should have.
I got stuck on the same spot as Mark. Got it eventually! 45ish mins
Rules: 04:01
Let's Get Cracking: 04:55
Mark's time: 30m20s
Puzzle Solved: 35:15
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Construction Work: 3x (07:24, 07:34, 09:50)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Ah: 7x (14:24, 17:14, 19:40, 25:05, 25:19, 27:32, 32:55)
Obviously: 6x (10:27, 13:30, 15:30, 22:38, 25:36, 27:17)
Approachable: 3x (00:43, 01:14, 02:19)
Lovely: 2x (03:35, 35:39)
In Fact: 2x (17:23, 34:21)
Progress: 2x (08:42, 23:38)
Goodness: 1x (13:00)
Sorry: 1x (07:21)
Clever: 1x (19:53)
Stuck: 1x (24:24)
Come on Mark: 1x (20:01)
By Sudoku: 1x (33:09)
Hang On: 1x (10:57)
Box Thingy: 1x (29:03)
Intriguing: 1x (04:39)
Wow: 1x (28:20)
Pencil Mark/mark: 1x (06:27)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Thirteen (7 mentions)
Four (58 mentions)
Green (59 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
Low (27) - High (15)
Even (5) - Odd (0)
Higher (5) - Lower (1)
Row (17) - Column (8)
FAQ:
Q1: You missed something!
A1: That could very well be the case! Human speech can be hard to understand for computers like me! Point out the ones that I missed and maybe I'll learn!
Q2: Can you do this for another channel?
A2: I've been thinking about that and wrote some code to make that possible. Let me know which channel you think would be a good fit!
Loved this solve!
This feels like a case where the LMD difficulty rating is probably affected by an artifact of their insistence on having equal bin size for the star values. Essentially, any puzzle with an average difficulty rating of 1-1.8 stars is shown as 1*, 1.8-2.6 is shown as 2*, 2.6-3.4 as 3*, 3.4-4.2 as 4* and anything above 4.2 as 5*.
10:30 for me. Definitely a 2-star imo. I did miss a couple obvious things as Mark did, but even then the puzzle is not trivial. Very fun one, regardless!
6:40 Once I sense that I might have too many digits on a green line, such as 123789, I shift to letters, using (say) ABC.
This time I saw that green was 5 right away, while you struggled with it.
I am a genius!!!!!!!!!!!
Classic! I loved this puzzle.
Beautiful and very relaxing puzzle.
As far as this channel goes I would say, 1 or 2 stars. My logic being that I finished it. I struggled figuring out the 5 , more than most people in the comments. But after that it, was fairly approachable Sudoku for me.
Took me about 7 minutes. I would call that 1 star overall, although the step to identify green was a 2 star deduction.
Mark missing the 4 purples looking at green in row 9 made this take 25 minutes longer than it should have.
13 minutes.
Greens placed in rows 8 and 9 at 15:00. Green entered as a 5 at 28:15.
This would change his 30 minute solve time to a 17 minute solve time. I think that could qualify it as a 1 star difficulty rating.
16:06 for me. Was pretty fun.
Lovely puzzle. If you found the intended break in (I did) I think I would've said a hard 1 star or easy 2 star on LMD. The difficulty ratings there tend to be harder then you think even for a 2-star puzzle - at least that's my experience.
10:00 in box 7,8 you determined that green is either yellow or 5. So then that should mean green is not purple making green 5. I didn't see it till you said this but it is cool and gives you first digits🎉🎉🎉
I liked it! It's fun to solve
It was an easy 11:56 for me, definitely one star difficulty since I can barely finish 3 stars 😮
Loved this puzzle! The fact that I managed to do it means it must be 1 star difficulty.
I would definitely rate as strong 1 star difficulty.
Completed in just 13 minutes with no stucks.
How could he miss that row 8 had 4 yellow, and row 8 had 4 purple, so green could not be low or high so must be 5. So obvious, that’s why it’s 1* puzzle!
Neat puzzle! We solved it fast but made a logic error, so that disqualifies us. Very neat break-in.
I got stuck later in the solve so watched Mark to see what I was missing. Then I got hoarse from yelling green can't be purple at the screen.
Easy to find the break in for experienced solvers, not so simple for beginners. Even Mark struggled a bit.
On the other hand, finding the break in is all you need to do, then you are basically done. An easy 2 stars imo.
It's rare that i actually beat you guys. I got a 29:20
9:45
25.33 for me. Nice one.
took me a bit bc i had the wrong colouring, but it was fun to do and i needed several thinking points, so i think two stars is fun
It wasn't difficult but a rating of 1 feels a bit low
Clearly a 1-star difficulty. But 5 stars for the setting! Took me under 12 minutes.
10:34 for me. Dont know about 1 star, but it is not more than 2.
I'm a one star master. Took me 90 minutes to solve, so I'm voting harder than one star
I solved this one in 20:43.
I don't know what rating would be appropriate, but I certainly don't think it's a 1.
19:30 for me.
Found this to be pretty easy
Frolicme is used in a far different context than this.
14 mins，really an easy one
Looki g at the comments the region sum was 5 was my very first step and inwas slow on that. Probably because some rules that were word fornword the same as this puzzle were infact region in box and not segment but thats bad rules on thebother puzzles.
17 minutes for me and i solved the 5 much faster by coloring without looking at the numbers. I'd say a low 2/5 difficulty.
28::05
A fun one!
15 minites for me and im not the fastest person by a long way. Very nice high low puzzle. Ive found plenty 1 star harder than this.
30:39 for me and solver #2615.
Nice puzzle, not one star for sure. by my grading standards ). If it takes more than a simple step for an opener, than it is at least a two star .
This is the first time i beat it faster then Simon or Mark. Mostly because mark missed one simple logic with the 5 but still.
I BEAT HIM!!!!! MOuhahahahaha
The break in is 2* but the rest of the puzzle is 1*.
Marvellous!
Seems like a 4 or 5 star to me, I don't see any way to logically get through it, it still seems like you guessed and happened to be right but that's not logical deduction.
i couldnt solve
yep - definitely a one star
Yes, 1 star! It's easy to spot that the „green” is neither „high” or „low”, looking row 9 and box 9.
did it in 20 minutes, so yeah, 100% 1 star
20 minutes
Looki g at the comments the region sum was 5 was my very first step and inwas slow on that. Probably because some rules that were word fornword the same as this puzzle were infact region in box and not segment but thats bad rules on thebother puzzles.