Ahhh this was brilliant to watch, SImon, thankyou so much for featuring this - I wasn't expecting it at all. I realised a couple of weeks ago that my 100th puzzle was coming up and wanted to do something fun for it. I liked the idea of a shading puzzle using slightly different rules from usual things like yin-yang or cave, to create a surprise at the end. I'm really happy you didn't know in advance that it was my 100th puzzle, - your discovery of this surprise was absolutely perfect. Even the fact that you finished the top two rows first before finishing the final 0 and the deadly pattern on 5s and 6s, was even more perfect and satisfying than I had anticipated, as it is perfectly possible to get the 100 all coloured before finishing off the top. Whoever recommended the puzzle, thank you for recommending and also thank you for not mentioning the fact it was my 100th puzzle. Finding a set of constraints that could make a solvable puzzle out of the 8 regions I wanted to have was challenging. German Whispers didn't work, but I tried out quite a few other things, including parity lines, which worked but weren't powerful enough to garner digits and create a smooth and fun solve. Dutch Whispers ended up being just the right amount of constrained. I only had to enter a few digits into orange and the solving software told me it led to a unique solution, so I knew the Dutch Whispers would be very forcing. I already knew I wanted a rule about milestones, to give a decoy meaning behind the title. But obviously I already had a filled grid solution to aim towards, meaning I could only place milestone clues in a handful of places. Their interactions were interesting, and particularly the ones involved in the break-in I found very pleasing. But alone they weren't powerful enough to give enough oomph to the solve path, so one more constraint type was needed, and it took my quite a few days of playing around before I found one which worked very well with the Dutch Whispers and milestones - the balanced cages. The last minute addition to this puzzle was the 28 clue. I used to have a second 9 clue in the top orange region too, but then I thought it would be way more interesting and a bit silly to have a very large clue there right from the beginning that is pretty useless until right at the end when it disambiguates the colouring. Excellent solve and reactions as usual Simon, I can't thank you enough for all the kindness and support of my puzzles you have shown me in the last 2 years. 🎉 ps: yes I did write the poem ;)
Simon‘s stubbornness against spotting anything obvious is one of the things that make this channel both intimidating and enjoyable. Intimidating, because I likely will never be able to spot any of the logic Simon constructs in order to be able to ignore clues, sudoku or simple rules; enjoyable, because this either proves that Simon is still human or a robot perfectly imitating human failure to trick us (which, now I think about it, is not calming and enjoyable at all). Why do we watch this channel again?
Shoutout to Marty Sears for building into the rules that the Dutch Whisper regions should be coloured orange, and removing all chances of Simon getting a funny idea and making them outrageous colours such as German Green or Renban Purple ❤😂🎉
If Simon had made the whisper gray, perhaps he would have noticed the significance of the shading pattern a tad quicker. This is probably the most fun Simon has had solving a dutch as well. He has been quite open with how he feels about them.
Not seeing the 100 until the end and it being a surprise was so wonderful to watch! I'm fascinated by the human brain and how because Simon was so focused on the gray, his brain wouldn't let him see the 100 in orange right there. Because the brain assumed the orange was a flat orange background with no significance. It's almost like those stereogram pictures where you make your eyes unfocused and then suddenly a picture pops up.
The youtube channel Memeristor has a series called "Setter Spotlight" where they interview setters (No Marty Sears) but lots of other CTC featured setters.
My recollection of the setter videos is that some of these puzzles simmer for months before taking their final form. It seemed impractical to record that.
Simon spots so many of the most difficult pieces of logic, yet seems to overlook some of the easiest deductions. It's pretty funny. One moment I'm thinking, "How did you ever figure that out, Simon?! I would have stared at that for 2 days without a clue." The next moment, I'm yelling at my phone, "Simon! R2C3 has to be grey!" 😂
Yeah, but I think the funniest thing he missed was the fact that the whole grid was a 100. He even found amusing the pattern of grays and didn't think to look at the oranges!
Simpler solution to the ending. The cage just have an even total. It has to be a size, which forces the color to be grey. Grey in the cage sums up to 13, which is half the cage total.
38:31 here. Another example of a puzzle where Goodliffing all of the arrows saved me a ton of time. There were a lot of pairs/max digits that instantly gave insights and pushed the puzzle along.
47:20 classic Simon: only using two cells of the 3-arrow to explain why the 3 can't be grey for complicated reasons, instead of adding the third cell and seeing that the region is now 4 cells big with a region size of 3. As always though, lovely to watch!
I finished in 82:29 minutes. This was a fantastic puzzle that turned really sweet as I figured out where it was heading. The hardest part felt like it was deciding which one was grey and orange between r7c3 and r8c3. I spent quite a while on that part and once I got it, the puzzle became very straightforward. I noticed that a circle was appearing around the 3 clue and that's when I figured out the theme of the puzzle. That was also my favorite part, trying to hem in the 3 clue. It is kind of wild that Marty has achieved 100 puzzles created. I have played through a lot of puzzles on this channel and one of the names that always excites me is Marty Sears. Congratulations on 100 puzzles, Marty! I am waiting with pure excitement for season 2 of the Rat Run series. Great Puzzle!
I solved the last bit slightly different. When you add up the digits already in the cage, you get 20. Therefore, R5C8 must be even, making it a 6, and the only combination of 13 with the 6 is with the 7. Glad Simon saw the 100 at the end.
This is the first time I've ever followed a hunch to shortcut a puzzle. "Hmm what's the name of this puzzle again? No. Could it be?" I may have missed some logic but it was special to solve by intuition for once. Congrats on 100 puzzles!
