Happy Finkz Friday the 13th! Thankyou Simon for a perfect solve once again. You were very quick to pick up on all the logic in this. Personally I find box 2 the trickiest part (I kept forgetting how to do it when testing it) but your observation about the 4 in box 2 was very neat and an elegant proof that you had to go round the top of box 2. I hinted a few weeks ago that there is something special about episode 18. And that thing is… this is the original Rat Run puzzle! By which I mean it was the first one I set. Well, 90% of it anyway, I had boxes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7 finished for ages and ages, but over the months, I kept tinkering with the last stage in the open expanse of boxes 5, 6, 8 and 9. UA-cam sometimes deletes my comments if they’re too long, so I’ll try going into a bit more detail about this puzzle in my comments below…
1) In some ways I have gdc to thank for all this. Back in February he made a brilliant puzzle called Mirrored Zippers, which was was also featured on CTC. I loved it, and I loved the mirror cell modifier and wanted to make something with it myself. I often like thinking of titles first, and I like path finding puzzles, so I thought a puzzle called Mirror Maze would be fun. Oh, also, as a child I used to be addicted to drawing mazes, so that might be something to do with it too. I started making this puzzle called Mirror Maze, and the opening deductions about ruling out the paths across the top because they would all take whole boxes or rows, and the the breaking down column 1, all came very quickly, and remained as they were after that. As usual, German Whispers were very constrained here and forced a plethora of digits across the grid. Combined with having a complete set of modifiers too, this became quite a difficult grid to make work, and it was a challenge for me to connect the two ends of the path in an interesting way. I needed to use at least one teleport to achieve it, and this is how teleports became a thing in these puzzles. One Way doors were needed too, to resolve the polarity of the path. (Interestingly, one way doors and teleports were both things that I used to include in a lot of my mazes as a child! So they were not a new notion for me to think about, although combining it all with sudoku and a test constraint on the path was obviously very new for me.)
2) So I had this puzzle almost completely set, but I had so enjoyed the flexibility of setting it, being able to place walls wherever I wanted to nudge the path here and there, I wanted to set another one. So I tried it with renbans, which became episode 15. I had no intention of publishing these straight away, because I was already realising there was massive potential here for a cool series of maybe 5-10 maze puzzles, each using a different constraint on the path. It also seemed like a good chance to experiment with writing a narrative and having strong theming, something I hadn’t really dabbled with so far, and hadn’t come across too much of in the sudoku community either. A rat in a series of experiments seemed like the perfect theme, and I had recently become very chatty with the lovely setter Ratfinkz, who had been so kind and encouraging of all my puzzles, so I thought it would be a nice surprise for her if I named the rat Finkz. Mirror Maze, as you’ve just seen, is quite a complicated puzzle, and so I really wanted to make lots more easier puzzles to come before it, to gradually introduce the core maze concepts, and also introduce the ‘grid extras’ one by one over different puzzles (blackcurrants, teleports, one way doors, etc…) Imagine if this had been episode 1 how much of an overload of information the rules would have been! For several months, between March and June, I made more, episodes, easier ones, and the series grew as I kept thinking of more ideas. My plan extended to 15 episodes, then 20, and eventually I decided to split it up into 3 seasons. I wanted to have at least 5 episodes finished before releasing any of them, and eventually it got to June and I had the first 5 episodes ready to go (plus the two original ones, German Whispers and renbans, which I knew I’d save for season 2.)
3) I could have kept making more before releasing any of them, and that was tempting, because launching something like this was exciting but also quite daunting… once its out there, everyone will know about it and I’m committed then! So I put that moment off for a while, but at the start of June I decided to throw myself into it and released episode 1, with only a vague idea of what the path ahead would look like (much like Finkz). Once all the nice reactions started coming in to the first few episodes, and of course Simon being so supportive of the series too, this was such a massive boost and motivation for me to keep on making the series be as good as I can.
4) I had a few hairy moments during season 1, trying to get some puzzles finished on time for their scheduled release date, but these self-imposed deadlines were quite motivating and I was very proud that I managed to pull it off each time. So yes that’s the story of season 1, and how it all started with this Mirror Maze. So thank you gdc for your excellent and inspiring mirror puzzle! Hope you all enjoy the last 2 upcoming episodes of Phase 2, and bye for now :)
Thanks for the shoutout. Very interesting backstory and I'm honored that one of my puzzles played a role in the origin of this excellent series. I understand the desire to slowly introduce rules and reuse the maze concept since there is so much to do with it. But still your patience is impressive. Can't wait to see how finkz' journey continues.
I think I realized one of the reasons Rat Run is so much fun is because it works off the same principle that makes Fog Sudoku so fun... almost always you only have one or two places to look to continue to solve and its very progressive through the end! Thats the same with Fog and the same with Rat Run. It makes it so that solving it requires very very fair logic and that's what makes these puzzles world class!
Having finally had time to look at the rat run puzzles, i solved all 17 in two days (very enjoyable and a little addictive, I must confess) - and then tackled this one when it was released. This was perhaps the first that really gave me a lot of pause because i thought i had broken it for a good 2-3 minutes and tried to reinvent the logic i had without success - until my brain finally told me to stop my nonsense and i made it through. Very neat.
