Thinking Outside The... Cage?!!
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
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Today's puzzlehas the coveted 100% approval rating on Logic Masters Germany. It's a beautiful (and approachable) pentomino/sudoku hybrid by Cris Moore, called Think Outside The Cage. Give it a try at the following link:
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Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply. Along thermometers, digits increase from the bulb end. The white cells must be tiled with one copy each of the twelve possible pentominoes. If a pentomino contains a cell with a small number, its cells sum to that number. Digits in a pentomino may repeat if otherwise allowed.
Sam Cappleman-Lynes has made an extremely clever 6x6x6 set of puzzles. We have released a solution video for this puzzle on Patreon and you can try to solve it yourself at these links (one to our software, one to penpa (which allows you to increase the size of the grids):
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11:54 "X is a very difficult digit to place", can't wait for the 26x26 sudoku where you have to place the letters A-Z in every row column and box
this will have to be an irregular sudoku, as 26 is not a square number. then, if you add a diagonal constraint, there will be a very big X in the grid....
@@bevstarrunner9472 25 by 25 sudoku, one letter is absent and it is up to the solver to deduce.
Clues could be given words, crossword clue boxes, "killer cage" word scrambles, etc.
please, one of the incredibly smart setters, get cracking on this asap!
@@kevinyoung796 That would be amazing
This is the first puzzle in recent memory when Maverick didn't pay Simon a visit during recording. I hope he's OK!
Maybe Simon's cold made him close the window? Or reduced hearing?
LOL
It always amazes me how setters can come up with puzzles such as this one.
I would love to see a “lines” app with Palindromes, Renbans, and German Whispers.
and dutch whispers
And lockout lines
And "between lines"
I have an idea for a Lines and Circles puzzle, where each line is either a Palindrome, an Arrow Shaft, or a Thermometer, and each circle is either the fletching of an arrow or the bulb of a thermometer, and it's up to the solver to figure out which witch is which.
@@danieltaber4924 to make it harder, the circle could be meaningless on a palindrome too.
Elegant, entertaining, smooth construction. Lovely puzzle and lovely solve as always. Hope to see more of Chris’s puzzles here.
Around 8:00 when Simon starts musing about three repeats in a pentomino, I was thinking "of course not, that would require a hexomino". I eventually figured out that he meant not three repeats (that is, two each of three different digits) but a triple of a single digit. My initial (incorrect) interpretation is, however, consistent with his usage of "two repeats" at other times.
I had the exact same thoughts!!
Also if a digit appears twice in a pentomino, is that digit 'repeated twice' or is it 'repeated once' (because its first appearance is not a 'repeat') and why do I wonder this every time?!
I'm going to let Simon play with his pentominos, THEN give it a go.
I'm not a fan any kind of shape colouring in sudoku but, after reading the rules and spotting the "W" almost instantaneously, I forced myself to keep going; much to my surprise, I was able to solve this one fairly straightforwardly, also employing the very obvious "Phistomefel ring" in the process. I've been following this channel for some two years now and, increasingly more often, it shows while solving 😎. Thank you Simon and Mark for helping keep my brain alert.
What if you built a time machine and went back in time two years to watch yourself struggle with sudokus that today you find easy?
About 45 minutes, the first 10 of which was wasted not noticing the 7 clue. "Build your own killer" puzzles usually go well for me, while pentominos do not, so I'm glad this was a little bit more on the build-your-own side of the equation. Picked up the idea from an earlier puzzle like this to try to place the X pentomino early and that was key. Fun puzzle.
I get stuck every time with these puzzles lol. I love solving alongside you - it helps me appreciate how cool these challenging versions of sudoku rather than getting frustrated. I always feel very accomplished when I solve the puzzle "before" you. I mean this one may have taken me a little over an hour, but I completed it before unpausing you
"Domino Sudoku" seems like a fine name to me!
35:39 ... I saw the starting point quickly, but it took me a bit to get the next step (which really did break the whole thing open).