I came back to this several times over the last couple of days chipping away at it each time. Very glad I kept going and pretty much finished this entirely on my own, as this puzzle was awesome from start to finish!
Absolutely brilliant from Marty Sears and such a good ending. Watching the orange develop early on I guessed it was leading to 100 but I had to prove it through the logic. Watching Simon towards the end of his session I was almost screaming 100. Loved it all.
Really enjoyed watching this one! I'm a novice so I don't usually do the puzzles myself, but I like watching you go through the process! Maybe 3/4 of the way through I noticed it was looking like 100 and rereading the title being "milestones" I put it together, and was then finding the numbers based on the pattern (which wouldn't be correct but was still exciting). This was a fun one!
1:04:21 finish. As I started working on the right hand side of the grid, I started to wonder if it would wind up with the pattern it did. Of course, I didn't surmise what the reason was. Congratulations on 100! Another enjoyable solve!
It always amuses me how opposite Simon and Mark's reactions are to doing sudoku in their variant sudoku puzzles. Simon will use any other rule first, whereas Mark will jump on the sudoku parts as soon as he can.
Not having time to watch the whole video I just watched the last few minutes in order to be astonished. I feel I may have needed to watch the whole thing! :)
from 41:00 - 52:00 the logic surrounding the grey 3 region could've been streamlined by noting that the 12 had to orthogonally surround the 3 region to avoid diagonals. The only arrangement that works is having a vertical region centered at the clue
Loved the solve. I always solve these then watch the video to see Simon'slogic. Noticed about the 40-minute mark in this video what was going to happen with coloring. Title was a huge help. Didn't make it any less enjoyable. 🎉🎉🎉
I figured out what the final pattern was going to do quite early, and had to restrain myself from just filling in the colors and backsolving the sudoku, instead using actual logic to prove where the colors needed to be. Fantastic puzzle
I did not finish this one myself but as soon as I saw Simon finish 10 with a line underneath I was like.. a number.. so what's it gonna be.. 100? 101? No it's gonna be 100 isn't it, to be symmetrical and work with the coloring rules... then i checked the little preview that youtube shows you on the end of the vid and I knew I was right. So you can imagine my reaction when Simon focused on the GREY and not the orange. :') I was like please tell me he finds out before the video ends. Beautiful puzzle, really enjoyed watching Simon solve this.
Really good choice, Simon, to start with the arrows - I did some meta deductions on shading and the region sizes before I hit that point, and it would have been a lot easier with what you found done first.
One of the things I did up front was to see that the 12 region had to surround the 3 region and be a different colour. The 12 region needs a complete boundary of the other colour, and that is very limiting, but I do wish I'd used more of the logic with arrows earlier
Wow! Figured halfway through that it had to be 100. But 100 what? 100th puzzle? Oh, well just plow through because I'm sure there will be an explanation message upon solving. Not too hard and not too easy, glad I found the break in fairly quick instead of the expected 3-4 hours. Just the right amount of Marty Sears madness to brighten my day. Now go have some well deserved cake for your amazing milestone.
The colours grey and orange are probebly becouse: grey is a stone colour (as in mileSTONE) and orange is the colour of the Netherlands. (as in Dutch wisper). Nicely done!
The interesting thing of the puzzle is that the rule "... how many cells you have to travel in the indicated direction until you reach a cell of the opposite colour." CAN be read like "... how many cells you have to travel in the indicated direction until you reach a cell of the opposite colour OR THE EDGE OF THE PUZZLE.". And you still will have the same solution. It will be much harder, but aprochable (at least I did it)
lol that's not the rule though and is different logic. If it yields the same unique solution then that's a coincidence. A large portion of my intended solve path uses the fact that an arrow must always be pointing at a cell of the opposite colour somewhere
I think there was a flaw in Simon's execution of 'no diagonal connections' rule. Simon always connected to diagonally touching cells with the shortest possible connection, but they could be connected in longer way, leaving them touching diagonally, but they will be part of the same region, thus obeying the rule. Example: 1:13:09, he connects 2 using cell on top, but he actually can connect that 2 with two additional orange cells in row 5. It will break, of course, but Simon didn't even consider that option here and in some other cases throughout this puzzle
Simon's logic isn't flawed... If you connect two diagonally touching orange cells up via a 'long route' so that they are still part of the same region, what you're not considering is: what happens to the grey region it encloses? Now THAT will be touching another grey region diagonally. He had realised this general principle very early, and how it disallows checkerboard 2x2s altogether
@@martysears I'm not so convinced that Simon realized that without telling us... I think it's more likely that he just used the ying-yang rule where a region can't touch _itself_ diagonally (which isn't explicitly the case here). But your logic is sound. Marvellous puzzle, as always!
@@mscha As far as I've seen on the channel, the normal yin-yang rule is just that both regions must be orthogonally connected, and the "no checkerboards" rule is a consequence of this, because one region looping around will split the other colour into two separate regions. It's exactly the same principle here, with the only difference being which rule it violates ("each colour is a single region" vs "two regions of the same colour may not touch"), so I don't think you're justified in believing that Simon didn't understand it.
Squell is a word-finding game that also tests your spatial reasoning. Slide rows and columns of tiles to rearrange a grid of letters and spell words. Score points based on the letters you use. Spell as many words as you can before you run out of moves.
It’s funny how Simon literally pencil marked every arrow cell in the beginning except for the one in r4c9 (which he ignored for almost the entire solve) which is one of the most restricted ones and would definitely help with some sudoku 😂
At 1:15:30 an easy way to finish the sudoku is to realize that every cage total must be even since the cage is divided into two regions with the same sum. Therefore r5c8 is even and must be 6.