Thankyou tallcat, watching your puzzles on the channel 2 years ago were part of what got me hooked on variant sudoku. Glad you have been enjoying binging the series :)
@@DaveLeCompte usually you couldn’t, but in this puzzle you can with mirror cells. Eg r9c6 and r9c7 both have the value of 4, so that would have an equals sign between them 🙂
What a fantastic puzzle ... not that we would expect anything less! Solved in 30 minutes ... for once, I seemed to ask the right questions and the right time, and apart from a slight ricket where I forgot about the possibility of going via r2c8, and a little bit of finagling with the 2-8 pairs towards the end, it was a nice, straightforward and very satisfying solve. As is so often the case, I think Simon made this harder for himself by parity colouring everything. I reserved my colouring for mirror and non-mirror cells, which made it much easier to keep track of which cells could and couldn't be flipped, and the occasional use of blue or orange circles on the line if I needed to remember which cells were high and low but didn't know if they were genuine digits or flipped.
18:15 One way to see this particular arrangement breaks is to note that as soon as you mirror anything but the 5 you have five values of one high/low polarity and three of the other, which means there's no possible way to alternate on that 8-cell run
Yeah, this was Simon overthinking things. Col 1 and Box 7 really fill themselves in and the arrow gives you the polarity of the path. He has a gift for seeing difficult things and missing the low-hanging fruit.
Yep, an 8 cell run needs 4 high, and 4 low. which if you mirror one of the non 5 digits, you will get a 6/3 split and can not make a line no matter what numbers you use.
Always enjoy watching Finkz searching for the cupcake!! Thank you Marty and Simon! Take care of yourself, Simon! I remember you solving puzzles with COVID! It is beyond admirable that you and Mark haven’t missed 2 puzzles EVERY SINGLE DAY in YEARS!!!
Howdy Cryptic sir. I found your vid just last week with only a single #2. I paused it. I was intoxicated on too many beers. It was great! I figured out the same first step as you!.... now I'm hooked brother CHEERS!
it took me about 5 minutes to rule out the top path and realise where a 5 goes in col 1 just to be stuck thinking "how do you get 6/4". Finished the puzzle pretty quick when I found the mirror in box 4 - total 52mins. My first Rat Run puzzle and that was a blast! Also short edit - can we talk about the lore behind the completion statements in these puzzles? Now I'm going away to do 1->17 just to see the whole story
What a beautiful puzzle. I find the break in a little too daunting for most of Finkz' tests (I'm no match for an experienced lab rat) but this one just fell in to place perfectly. Even when I thought there couldn't possibly be a logical way to fill in an empty third or so of the puzzle, or to disambiguate at the end, Marty always came through and the puzzle never disappointed. Fantastic!
I finished in 67:38 minutes. The addition of the mirror cells in this puzzle was so cool and executed perfectly. I for sure thought that I knew how box 7 worked, but I failed to see how. That is until I simply thought about parity and then everything made sense. I think my favorite part was determining the pathway in box 2. I, initially, thought it had to go down, but it broke two ways for the same reason. That was so cool to see. I think this puzzle is a little easier than my time would suggest, but it was so fun that I don't mind the time I spent. Marty killed it with this one as always. Great Puzzle!
This is an absolute marvel. The way you fill in the path then the digits in the more constrained parts of the grid, and then the other way around in the more open parts is a lovely reversal. It has happened in puzzles before. An 8 cell German whispers line where all cells see one another can only be filled in 2 ways: 49382716 or its reverse. I am pretty sure Simon himself taught me this. So seeing him struggle to do just that in box 7 was a bit strange.
yes that is a great point, and one of the things I love about this format. This is why you'll notice that in a lot of the rat run puzzles, there are lots of walls at the beginning, and usually the solve ends in a more open area, where walls aren't needed any more because the digits garnered by sudoku are now constraining the path
Regarding the German whisper sequence - it still needs to be proven that that's the case in *this* puzzle, because you could potentially have a mirror cell giving you the same value twice, even when all the digits see each other. That's part of what gives these puzzles their richness - combining different variant rules can sometimes change things that we normally know about one of the rules... and throw experienced solvers for a loop in the process.
Thank you Simon, and Marty, for making my prediction/wish come true from last night! This series is just out of this world. Continue to take care of yourself and voice Simon!
Even while I wasn't watching your Sudoku anymore ( I stepped away) I some how still tuned into to the rats, and that ultimately got me back. Also the Saturday puzzlers and you put out some streams of games, you cooking something great, keep it up Simon!
Fun fact, you can restrict digits along Finkz's path using only distance to 5 without minding the mirror. This is because a digit and its mirror have the same distance to 5, and it is distance to 5 that determines which digits can be next to each other (aside from parity). Then polarity determines which value in a cell, giving a cirrelation between mirrorness and digit. Basically, you can appky much logic the same with any two mirror digits or mirrorness statuses by simply flipping the polarity of involved cells.
That solve text about pawing at the mirror did nothing to dissuade me from my theory that the bit about the teleporter acting up in one of the previous puzzles was hinting at Finkz trading places with her alternate universe self
Glad Simon was discombobulated at the start because I was discombobulated at the start. I don't think a single solve of mine of these puzzles has been straightforward, I am always caught out by forgetting diagonal moves or boxes or something else. Even so, thanks, I do enjoy them.