Fun puzzle!
OMG I'm so excited for the GAS app! I just started on Sudoku variants, that will be the one for me
How is nobody talking about how clever he is by recognizing red-long orange pattern without even seeing it?
What a legend
23:58
"don't wanna go red on top of orange"
A simpler method to unwind the pentominoes at 24:00 at the top would be to remember that the bulb is out of range of every other pentomino and has to belong to the hidden one. This would also solve the logical leap that some have pointed in that the hidden pentomino could have been the X, as once it takes the bulb there's immediately no valid X position for it, and the solve resumes from here (and as Simon demonstrates, it is immediately forced to be the I)
I’m probably missing something, but can anyone explain why the blue U pentomino needs to add up to 41? In the rules it says that the pentomino will add up to the clue in the top left corner, but in the puzzle the clue is in the top right? Or is the rule just if the pentomino contains the clue then it needs to sum to that amount?
The “top left corner” refers to the cell, and if the pentomino contains one such cell it sums to that number.
Compare:
If (the pentomino) contains (a cell with a clue in it’s top left corner) versus
if (the pentomino) contains (a cell with a clue) in (it’s top left corner)
Same text but it it’s top left corner refers to the cell in one case but the pentomino in the other.
Hope that makes sense.
Yeah. That messed me up as well. Dominos bottom blue y has its clue in the lower right of the pentomino but the clue is in the upper left of that particular box r9c7. Therefore, if a pentomino uses that cell it gets that sum regardless where the sum is. Tricky.
Right, I was confused about this as well! thank for taking the time to explain :)
This also tripped me up. Spent a good 15 minutes trying to force totals to be in the top left of their pentomino...
@@zachpekarsky6905 I made a mistake the other way around and figured if the numbered cell wasn't in the top-left of the pentomino, it was just a meaningless red herring!
I first parsed "If a pentomino contains a cell with a small clue in its top left corner" as "If a pentomino contains (a cell with a small clue) in its top left corner" instead of "If a pentomino contains (a cell with a small clue in its top left corner)"...
*Approaches puzzle*
"Hello, puzzle!"
*stares for a minute*
"Goodbye, puzzle!"
Fun, I enjoyed that. I like doing the 'find the pentomino' puzzles, much like snake puzzles. I need to remember "Look for where 'X' can go"...it's always a fruitful question.
Not me watching Simon solve these puzzles like I’m ever going to be able to do them when I struggle on medium puzzles in the sudoku books 😅
W -> T -> F was my pentomino solve. Incredibly nice puzzle.
One of the things I'm learning from Simon is the need to celebrate beauty and cleverness. Of course when I celebrate my own it turns out that I've made a mistake, most of the time... So oh well, it still feels damn good.
What an excellent puzzle, thanks Cris! I really like these colouring/tiling puzzles, but it's great when it's not an immensely technical case bash! So much fun, thanks again :-)
Stunning puzzle. Congratulations
First one I actually finished without some mayor crash in the middle.
76:00 minutes of pure joy.
Usually these pentomino sudokus give me a hard time, but I managed to solve this one without encountering too many difficulties. Took me 43:01 to solve
First Puzzle in a while I've managed to solve without having to check back in the video. I figure out the pentominoes much easier since I saw the W pretty much right away (after I looked up all the pentominoes anyways to have a reference image) and that also let me place the I pentomino then go around the grid ruling different possibilities out, then I reached the sudoku portion, that took me about 3 times as long as Simon, but in the end, very fun puzzle. Final Time 78:06 (time was running for a bit while I looked up a reference image and did some background stuff, so probably only took about 70 mins)
27:33 Very nice puzzle, I think I have never been so fast placing pentominoes 🙃 Of course the extreme clues help a lot 😀
I think that I have never seen Simon make a mistake, and I must have watched several hundred of his solution videos. He does this without ever using a play aid, and he fills in candidates only sparingly. However, for the rest of us, a more obviously systematic approach will be better. To this end, I offer the following suggestions.