Usually I feel like I'm lagging so far behind Simon, but this time around I spent half the video yelling 'PLEASE LOOK AT THE ARROWSSSSSS' impotently at my screen....then suddenly he makes an insane deduction that ignores the obvious clues and I'm left in the dust again. 😂
1:13:00 "this could still be orange if it's a 6" says the man looking at a cell with a 1 and a 6 pencil marked in it as the only 2 options, with 1's in the same row, column and box.. one of them being on the very cell next to it. It doesn't get much more Simon than this lmao EDIT : OMG..... it DOES get more Simon than this at the end hahahahahahaha
27:14 for me. I’ve never beaten my hero by so much. I quickly worked out the way the regions had to go so I’d filled those in before starting any of the numbers. It was very straightforward after that.
Not sure if it was intended but the final shape also looks a like like a horizontal track/ladder of sorts riddled with the grey 'stones along the path we tread'
I mirrored Simon's logic for the whole of box 4 and 7, then thought about possible shapes of the 3-sized region, about the artistic sensibilities of Marty Sears, and thought to myself "I bet the regions look exactly like this" ... and they did. So that condensed the last 40 minutes of Simon's solve into 10, but felt a bit slimy.
I started the puzzle off thinking that C3R7 and C6R7 could be 1/2/3 because what happens if all the blocks from the arrow cell until the edge are the same colour? Then it would technically have to move three blocks before reaching a different colour (outside the puzzle).
I almost feel like i was kind of spoiled, by realizing how the final grid would look, after 30 minutes in the solve. Nonetheless a very enjoyable video as always.
Really great puzzle, took me an hour and 40 mins. Simons way of resolving the cage balance though was just weird. I mean... the total has to be even, just use that.
Loved that puzzle, although I comparatively breezed through it with a time a smidgen under 38 minutes. As always, when that happens, I wonder what error I made and got lucky with(!) That said, my first five minutes were spent playing around a little trying to get my head around the rules, with what could be considered trial and error I guess, although I don't think it impacted the solve. I definitely needed it to engrain the arrow rule, though - I'm too used to the cell containing the arrow being counted when it comes to steps until X. Crazy how small things like that wreck my head.
I feel like I did this puzzle on hard mode because the rules just say that diagonals can't be *different* regions, but they could be the same region, so I spent a long time working on the coloring of r8c2. Still got it in 55:47. This is more of a me thing but I didn't like that I knew the solution because I realized the entire coloring long before the end of the puzzle and most of the end of the puzzle was trying to logically prove things that I already knew were true. I liked the ruleset overall. It was a fun puzzle.
At 21:40 Simon decides r8c2 has to be grey. That is ultimately correct but I don't think there's enough information to decide on that right then. Edit: Oh I see checkerboards in general are impossible because both pairs would need to join.
Sometimes a different perspective. 1 had about 75% of the color filled in but wasn't seeing it. I got up to do something and as I walked nack and looking at screen at a sharp angle the pattern popped out at me. Changed a couple colors and filled the rest and was so happy when I counted the color associated with grey. Anyone else finish with the 56 combo in row 4,5 column 4,8. Both patterns work but the app only exempts one of them.
Just a little criticism for Marty's rule-writing: it's not exactly clear what should happen should an arrow clue goes off the grid. Would it be an infinity clue (since we never see an orange cell), or does the edge of the grid count as a delimiter for the arrow? If the latter, it would be clearer to describe the stripe of same cell digits itself rather than the distance to the delimiting edge as "a digit on an arrow counts the number of samw-colour cells seen by it in the direction of the arrow where other-colour cells block the view"
The way the rules are written (and indeed Simon uses that logic a few times) is that the situation you describe is impossible for the puzzle. Describing it as cells of the same color including the arrow cell might introduce some ambiguity that would arise in the solution path for the puzzle. (Not sure, because I haven't tried the puzzle that way.)
@Tahgtahv That is what I'm assuming as well. It's just that the stated rules are slightly logically different to the classical way such a rule is usually stated, and I thought the relevant edge case was worthy of addressing in the rule writeup.
There has to be a finite digit (1-9) written into every cell with an arrow, by the rules of sudoku. The rule states that the cell that distance from the arrow will be the first cell that's a different colour. Since it's a finite number, to my mind, that's saying there *will* be a different colour encountered before you reach the edge of the grid.
@@Tahgtahv I already wrote a comment about that earlier, but I solved the puzzle using it as a rule that includes the edge of the puzzle (not only "... until you reach a cell of the opposite colour"). And it has a UNIQUE solution. But it is harder to solve
66:27, I spent like 20 minutes breaking in, looked at the video to see if I was right, and saw I was SLIGHTLY wrong in reading the rules (I took a 3 on an arrow as being three additional cells the same color as the arrow instead of the 3rd digit being the other color). And I looked at the video after seeming breaking the puzzle to see that I typed a digit in the wrong cell. I thought with the colors this would be a pumpkin at the end. Guess I have Halloween on my mind!
I don't think checkerboards are prevented by the rules, because a region is at least in theory allowed to touch itself diagonally. It does require quite a large region (like the 28) surrounding quite a small region (like the 3), but I think it's allowed by the rules. Not sure if Simon still ends up being correct by luck since I haven't solved the puzzle yet.
if a large region touches itself diagonally, it will enclose a small region of the other colour which will touch another region of the same colour diagonally, so it still wouldnt be allowed
Oh, I've just realized I'm wrong, and it still doesn't work, because in my example even though the 28-cell region would only be touching itself, the 3-cell region would be touching some other region, which isn't allowed.