At the 19 minute mark, it does work. You put the mirror 1 in row 6 column 2 then 4 in r7c2 and the 9 in r8c2. The 1 goes in r8c3 and 6 goes in r7c2 and then 1 in r7c4.
this was my favorite rat run puzzle yet, it's insane how they just keep getting better. Realizing I'd finished the puzzle but still didn't have the path and having to parse it was a ton of fun. 43:89 for me.
39:30 finish. Perhaps other rats can eventually join Finkz in the maze, and we can have a nice race using the constraints of the day. Another enjoyable edition!
54:39, with help from the video to start. I immediately "proved" I couldn't go down because I'd get a 4 or a 6 on a cell that would for two 1s or two 9s to see each other, then broke it going horizontally, and looked at the video to see that I COULD go down and use a mirror cell to fix my problem. I also seem to have "finished" the sudoku before finishing drawing the line. Guess it's one of those where you can figure out all of the digits a get a "solve" pop-up without needing the line completed.
1:18:34 great puzzle even though I made an utter mess of it, curious if I found the most efficient breakin or if there's something obvious I missed edit: watching the video, at about 21 mins simon overlooks the possibility that you can move into the box 4 teleporter and come out of the box 3 teleporter, however, this can be disproven in a very cool way: it would take all the cells in box 2!
I don't know why people make such a big deal about Friday the thirteenth. I mean, when all is said an done, it's still Friday. Now on MONDAY the thirteenth, one has the rest of the work week to slog through.
That puzzle was BREATH TAKING! I loved every single second of it. I'm not usually a fan of "lying cell" puzzles, but this was solid. It was really a mental masterpiece of mental gymnastics :D 73:29 solve!
One idea for sick days Simon is to pre-record a solve if you can't make it, or have a collection of puzzles that are really easy that you can dip into and have a nice 20 minute or less video. Feel better!
One day I'm going to solve a CtC puzzle quicker than it takes to scroll down to the comments but it won't be a Marty puzzle! 41:56 today. Brilliant fun as always.Thanks Marty.
omg I did the exact same thing Simon did at the start... I went straight down and said "nope this isn't possible" until I started solving across the top when you realize that's actually 100% impossible... and then you're like... okay well then I have to make going straight down work... lets figure out how.
*Sigh*…. “Mirror cells may not contain teleports.” That small little sentence got lost on me in such a large ruleset, and made my life much more difficult. I can confirm this puzzle is solvable without that though 😢
Finished in just under an hour. Could have gone slightly faster but I didn't trust the terminology in the teleport clue (it says digit, not value, meaning the mirror wouldn't affect it). It was a fun puzzle though. The last few rat puzzles have all given me that "how is this even possible to start" feeling at first but it usually doesn't actually take too long to find the break in.
Glad you liked it. The rules say that teleports can't be in mirror cells, so that gets rid of the problem of hor mirror cells might effect teleport digits
I am a die hard LSU Tiger fan and have enjoyed the Purple and Gold combos this week! (I know they are blue and orange but via the screen it’s close enough)😅
First run I solved fairly quickly (42 minutes) without any mistake made along the solve. Also one I kept thinking: this can’t be right, I’ll hit a wall anytime. Especially the 5 on the teleport felt suspicious…
When Simon decides early on that the first mirror cell is the five in column one because there needed to be an equal number of high and low parity cells and mirroring any other number would cause an imbalance, why couldn't you use two mirror cells to readjust this using one to flip a low to high and another vice versa? One in column one box 4 and one in column 2 box 7? He only discussed it based solely on the single column. I'm guessing there's a reason why that fails further along the logic chain but I would have liked to have seen it thought through. Or is there some basic aspect that rules it out that I'm missing?
yes the logic works just for the numbers of high and low in the column, regardless of the path. In column 1, we know there are 4 low DIGITS and 4 high DIGITS. Also, because of the alternating polarity on the forced path, we also know that column 1 has 4 low VALUES and 4 high VALUES. So this would work perfectly if it were a normal German Whisper and there were no mirror cells in the puzzle. But we know we do need a mirror in column 1 somewhere. A mirror cell anywhere but on the 5 would change the polarity of one of the cells to make its value the opposite polarity to its presenting digit. This would mean there would be 5 of one polarity and 3 of the other. But we know (by the alternating polarity colouring of VALUES) that we need 4 of each VALUE too. So this is a contradiction. We cannot ruin the balance of having 4 of each value AND 4 of each digit. Putting a mirror cell in column 2 has no effect on this column 1 problem. Remember, the mirror cells do not cause a polarity shift along the German Whisper (in the same way that a 5 on a Dutch Whisper does.) All a mirror cell is doing is making its value be the opposite of its presenting digit, but the German Whisper still always goes high low high low high low (values). This is why placing a mirror cell somewhere along the path does not affect the polarity of cells anywhere else on the path. Hope that helps :)
You can split the line in c1 into 4 pairs of cells, each of which must contain one high value and one low value - so we need 4 high values and 4 low values to complete the column. Because we've taken 5 off the line, we know that we have remaining 4 high digits and 4 low digits. Because each house can only have one mirror cell, at most one of those 8 cells could be flipped. If the mirror cell is anything other than the 5, it would leave 5 high and 3 low values, or 3 high and 5 low values, neither of which would allow us to fill the 4 pairs of cells along the whisper.