I didn't watch the full video, so I don't know how, but I ended up with a solution before I managed to color the entire grid. Moreover, I checked several times and it seems to me there is more than one way to color the grid. Counted every cell in 28, 12, 9, 3, every arrow and cage still matching, every dutch whisper satisfied... 🤔
Grey: R1C345, R3C9, R7C5, R9C9 Orange: R2C49, R8C59 The rest of cells unchanged. Can someone point out where is my mistake? Because I honestly cannot find anything wrong here.
@@martysears OH. "Diagonally". I missed this........ Thanks. I played on ultra hard then xD But then it seems that you can get to the same unique digits without the diagonal constraint, which is interesting on its own.
Ahhh this was brilliant to watch, SImon, thankyou so much for featuring this - I wasn't expecting it at all.
I realised a couple of weeks ago that my 100th puzzle was coming up and wanted to do something fun for it. I liked the idea of a shading puzzle using slightly different rules from usual things like yin-yang or cave, to create a surprise at the end. I'm really happy you didn't know in advance that it was my 100th puzzle, - your discovery of this surprise was absolutely perfect. Even the fact that you finished the top two rows first before finishing the final 0 and the deadly pattern on 5s and 6s, was even more perfect and satisfying than I had anticipated, as it is perfectly possible to get the 100 all coloured before finishing off the top. Whoever recommended the puzzle, thank you for recommending and also thank you for not mentioning the fact it was my 100th puzzle.
Finding a set of constraints that could make a solvable puzzle out of the 8 regions I wanted to have was challenging. German Whispers didn't work, but I tried out quite a few other things, including parity lines, which worked but weren't powerful enough to garner digits and create a smooth and fun solve. Dutch Whispers ended up being just the right amount of constrained. I only had to enter a few digits into orange and the solving software told me it led to a unique solution, so I knew the Dutch Whispers would be very forcing. I already knew I wanted a rule about milestones, to give a decoy meaning behind the title. But obviously I already had a filled grid solution to aim towards, meaning I could only place milestone clues in a handful of places. Their interactions were interesting, and particularly the ones involved in the break-in I found very pleasing. But alone they weren't powerful enough to give enough oomph to the solve path, so one more constraint type was needed, and it took my quite a few days of playing around before I found one which worked very well with the Dutch Whispers and milestones - the balanced cages.
The last minute addition to this puzzle was the 28 clue. I used to have a second 9 clue in the top orange region too, but then I thought it would be way more interesting and a bit silly to have a very large clue there right from the beginning that is pretty useless until right at the end when it disambiguates the colouring.
Excellent solve and reactions as usual Simon, I can't thank you enough for all the kindness and support of my puzzles you have shown me in the last 2 years.
🎉
ps: yes I did write the poem ;)
Thank you Marty, your puzzles are my absolute favourites!
@@-mir85-36 💜 thanks so much, that is very nice to read
Congratulations Marty! Your puzzles are always huge fun and I am looking forward to the next series of Rat Runs!
Congrats on your milestone! The puzzle was phenomenal as are all that you make. Wish you all the best! :)
Congratulations! It's a blast to solve all your puzzles!
Simon finds logic I can only dream of, but the length of time he took to spot the 100 was quite special. Another amazing puzzle from Marty Sears.
I was starting to get afraid that he would miss the bright orange 100 entirely.
Simon‘s stubbornness against spotting anything obvious is one of the things that make this channel both intimidating and enjoyable. Intimidating, because I likely will never be able to spot any of the logic Simon constructs in order to be able to ignore clues, sudoku or simple rules; enjoyable, because this either proves that Simon is still human or a robot perfectly imitating human failure to trick us (which, now I think about it, is not calming and enjoyable at all).
Why do we watch this channel again?
Can someone explain why c3r7 and c6r7 cant be 1, 2 or 3 in the beginning of the solve? It is used as a 1,2 pair for c2r7... What am i missing? Help
@@fdlatyt cause they point in a diferent color if it was 3 u need a 10th row
@@gi0nbecellhe is not a robot, he solved the sudoku computers cannot solve! I forgot the name of it.
Shoutout to Marty Sears for building into the rules that the Dutch Whisper regions should be coloured orange, and removing all chances of Simon getting a funny idea and making them outrageous colours such as German Green or Renban Purple ❤😂🎉
haha you can never be too careful ;)
Or even worse: making the Dutch whisper gray and the other region orange
If Simon had made the whisper gray, perhaps he would have noticed the significance of the shading pattern a tad quicker. This is probably the most fun Simon has had solving a dutch as well. He has been quite open with how he feels about them.
It's marvellous that Simon can solve these at all but the way he does it while ignoring several clues is amazing
Not seeing the 100 until the end and it being a surprise was so wonderful to watch! I'm fascinated by the human brain and how because Simon was so focused on the gray, his brain wouldn't let him see the 100 in orange right there. Because the brain assumed the orange was a flat orange background with no significance. It's almost like those stereogram pictures where you make your eyes unfocused and then suddenly a picture pops up.
I agree. I am so glad he didn’t spot it til right at the end !
"Is that actually a REAL poem, or has Marty written that?"
Absolutely roasted haha
I had a good laugh at that 😂 poor Simon and his wording
I love that the titles of your videos sound like clickbait but are actually just accurate
Any chance you can invite your puzzle creators on the channel so we can meet them? And maybe have videos of them creating the puzzles.
They used to do this a couple of years ago, don't know why it stopped.
The youtube channel Memeristor has a series called "Setter Spotlight" where they interview setters (No Marty Sears) but lots of other CTC featured setters.
Zetamath does react videos when one of their puzzles is featured.
My recollection of the setter videos is that some of these puzzles simmer for months before taking their final form. It seemed impractical to record that.
Simon spots so many of the most difficult pieces of logic, yet seems to overlook some of the easiest deductions. It's pretty funny. One moment I'm thinking, "How did you ever figure that out, Simon?! I would have stared at that for 2 days without a clue." The next moment, I'm yelling at my phone, "Simon! R2C3 has to be grey!" 😂
Yeah, but I think the funniest thing he missed was the fact that the whole grid was a 100. He even found amusing the pattern of grays and didn't think to look at the oranges!
Simpler solution to the ending. The cage just have an even total. It has to be a size, which forces the color to be grey. Grey in the cage sums up to 13, which is half the cage total.
Marty somehow did not sacrifce the difficulty in favour of drawing, a masterpiece
It was funny to see Simon at the end looking at the orange 😅
was relieved when he spotted it! haha
38:31 here. Another example of a puzzle where Goodliffing all of the arrows saved me a ton of time. There were a lot of pairs/max digits that instantly gave insights and pushed the puzzle along.
Simon looks at row 9, where there are 8 digits already given. He quickly starts calculating the 9th digit using Dutch whisper and cage rules.
wow another amazing puzzle by Marty Sears. 51:10 here. Didn't feel impossible anywhere but lots of lovely little logic puzzles to solve along the way.
47:20 classic Simon: only using two cells of the 3-arrow to explain why the 3 can't be grey for complicated reasons, instead of adding the third cell and seeing that the region is now 4 cells big with a region size of 3. As always though, lovely to watch!
I finished in 82:29 minutes. This was a fantastic puzzle that turned really sweet as I figured out where it was heading. The hardest part felt like it was deciding which one was grey and orange between r7c3 and r8c3. I spent quite a while on that part and once I got it, the puzzle became very straightforward. I noticed that a circle was appearing around the 3 clue and that's when I figured out the theme of the puzzle. That was also my favorite part, trying to hem in the 3 clue. It is kind of wild that Marty has achieved 100 puzzles created. I have played through a lot of puzzles on this channel and one of the names that always excites me is Marty Sears. Congratulations on 100 puzzles, Marty! I am waiting with pure excitement for season 2 of the Rat Run series. Great Puzzle!
I solved the last bit slightly different.
When you add up the digits already in the cage, you get 20. Therefore, R5C8 must be even, making it a 6, and the only combination of 13 with the 6 is with the 7.
Glad Simon saw the 100 at the end.
39:32 - "They can't both be whisper" is technically correct. Much more important is that r2c3 can't be orange at all.
Marty, what else can I say other than just WOW! That is utter genius to celebrate your milestone! 👌👏👏👏
This is the first time I've ever followed a hunch to shortcut a puzzle. "Hmm what's the name of this puzzle again? No. Could it be?"
I may have missed some logic but it was special to solve by intuition for once. Congrats on 100 puzzles!
I came back to this several times over the last couple of days chipping away at it each time. Very glad I kept going and pretty much finished this entirely on my own, as this puzzle was awesome from start to finish!
Just brilliant! So enjoyed solving this
Absolutely brilliant from Marty Sears and such a good ending. Watching the orange develop early on I guessed it was leading to 100 but I had to prove it through the logic. Watching Simon towards the end of his session I was almost screaming 100. Loved it all.
A beautiful puzzle, very creative in several ways, and what a way to celebrate this milestone.
Many congratulations Marty!
Just under 1h for me, one of my favorite puzzles this month so far, really enjoyed every step 😊
This was a really fun one to watch!
Really enjoyed watching this one! I'm a novice so I don't usually do the puzzles myself, but I like watching you go through the process! Maybe 3/4 of the way through I noticed it was looking like 100 and rereading the title being "milestones" I put it together, and was then finding the numbers based on the pattern (which wouldn't be correct but was still exciting). This was a fun one!
22:12 "Where do we go from here?"
Sudoku! Always that peasky Sudoku! 🙂
27:21 I think the restriction is even more than just "same parity", the difference is exactly two.
47:16 I would assume that a 3 indicates we have 3 cells of the same colour next to a cell in a size 3 region. That means we can't use gray there...
58:49 Are we just ignoring the arrows now?
1:11:00 Yes we are,...
What about Sudoku indeed? 😀
This puzzle was truly enjoyable.
1:04:21 finish. As I started working on the right hand side of the grid, I started to wonder if it would wind up with the pattern it did. Of course, I didn't surmise what the reason was. Congratulations on 100! Another enjoyable solve!
What an absolute triumph of a milestone and a puzzle. Thoroughly enjoyed every step!❤❤
It always amuses me how opposite Simon and Mark's reactions are to doing sudoku in their variant sudoku puzzles. Simon will use any other rule first, whereas Mark will jump on the sudoku parts as soon as he can.
What an incredible masterpiece! Absolutely beautiful!
All I can say is wow. That was an amazing puzzle. Congrats, Marty!
Not having time to watch the whole video I just watched the last few minutes in order to be astonished. I feel I may have needed to watch the whole thing! :)
Fantastic puzzle. Congrats on 100 puzzles Marty!