Why, when Simon was working out where the red 3 goes, couldn't the teleport be red teleporting Finkz between a red 3 (7) in r9c5 to a real 3 in r6c6, thus changing the path polarity within the teleport?
@@JohnPalmer-ci4my I don't see rule stating teleports can't be mirror cells? I only see rule stating that teleports of same type must be identical digits, which my question allows for.
28:30 Couldn't r6c1 also have been 1? In that case r6c2 would've been 6 and r7c2 would also have been a 1. Is that impossible for any reason I haven't considered?
This is undoubtedly a great series of puzzles from a great constructor. However, I watch this channel just before I go to bed. I love watching Simon solve a puzzle, but I don't feel like reading 15 lines of explanation. For that reason, this is one of the few series of puzzles that I don't watch, no matter how great they may be... Sorry!
The Christmas three was adopted by the early church from the German celebration of Saturdreilia (Saturthreelia? I wasn’t sure what to go with here. 🙂).
One day, I want Marty to send Finkz in the most direct route and I'm sure we'll all enjoy watching Simon get very confused.
Lol
I keep having same idea since episode ~5
If he could managed to make it so that the path was one of the last things you were able to determine, it would be icing on the cake
Yes, that would be a very underwhelming Finkz going from r1c1 ro r1c2, and furthermore there'd be normal sudoku rules only ;-)
Happy Finkz Friday the 13th!
Thankyou Simon for a perfect solve once again. You were very quick to pick up on all the logic in this. Personally I find box 2 the trickiest part (I kept forgetting how to do it when testing it) but your observation about the 4 in box 2 was very neat and an elegant proof that you had to go round the top of box 2.
I hinted a few weeks ago that there is something special about episode 18. And that thing is… this is the original Rat Run puzzle! By which I mean it was the first one I set. Well, 90% of it anyway, I had boxes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7 finished for ages and ages, but over the months, I kept tinkering with the last stage in the open expanse of boxes 5, 6, 8 and 9.
UA-cam sometimes deletes my comments if they’re too long, so I’ll try going into a bit more detail about this puzzle in my comments below…
1) In some ways I have gdc to thank for all this. Back in February he made a brilliant puzzle called Mirrored Zippers, which was was also featured on CTC. I loved it, and I loved the mirror cell modifier and wanted to make something with it myself. I often like thinking of titles first, and I like path finding puzzles, so I thought a puzzle called Mirror Maze would be fun. Oh, also, as a child I used to be addicted to drawing mazes, so that might be something to do with it too. I started making this puzzle called Mirror Maze, and the opening deductions about ruling out the paths across the top because they would all take whole boxes or rows, and the the breaking down column 1, all came very quickly, and remained as they were after that. As usual, German Whispers were very constrained here and forced a plethora of digits across the grid. Combined with having a complete set of modifiers too, this became quite a difficult grid to make work, and it was a challenge for me to connect the two ends of the path in an interesting way. I needed to use at least one teleport to achieve it, and this is how teleports became a thing in these puzzles. One Way doors were needed too, to resolve the polarity of the path. (Interestingly, one way doors and teleports were both things that I used to include in a lot of my mazes as a child! So they were not a new notion for me to think about, although combining it all with sudoku and a test constraint on the path was obviously very new for me.)
2) So I had this puzzle almost completely set, but I had so enjoyed the flexibility of setting it, being able to place walls wherever I wanted to nudge the path here and there, I wanted to set another one. So I tried it with renbans, which became episode 15. I had no intention of publishing these straight away, because I was already realising there was massive potential here for a cool series of maybe 5-10 maze puzzles, each using a different constraint on the path.
It also seemed like a good chance to experiment with writing a narrative and having strong theming, something I hadn’t really dabbled with so far, and hadn’t come across too much of in the sudoku community either. A rat in a series of experiments seemed like the perfect theme, and I had recently become very chatty with the lovely setter Ratfinkz, who had been so kind and encouraging of all my puzzles, so I thought it would be a nice surprise for her if I named the rat Finkz.
Mirror Maze, as you’ve just seen, is quite a complicated puzzle, and so I really wanted to make lots more easier puzzles to come before it, to gradually introduce the core maze concepts, and also introduce the ‘grid extras’ one by one over different puzzles (blackcurrants, teleports, one way doors, etc…) Imagine if this had been episode 1 how much of an overload of information the rules would have been!
For several months, between March and June, I made more, episodes, easier ones, and the series grew as I kept thinking of more ideas. My plan extended to 15 episodes, then 20, and eventually I decided to split it up into 3 seasons.
I wanted to have at least 5 episodes finished before releasing any of them, and eventually it got to June and I had the first 5 episodes ready to go (plus the two original ones, German Whispers and renbans, which I knew I’d save for season 2.)