That's the perfect puzzle! It was so enjoyable that even after solving it myself, I wanted to watch how Simon solved it all the way through
from 41:00 - 52:00 the logic surrounding the grey 3 region could've been streamlined by noting that the 12 had to orthogonally surround the 3 region to avoid diagonals. The only arrangement that works is having a vertical region centered at the clue
Loved the solve. I always solve these then watch the video to see Simon'slogic. Noticed about the 40-minute mark in this video what was going to happen with coloring. Title was a huge help. Didn't make it any less enjoyable. 🎉🎉🎉
I figured out what the final pattern was going to do quite early, and had to restrain myself from just filling in the colors and backsolving the sudoku, instead using actual logic to prove where the colors needed to be. Fantastic puzzle
What a great puzzle, thanks Simon & Marty
I did not finish this one myself but as soon as I saw Simon finish 10 with a line underneath I was like.. a number.. so what's it gonna be.. 100? 101? No it's gonna be 100 isn't it, to be symmetrical and work with the coloring rules... then i checked the little preview that youtube shows you on the end of the vid and I knew I was right. So you can imagine my reaction when Simon focused on the GREY and not the orange. :') I was like please tell me he finds out before the video ends. Beautiful puzzle, really enjoyed watching Simon solve this.
Stopped off to give this a go. Took a bit of a while to get into it, but once I had that it was a smooth solve
Really good choice, Simon, to start with the arrows - I did some meta deductions on shading and the region sizes before I hit that point, and it would have been a lot easier with what you found done first.
One of the things I did up front was to see that the 12 region had to surround the 3 region and be a different colour. The 12 region needs a complete boundary of the other colour, and that is very limiting, but I do wish I'd used more of the logic with arrows earlier
Wow! Figured halfway through that it had to be 100. But 100 what? 100th puzzle? Oh, well just plow through because I'm sure there will be an explanation message upon solving.
Not too hard and not too easy, glad I found the break in fairly quick instead of the expected 3-4 hours. Just the right amount of Marty Sears madness to brighten my day. Now go have some well deserved cake for your amazing milestone.
🍰
Props to Marty Sears! Milestone indeed.
Loved the solve and the flow you had ! I did a few of the Finkz series, but this one was too complicated for me 😅 such an emotional ending 🥲
Congratulations on your milestone @martysears ! Keep them coming, your puzzles sure make for good content on this channel 😊
What a brilliant and exciting puzzle.
The colours grey and orange are probebly becouse: grey is a stone colour (as in mileSTONE) and orange is the colour of the Netherlands. (as in Dutch wisper). Nicely done!
Another original concept, thanks.
Cheers, Marty! Here's to the next hundred.
43:50 ... Congrats on the Milestone!
Nice puzzle!
The interesting thing of the puzzle is that the rule "... how many cells you have to travel in the indicated direction until you reach a cell of the opposite colour." CAN be read like "... how many cells you have to travel in the indicated direction until you reach a cell of the opposite colour OR THE EDGE OF THE PUZZLE.". And you still will have the same solution. It will be much harder, but aprochable (at least I did it)
lol that's not the rule though and is different logic. If it yields the same unique solution then that's a coincidence. A large portion of my intended solve path uses the fact that an arrow must always be pointing at a cell of the opposite colour somewhere
@@martysears I mean it could be the rule to make this puzzle harder
33:03 for me. What an amazing puzzle, loved it!!
The last two minutes were astonishing
@56:04 Simon predicted my "Yes" answer right in sync with my "Yes" answer. hahaha
I think there was a flaw in Simon's execution of 'no diagonal connections' rule. Simon always connected to diagonally touching cells with the shortest possible connection, but they could be connected in longer way, leaving them touching diagonally, but they will be part of the same region, thus obeying the rule.
Example: 1:13:09, he connects 2 using cell on top, but he actually can connect that 2 with two additional orange cells in row 5. It will break, of course, but Simon didn't even consider that option here and in some other cases throughout this puzzle
Simon's logic isn't flawed... If you connect two diagonally touching orange cells up via a 'long route' so that they are still part of the same region, what you're not considering is: what happens to the grey region it encloses? Now THAT will be touching another grey region diagonally. He had realised this general principle very early, and how it disallows checkerboard 2x2s altogether
@@martysears I'm not so convinced that Simon realized that without telling us... I think it's more likely that he just used the ying-yang rule where a region can't touch _itself_ diagonally (which isn't explicitly the case here). But your logic is sound.
Marvellous puzzle, as always!
@@mscha As far as I've seen on the channel, the normal yin-yang rule is just that both regions must be orthogonally connected, and the "no checkerboards" rule is a consequence of this, because one region looping around will split the other colour into two separate regions. It's exactly the same principle here, with the only difference being which rule it violates ("each colour is a single region" vs "two regions of the same colour may not touch"), so I don't think you're justified in believing that Simon didn't understand it.
Squell is a word-finding game that also tests your spatial reasoning. Slide rows and columns of tiles to rearrange a grid of letters and spell words. Score points based on the letters you use. Spell as many words as you can before you run out of moves.
It’s funny how Simon literally pencil marked every arrow cell in the beginning except for the one in r4c9 (which he ignored for almost the entire solve) which is one of the most restricted ones and would definitely help with some sudoku 😂
Fantastic! I love it.
Brilliant!
In fact, I think this is a hall of fame puzzle
So your saying Marty can't write real poems, huh? Shots fired
Great solve. Total sum of digits in all cages must be even.
At 1:15:30 an easy way to finish the sudoku is to realize that every cage total must be even since the cage is divided into two regions with the same sum. Therefore r5c8 is even and must be 6.
Usually I feel like I'm lagging so far behind Simon, but this time around I spent half the video yelling 'PLEASE LOOK AT THE ARROWSSSSSS' impotently at my screen....then suddenly he makes an insane deduction that ignores the obvious clues and I'm left in the dust again. 😂
Once again Simon wonderfully misses the forest for the trees
1:13:00 "this could still be orange if it's a 6" says the man looking at a cell with a 1 and a 6 pencil marked in it as the only 2 options, with 1's in the same row, column and box.. one of them being on the very cell next to it. It doesn't get much more Simon than this lmao
EDIT : OMG..... it DOES get more Simon than this at the end hahahahahahaha
27:14 for me. I’ve never beaten my hero by so much. I quickly worked out the way the regions had to go so I’d filled those in before starting any of the numbers. It was very straightforward after that.
Very cool. Didn't see that coming until just at the end. 53:39 for me.
I love long it took simon to notice the 100. I actually guessed it like half way through the puzzle lol
Not sure if it was intended but the final shape also looks a like like a horizontal track/ladder of sorts riddled with the grey 'stones along the path we tread'
I mirrored Simon's logic for the whole of box 4 and 7, then thought about possible shapes of the 3-sized region, about the artistic sensibilities of Marty Sears, and thought to myself "I bet the regions look exactly like this" ... and they did. So that condensed the last 40 minutes of Simon's solve into 10, but felt a bit slimy.
you clearly have a good sense of my sensibilities
I started the puzzle off thinking that C3R7 and C6R7 could be 1/2/3 because what happens if all the blocks from the arrow cell until the edge are the same colour? Then it would technically have to move three blocks before reaching a different colour (outside the puzzle).
1:17:17 for me - I finished it about a minute earlier but I wanted to finish coloring it.
01:03:08 for me. Fantastic puzzle. Well done Marty! Kind comment.
How nervours I was that Simon would end the video without noticing the 100 😂😂😂
Simon, probably, in take one: hm what color should be orange? Let’s go with grey. And for grey, yes I’ll go with orange!
(Love you Simon 😂)
I almost feel like i was kind of spoiled, by realizing how the final grid would look, after 30 minutes in the solve. Nonetheless a very enjoyable video as always.
So excited to see Finkz again 🐀💜
Really great puzzle, took me an hour and 40 mins. Simons way of resolving the cage balance though was just weird. I mean... the total has to be even, just use that.
32:42 for me! I'm getting the hang of shading puzzles :)
Loved that puzzle, although I comparatively breezed through it with a time a smidgen under 38 minutes. As always, when that happens, I wonder what error I made and got lucky with(!)
That said, my first five minutes were spent playing around a little trying to get my head around the rules, with what could be considered trial and error I guess, although I don't think it impacted the solve. I definitely needed it to engrain the arrow rule, though - I'm too used to the cell containing the arrow being counted when it comes to steps until X. Crazy how small things like that wreck my head.
The *first* two minutes of this Sudoku solve will astonish me (I don't know how to play Sudoku.)
Rules: 06:01
Let's Get Cracking: 09:35
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Bobbins: 3x (17:45, 17:45, 39:14)
Maverick: 2x (05:49, 05:54)
Knowledge Bomb: 1x (08:42)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Hang On: 25x (15:43, 15:43, 23:21, 23:21, 24:48, 28:14, 31:30, 36:08, 37:30, 38:22, 41:03, 42:06, 42:11, 46:08, 59:37, 1:03:56, 1:06:16, 1:06:29, 1:10:03, 1:17:14, 1:18:15)
Checkerboard: 13x (06:43, 21:32, 30:33, 31:08, 47:51, 47:55, 51:20, 51:36, 51:44, 51:46, 1:10:15, 1:12:41, 1:13:14)
In Fact: 12x (01:49, 17:12, 28:50, 28:55, 47:35, 47:40, 47:58, 49:27, 1:06:26, 1:16:27, 1:17:05)
By Sudoku: 11x (09:01, 13:16, 16:55, 18:20, 27:41, 33:14, 58:21, 1:04:31, 1:09:45, 1:10:35)
Ah: 10x (12:31, 22:44, 24:48, 28:23, 41:18, 55:06, 1:06:29, 1:12:07, 1:13:04, 1:13:12)
Lovely: 7x (13:28, 18:41, 35:30, 46:18, 46:34, 1:08:14, 1:17:38)
Cake!: 7x (03:27, 04:06, 04:27, 04:45, 04:49, 05:20, 05:32)
Goodness: 5x (30:58, 52:24, 1:17:14, 1:17:56, 1:18:15)
Sorry: 5x (12:31, 31:30, 42:31, 56:55, 1:03:08)
Beautiful: 5x (46:18, 1:17:02, 1:18:07, 1:18:07, 1:19:24)
Pencil Mark/mark: 4x (19:14, 31:42, 1:00:42, 1:02:01)
Clever: 3x (15:19, 27:51, 27:53)
Incredible: 3x (1:16:59, 1:16:59, 1:19:59)
Symmetry: 3x (1:17:05, 1:17:11, 1:19:21)
Weird: 3x (27:20, 27:23, 1:15:41)
Naked Single: 2x (35:43, 1:09:22)
Stuck: 2x (1:01:48, 1:01:52)
Surely: 2x (17:48, 52:53)
Stunning: 2x (1:19:50, 1:19:54)
Wow: 2x (1:19:41, 1:19:41)
What Does This Mean?: 2x (28:46, 33:59)
What on Earth: 1x (1:08:02)
What a Puzzle: 1x (1:16:55)
Bother: 1x (1:12:33)
Brilliant: 1x (00:38)
First Digit: 1x (18:45)
Deadly Pattern: 1x (1:13:43)
Shouting: 1x (04:41)
Approachable: 1x (02:15)
Of All Things: 1x (1:04:31)
Phone is Buzzing: 1x (44:24)
Almost Interesting: 1x (54:31)
That's Huge: 1x (19:07)
Have a Think: 1x (30:36)
Nature: 1x (58:00)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Twelve (14 mentions)
One (115 mentions)
Orange (154 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
Low (9) - High (6)
Even (14) - Odd (0)
Column (9) - Row (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!