3) I could have kept making more before releasing any of them, and that was tempting, because launching something like this was exciting but also quite daunting… once its out there, everyone will know about it and I’m committed then! So I put that moment off for a while, but at the start of June I decided to throw myself into it and released episode 1, with only a vague idea of what the path ahead would look like (much like Finkz). Once all the nice reactions started coming in to the first few episodes, and of course Simon being so supportive of the series too, this was such a massive boost and motivation for me to keep on making the series be as good as I can.
4) I had a few hairy moments during season 1, trying to get some puzzles finished on time for their scheduled release date, but these self-imposed deadlines were quite motivating and I was very proud that I managed to pull it off each time. So yes that’s the story of season 1, and how it all started with this Mirror Maze. So thank you gdc for your excellent and inspiring mirror puzzle! Hope you all enjoy the last 2 upcoming episodes of Phase 2, and bye for now :)
Thanks for the shoutout. Very interesting backstory and I'm honored that one of my puzzles played a role in the origin of this excellent series. I understand the desire to slowly introduce rules and reuse the maze concept since there is so much to do with it. But still your patience is impressive. Can't wait to see how finkz' journey continues.
I think I realized one of the reasons Rat Run is so much fun is because it works off the same principle that makes Fog Sudoku so fun... almost always you only have one or two places to look to continue to solve and its very progressive through the end! Thats the same with Fog and the same with Rat Run. It makes it so that solving it requires very very fair logic and that's what makes these puzzles world class!
Having finally had time to look at the rat run puzzles, i solved all 17 in two days (very enjoyable and a little addictive, I must confess) - and then tackled this one when it was released. This was perhaps the first that really gave me a lot of pause because i thought i had broken it for a good 2-3 minutes and tried to reinvent the logic i had without success - until my brain finally told me to stop my nonsense and i made it through. Very neat.
Thankyou tallcat, watching your puzzles on the channel 2 years ago were part of what got me hooked on variant sudoku. Glad you have been enjoying binging the series :)
@10:39 "These operate a bit like greater than or equal signs" Ok, yes, but they operate even MORE like greater than signs.
lol yes, good spot hahaa
Or less than signs, depending on which way they are dacing.
@@martysears I guess either one solves the same way, since you couldn't put equal values in the same row or column anyway.
@@DaveLeCompte usually you couldn’t, but in this puzzle you can with mirror cells. Eg r9c6 and r9c7 both have the value of 4, so that would have an equals sign between them 🙂
@@martysears Oh, interesting! I wonder if we'll see this in a future puzzle :)
Another relaxing evening curled up on the couch with my quilt and cocoa, yelling at the sudoku on the TV. 😂
What a fantastic puzzle ... not that we would expect anything less!
Solved in 30 minutes ... for once, I seemed to ask the right questions and the right time, and apart from a slight ricket where I forgot about the possibility of going via r2c8, and a little bit of finagling with the 2-8 pairs towards the end, it was a nice, straightforward and very satisfying solve.
As is so often the case, I think Simon made this harder for himself by parity colouring everything. I reserved my colouring for mirror and non-mirror cells, which made it much easier to keep track of which cells could and couldn't be flipped, and the occasional use of blue or orange circles on the line if I needed to remember which cells were high and low but didn't know if they were genuine digits or flipped.
18:15 One way to see this particular arrangement breaks is to note that as soon as you mirror anything but the 5 you have five values of one high/low polarity and three of the other, which means there's no possible way to alternate on that 8-cell run
Yeah, this was Simon overthinking things. Col 1 and Box 7 really fill themselves in and the arrow gives you the polarity of the path. He has a gift for seeing difficult things and missing the low-hanging fruit.
Yep, an 8 cell run needs 4 high, and 4 low. which if you mirror one of the non 5 digits, you will get a 6/3 split and can not make a line no matter what numbers you use.
Always enjoy watching Finkz searching for the cupcake!! Thank you Marty and Simon! Take care of yourself, Simon! I remember you solving puzzles with COVID! It is beyond admirable that you and Mark haven’t missed 2 puzzles EVERY SINGLE DAY in YEARS!!!
Absolutely beyond admirable what they have done over the years!!