I feel like I did this puzzle on hard mode because the rules just say that diagonals can't be *different* regions, but they could be the same region, so I spent a long time working on the coloring of r8c2. Still got it in 55:47. This is more of a me thing but I didn't like that I knew the solution because I realized the entire coloring long before the end of the puzzle and most of the end of the puzzle was trying to logically prove things that I already knew were true.
I liked the ruleset overall. It was a fun puzzle.
If two cells touching diagonally are orange and in the same region, you automatically get two grey cells touching that are not in the same region…
At 21:40 Simon decides r8c2 has to be grey. That is ultimately correct but I don't think there's enough information to decide on that right then.
Edit: Oh I see checkerboards in general are impossible because both pairs would need to join.
39:09 for me this time, well done on the milestone!
After finishing the 12 and 3 region, I noticed that they form a '1' and a '0,' and thus the whole grid would be '100.'
Setter specifying colours to prevent gray hedges and green paths? 😂
Sometimes a different perspective. 1 had about 75% of the color filled in but wasn't seeing it. I got up to do something and as I walked nack and looking at screen at a sharp angle the pattern popped out at me. Changed a couple colors and filled the rest and was so happy when I counted the color associated with grey. Anyone else finish with the 56 combo in row 4,5 column 4,8. Both patterns work but the app only exempts one of them.
All cage totals should be even. That would have made it a lot simpler in the end.
Could you please explain your very first pencil marks? Seemed to me you disregarded the arrow cells in your count! Thank you.
arrow cells don't count themselves
Just a little criticism for Marty's rule-writing: it's not exactly clear what should happen should an arrow clue goes off the grid. Would it be an infinity clue (since we never see an orange cell), or does the edge of the grid count as a delimiter for the arrow? If the latter, it would be clearer to describe the stripe of same cell digits itself rather than the distance to the delimiting edge as "a digit on an arrow counts the number of samw-colour cells seen by it in the direction of the arrow where other-colour cells block the view"
The way the rules are written (and indeed Simon uses that logic a few times) is that the situation you describe is impossible for the puzzle. Describing it as cells of the same color including the arrow cell might introduce some ambiguity that would arise in the solution path for the puzzle. (Not sure, because I haven't tried the puzzle that way.)
@Tahgtahv That is what I'm assuming as well. It's just that the stated rules are slightly logically different to the classical way such a rule is usually stated, and I thought the relevant edge case was worthy of addressing in the rule writeup.
@@minamagdy4126 Well, it is tacitly addressed in that the rules are written in such a way that that edge case isn't a consideration.
There has to be a finite digit (1-9) written into every cell with an arrow, by the rules of sudoku. The rule states that the cell that distance from the arrow will be the first cell that's a different colour. Since it's a finite number, to my mind, that's saying there *will* be a different colour encountered before you reach the edge of the grid.
@@Tahgtahv I already wrote a comment about that earlier, but I solved the puzzle using it as a rule that includes the edge of the puzzle (not only "... until you reach a cell of the opposite colour"). And it has a UNIQUE solution. But it is harder to solve
66:27, I spent like 20 minutes breaking in, looked at the video to see if I was right, and saw I was SLIGHTLY wrong in reading the rules (I took a 3 on an arrow as being three additional cells the same color as the arrow instead of the 3rd digit being the other color). And I looked at the video after seeming breaking the puzzle to see that I typed a digit in the wrong cell.
I thought with the colors this would be a pumpkin at the end. Guess I have Halloween on my mind!
46:34 for me. interesting logic.
Marty Sears is one of the few creators where I keep making mistakes along the solve. I usually spot them fairly quickly, but it’s still weird. 🤔
I don't think checkerboards are prevented by the rules, because a region is at least in theory allowed to touch itself diagonally. It does require quite a large region (like the 28) surrounding quite a small region (like the 3), but I think it's allowed by the rules. Not sure if Simon still ends up being correct by luck since I haven't solved the puzzle yet.
if a large region touches itself diagonally, it will enclose a small region of the other colour which will touch another region of the same colour diagonally, so it still wouldnt be allowed
Oh, I've just realized I'm wrong, and it still doesn't work, because in my example even though the 28-cell region would only be touching itself, the 3-cell region would be touching some other region, which isn't allowed.
53:10 I think it still could be 7 based on logic up to this point and same error at 1:04:00 it could still be 4?
How could it be 7? There is no cell 7 moves away in a southerly direction
I didn't watch the full video, so I don't know how, but I ended up with a solution before I managed to color the entire grid. Moreover, I checked several times and it seems to me there is more than one way to color the grid. Counted every cell in 28, 12, 9, 3, every arrow and cage still matching, every dutch whisper satisfied... 🤔
Grey: R1C345, R3C9, R7C5, R9C9
Orange: R2C49, R8C59
The rest of cells unchanged. Can someone point out where is my mistake? Because I honestly cannot find anything wrong here.
@@Vathorus do you still have a 28 cell grey region and avoid diagonally touching regions of the same colour?
@@martysears OH. "Diagonally". I missed this........ Thanks. I played on ultra hard then xD But then it seems that you can get to the same unique digits without the diagonal constraint, which is interesting on its own.