Rules: 07:34
Let's Get Cracking: 12:41
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Bobbins: 1x (1:00:50)
The Secret: 1x (13:08)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Naughty: 22x (03:43, 26:42, 42:13, 43:36, 43:36, 43:39, 43:39, 44:13, 47:15, 47:55, 48:37, 48:40, 56:24, 56:30, 56:52, 56:58, 57:07, 57:14, 59:03, 1:00:27, 1:00:33, 1:00:35)
Ah: 17x (13:38, 19:50, 19:50, 20:19, 20:19, 27:12, 39:43, 39:43, 41:58, 47:19, 50:45, 54:59, 57:10, 57:10, 1:00:16, 1:00:16, 1:00:16, 1:04:53)
Hang On: 14x (18:42, 18:45, 20:19, 20:21, 22:29, 25:23, 27:09, 31:33, 34:23, 37:34, 52:30, 1:02:30, 1:07:45)
Weird: 9x (14:36, 19:39, 30:26, 30:31, 36:31, 47:52, 50:36, 52:14, 1:07:09)
By Sudoku: 8x (32:12, 33:21, 49:38, 51:01, 57:14, 1:00:57, 1:01:04)
Lovely: 6x (02:30, 29:29, 29:32, 29:32, 48:25, 55:10)
Beautiful: 5x (39:43, 41:39, 43:30, 43:32, 1:05:05)
In Fact: 4x (57:10, 59:44, 1:06:38, 1:07:04)
Sorry: 3x (03:43, 03:47, 11:14)
Nonsense: 3x (21:09, 54:31, 54:34)
Bizarre: 3x (32:05, 32:05, 43:00)
What on Earth: 2x (29:50, 42:31)
Goodness: 2x (16:39, 1:09:12)
Stuck: 2x (50:54, 1:06:08)
Obviously: 2x (23:51, 23:51)
What Does This Mean?: 2x (15:30, 50:30)
Cake!: 2x (04:27, 06:00)
Good Grief: 1x (1:04:53)
Useless: 1x (44:16)
Naked Single: 1x (52:14)
Clever: 1x (07:57)
I Have no Clue: 1x (39:39)
Brilliant: 1x (05:58)
Ridiculous: 1x (13:34)
Approachable: 1x (02:18)
Proof: 1x (19:26)
Symmetry: 1x (43:00)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Ten, Thirty Five (3 mentions)
One (100 mentions)
Red (16 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
High (14) - Low (13)
Even (8) - Odd (0)
Column (27) - Row (17)
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!
How did you do this in 1 minute?
I love this!
Very fun! I am a few days ... or weeks ... behind on watching these, but they are absolutely worth my returning to. Thanks, Simon - and thanks Marty!
Howdy Cryptic sir.
I found your vid just last week with only a single #2. I paused it.
I was intoxicated on too many beers.
It was great! I figured out the same first step as you!.... now I'm hooked brother CHEERS!
Whoop 🙌 I love that Mrs Simon allows you all this time to indulge us with these great puzzles. She better get a wonderful Christmas present 😂
Thank Finkz it’s Friday 🎉
It's Finkzday. >:(
it took me about 5 minutes to rule out the top path and realise where a 5 goes in col 1 just to be stuck thinking "how do you get 6/4". Finished the puzzle pretty quick when I found the mirror in box 4 - total 52mins. My first Rat Run puzzle and that was a blast!
Also short edit - can we talk about the lore behind the completion statements in these puzzles? Now I'm going away to do 1->17 just to see the whole story
What a beautiful puzzle. I find the break in a little too daunting for most of Finkz' tests (I'm no match for an experienced lab rat) but this one just fell in to place perfectly. Even when I thought there couldn't possibly be a logical way to fill in an empty third or so of the puzzle, or to disambiguate at the end, Marty always came through and the puzzle never disappointed. Fantastic!
I finished in 67:38 minutes. The addition of the mirror cells in this puzzle was so cool and executed perfectly. I for sure thought that I knew how box 7 worked, but I failed to see how. That is until I simply thought about parity and then everything made sense. I think my favorite part was determining the pathway in box 2. I, initially, thought it had to go down, but it broke two ways for the same reason. That was so cool to see. I think this puzzle is a little easier than my time would suggest, but it was so fun that I don't mind the time I spent. Marty killed it with this one as always. Great Puzzle!
This is an absolute marvel. The way you fill in the path then the digits in the more constrained parts of the grid, and then the other way around in the more open parts is a lovely reversal. It has happened in puzzles before.
An 8 cell German whispers line where all cells see one another can only be filled in 2 ways: 49382716 or its reverse. I am pretty sure Simon himself taught me this. So seeing him struggle to do just that in box 7 was a bit strange.
yes that is a great point, and one of the things I love about this format. This is why you'll notice that in a lot of the rat run puzzles, there are lots of walls at the beginning, and usually the solve ends in a more open area, where walls aren't needed any more because the digits garnered by sudoku are now constraining the path
Regarding the German whisper sequence - it still needs to be proven that that's the case in *this* puzzle, because you could potentially have a mirror cell giving you the same value twice, even when all the digits see each other.
That's part of what gives these puzzles their richness - combining different variant rules can sometimes change things that we normally know about one of the rules... and throw experienced solvers for a loop in the process.
@@steve470 Yes, but my concern still applies after he mirrored the 5.
Translation: The thingy with the thingy-thingy-thingy is the original test note from Finkz's experimenter.
Very nice one! Great solve as well, spotting the red 3 quickly was very helpful indeed. Thanks!
I start every one of these puzzles thinking it's unsolvable, then you start breaking it down and eventually solve it.
Thank you Simon, and Marty, for making my prediction/wish come true from last night!
This series is just out of this world. Continue to take care of yourself and voice Simon!
Even while I wasn't watching your Sudoku anymore ( I stepped away) I some how still tuned into to the rats, and that ultimately got me back. Also the Saturday puzzlers and you put out some streams of games, you cooking something great, keep it up Simon!
A real Naughty and Nice kind of puzzle. (3 in the corner) and Red Cells!
This was an intriguing one. Usually to a great extent the path dictates the numbers, but for a lot of this the numbers dictate the path.
The new three-song was incredible! Much appreciated, Simon.
Fun fact, you can restrict digits along Finkz's path using only distance to 5 without minding the mirror. This is because a digit and its mirror have the same distance to 5, and it is distance to 5 that determines which digits can be next to each other (aside from parity). Then polarity determines which value in a cell, giving a cirrelation between mirrorness and digit. Basically, you can appky much logic the same with any two mirror digits or mirrorness statuses by simply flipping the polarity of involved cells.
That solve text about pawing at the mirror did nothing to dissuade me from my theory that the bit about the teleporter acting up in one of the previous puzzles was hinting at Finkz trading places with her alternate universe self
Another great addition to the series. Thanks Marty!
(Finished in 54:13)
Again a wonderful tour with Finkz and by the way the best gift for my birthday on the 13th.😃
At 57:25 , a mirrored 7 in R8C8 and the resulting mirrored 6 in C4 in box 8 would leave no options for the purple teleporter.
19:44 for me. We're getting close to the end of the second season... Can't wait to see what Marty has in store for us!
Solved in 22:11. Stunning logic, as usual for this series, although the numbers fill in quickly once you see the ideas.
Glad Simon was discombobulated at the start because I was discombobulated at the start. I don't think a single solve of mine of these puzzles has been straightforward, I am always caught out by forgetting diagonal moves or boxes or something else. Even so, thanks, I do enjoy them.
So happy to watch a Finkz video!
At the 19 minute mark, it does work. You put the mirror 1 in row 6 column 2 then 4 in r7c2 and the 9 in r8c2. The 1 goes in r8c3 and 6 goes in r7c2 and then 1 in r7c4.
this was my favorite rat run puzzle yet, it's insane how they just keep getting better. Realizing I'd finished the puzzle but still didn't have the path and having to parse it was a ton of fun. 43:89 for me.
39:30 finish. Perhaps other rats can eventually join Finkz in the maze, and we can have a nice race using the constraints of the day. Another enjoyable edition!
54:39, with help from the video to start. I immediately "proved" I couldn't go down because I'd get a 4 or a 6 on a cell that would for two 1s or two 9s to see each other, then broke it going horizontally, and looked at the video to see that I COULD go down and use a mirror cell to fix my problem.
I also seem to have "finished" the sudoku before finishing drawing the line. Guess it's one of those where you can figure out all of the digits a get a "solve" pop-up without needing the line completed.
I absolutely love this puzzle series Rat Run. Many thanks to Mary Sears and Simon Anthony!
19:20 You are missing one option.
R7C2 is a 4.
R6C2 is a mirror 1.
R8C2 is a 9.
R7C3 is a 6.
R7C4 is a 1 and R8C3 is a 1.
1:18:34 great puzzle even though I made an utter mess of it, curious if I found the most efficient breakin or if there's something obvious I missed
edit: watching the video, at about 21 mins simon overlooks the possibility that you can move into the box 4 teleporter and come out of the box 3 teleporter, however, this can be disproven in a very cool way: it would take all the cells in box 2!
I don't know why people make such a big deal about Friday the thirteenth. I mean, when all is said an done, it's still Friday.
Now on MONDAY the thirteenth, one has the rest of the work week to slog through.
That puzzle was BREATH TAKING! I loved every single second of it. I'm not usually a fan of "lying cell" puzzles, but this was solid. It was really a mental masterpiece of mental gymnastics :D 73:29 solve!
Seeing how much trouble Simon had with this one, I'm extra proud that I finished it.
One idea for sick days Simon is to pre-record a solve if you can't make it, or have a collection of puzzles that are really easy that you can dip into and have a nice 20 minute or less video. Feel better!
As always an absolute delight!
Absolutely lovely- the mirror 3 was ABSOLUTELY brilliant.
Can you explain why tge mirrored 3 can't be on the teleporter 3 in R9C5?
@ one of the rules is that the teleporters can't be mirrors
One day I'm going to solve a CtC puzzle quicker than it takes to scroll down to the comments but it won't be a Marty puzzle! 41:56 today. Brilliant fun as always.Thanks Marty.
Sid Waddell, what a man. Full of incredible phrases
It can't be Friday without Finkz! Yay! Kind comment.
00:35:51 for me. Fantastic fun as always!
As usually these just seem to make sense. I found the 5s before Simon which helped with ruling out paths. Fantastic job again by Marty.
loving these!
omg I did the exact same thing Simon did at the start... I went straight down and said "nope this isn't possible" until I started solving across the top when you realize that's actually 100% impossible... and then you're like... okay well then I have to make going straight down work... lets figure out how.
48:26 - Surely, Simon: 'How lovely are your cupcakes' in this instance.
*Sigh*…. “Mirror cells may not contain teleports.”
That small little sentence got lost on me in such a large ruleset, and made my life much more difficult. I can confirm this puzzle is solvable without that though 😢
Finished in just under an hour. Could have gone slightly faster but I didn't trust the terminology in the teleport clue (it says digit, not value, meaning the mirror wouldn't affect it). It was a fun puzzle though. The last few rat puzzles have all given me that "how is this even possible to start" feeling at first but it usually doesn't actually take too long to find the break in.
Glad you liked it. The rules say that teleports can't be in mirror cells, so that gets rid of the problem of hor mirror cells might effect teleport digits
I am a die hard LSU Tiger fan and have enjoyed the Purple and Gold combos this week! (I know they are blue and orange but via the screen it’s close enough)😅
39:11 for me - just the best way to start my Saturday, pure enjoyment
1.02.52 for me. I love it.
First run I solved fairly quickly (42 minutes) without any mistake made along the solve. Also one I kept thinking: this can’t be right, I’ll hit a wall anytime. Especially the 5 on the teleport felt suspicious…
Finkz is one math-obsessed rat. Intelligent girl, she is.
Next week we find out Finkz is actually Santa Claus trapped in a rat body because of some weird experiment!
Yes, the best part of a Friday. Rat run.
💜
When Simon decides early on that the first mirror cell is the five in column one because there needed to be an equal number of high and low parity cells and mirroring any other number would cause an imbalance, why couldn't you use two mirror cells to readjust this using one to flip a low to high and another vice versa? One in column one box 4 and one in column 2 box 7? He only discussed it based solely on the single column. I'm guessing there's a reason why that fails further along the logic chain but I would have liked to have seen it thought through. Or is there some basic aspect that rules it out that I'm missing?
yes the logic works just for the numbers of high and low in the column, regardless of the path.
In column 1, we know there are 4 low DIGITS and 4 high DIGITS. Also, because of the alternating polarity on the forced path, we also know that column 1 has 4 low VALUES and 4 high VALUES. So this would work perfectly if it were a normal German Whisper and there were no mirror cells in the puzzle.
But we know we do need a mirror in column 1 somewhere. A mirror cell anywhere but on the 5 would change the polarity of one of the cells to make its value the opposite polarity to its presenting digit. This would mean there would be 5 of one polarity and 3 of the other. But we know (by the alternating polarity colouring of VALUES) that we need 4 of each VALUE too. So this is a contradiction. We cannot ruin the balance of having 4 of each value AND 4 of each digit. Putting a mirror cell in column 2 has no effect on this column 1 problem.
Remember, the mirror cells do not cause a polarity shift along the German Whisper (in the same way that a 5 on a Dutch Whisper does.) All a mirror cell is doing is making its value be the opposite of its presenting digit, but the German Whisper still always goes high low high low high low (values). This is why placing a mirror cell somewhere along the path does not affect the polarity of cells anywhere else on the path. Hope that helps :)
You can split the line in c1 into 4 pairs of cells, each of which must contain one high value and one low value - so we need 4 high values and 4 low values to complete the column.
Because we've taken 5 off the line, we know that we have remaining 4 high digits and 4 low digits.
Because each house can only have one mirror cell, at most one of those 8 cells could be flipped.
If the mirror cell is anything other than the 5, it would leave 5 high and 3 low values, or 3 high and 5 low values, neither of which would allow us to fill the 4 pairs of cells along the whisper.
Lovely puzzle - difficulty a harder 3/5 I think
Rejoice, for it is Friday and the Rat has cometh!
ThingyThingyThingy :D Loved that
Nori nori nori
OH No Overheating Teleport, Might Finx be able to use one twice next week?
56:35 for me. so many mistakes. i kept forgetting that diagonal was an option. totally screwed my solve several times.
TGI Finkzday!
Why, when Simon was working out where the red 3 goes, couldn't the teleport be red teleporting Finkz between a red 3 (7) in r9c5 to a real 3 in r6c6, thus changing the path polarity within the teleport?
The rules state teleports can’t be mirror numbers
@@JohnPalmer-ci4my I don't see rule stating teleports can't be mirror cells? I only see rule stating that teleports of same type must be identical digits, which my question allows for.
@@gregind01It's in the mirror cells section. "Mirror cells may not contain teleports"
OMG OMG OMG NEW RAT RUN JUST DROPPED
28:30 Couldn't r6c1 also have been 1? In that case r6c2 would've been 6 and r7c2 would also have been a 1. Is that impossible for any reason I haven't considered?
where are you putting 4 and 6 in column 1 in that scenario? Those are the problem digits to place
53:30 - i don't think it is correct to say teleports cannot be mirrored. it only says digits are equal, not the values.
the rules say teleports can't be mirrored
@@martysears oh i missed that thank you so much :)
Yay! Go Finkz!
60:20 for me - one mistake along the way.
51:04 for me
nice puzzle
Philippine colors!! 🇵🇭
why is 3 in the corner a christmas 3?
Because it's December and Sven has coded the software to spew snowflakes instead of confetti when a 3 is placed in the corner.
Such a grate brain lag on box 7
Anyone?? Why is testdate 1974 ? Is Marthy 50 ?
Hehe I’m 40 actually but it felt like more of a 70s type of story to me
38:14 forme
This is undoubtedly a great series of puzzles from a great constructor. However, I watch this channel just before I go to bed. I love watching Simon solve a puzzle, but I don't feel like reading 15 lines of explanation. For that reason, this is one of the few series of puzzles that I don't watch, no matter how great they may be... Sorry!
Today you lost me at the mirrored shit
What, if the three in that cornah actually celebrates h...oly pagan festivals?
The Christmas three was adopted by the early church from the German celebration of Saturdreilia (Saturthreelia? I wasn’t sure what to go with here. 🙂).