1) When placing the 7=W pentomino, given that it must have no more than 2 cells in any row, column, or box, must be in 3 boxes (the 4 box option doesn't work), and must contain exactly 11122, start with the one known cell. So try up-left-broken. Then right-broken. Then L-U-broken. Then L-D-broken. Then D-L-D-broken. So the known cell is not an end. Can it be the middle of the W? No, because both R-U and R-D are unavailable. So the W shape must have one cell on one side of the known cell, and 3 on the other side. There are 3 broken possibilities, and only one that works. Of course, Simon does all this, but he doesn't show all the steps.
2) The next major step is to find the X pentomino. The best systematic way to do this is to colour in all possible middle cells (there are 15), and then to reduce them one by one. Four hit two sums. Eight isolate cells. The two remaining ones in box 8 break on the 9 total. Only one remains. Again, Simon does the calculation correctly, but this procedure is more systematic.
I got stuck until Simon mentioned trying to place an X Pentomino. After that insight, I finished in just over an hour. Nice puzzle!
Same. It's not obvious, but there are sudoku variants that everyone will struggle with, if they have no experience with that variant.
Watching this solve, I misunderstood the rules and kept assuming the normal killer rule that the clue has to be the top-left-most cell in the cage. So like even when doing his hypotheticals in the beginning, I kept thinking “you can’t do that, the clue’s in the wrong spot”. Very tricky
That Sound of Music reference. Take my engagement 💰
Even without filling in all the other pentominos, the 23 pentomino in box 1 can't be a V given all the 1's and 2's in the W. The V would contain at minimum 3/4/5/6/7 which totals 25.
Simon sounds like Hank from A Scanner Darkly
I took way more time on this that I would have liked because it took me a while before considering where the X pentomino would go. But aside from that, I did pretty much everything in the opposite order than Simon so watching him go through the puzzle turned out to be pretty funny.
1:19:52 for me. A challenge, but worth it.
I believe Simon made a mistake at 21:53. He did not rule out that the pentomino that we don’t have a clue for isn’t the X.
…although it’s fairly easy to prove, since the only option for a hidden x at the top of the grid would be with the center at row 2 column 6 and that would isolate row 1 column 7
This is why I no longer bother with the videos!!! Completed in 20m24s.
39:20 Simon didn't even use the secret to get that 7
33:16 haha nice
at 21:45, what's stopping the X pentomino from being the pentomino without a given sum?
The only place the X pentomino could go in that area would be r1c6/r2c5/r2c6/r2c7/r3c6 but that would leave r1c7 stranded.
I think this was one of the few times Simon has made a (small) logical leap. When looking for where the X-pentomino is, he only considered the "clued cages", but it still could be the unclued one. It's very simple to eliminate that possibilty though. I'll blame this one on the cold. Great puzzle!
I'm assuming he just didn't verbalize it - it was really obvious you couldn't put an x into a rectangle with 2 cell height regardless of the width
@@Jonnysh exactly, the upper pentominoes were already partially uncovered before looking at the position of an x.
Though Simon didnt go through with proving it, you can in fact prove that the X cant be the unclued one. Simon already deduced that the unclued pentomino was in the top ten squares and that the 41 clue needed two squares from the box directly beneath it. Once the W was placed there is only one spot for the X in the top ten cells but that forces the 24 clue to go right two spaces and the 41 clue to become an L. Then the 24 has to become an L as well because it cant run into the 21 or 41 and the puzzle breaks. Thus the X is not in the top ten cells and the only other place for the X is the 21.
Just in case you were curious.
Get well soon Simon!
yes!
For the entire first half of this puzzle Simon repeatedly referred to the v pentamino as an l, until he decided to list all the ones he had left to put in. Then he had to say v and l separately.
It is awful to see with what certainty Simon puts in number while I myself made calculations over again and again to make it all work out the right way.
A beautiful puzzle again! I use to love the pentomino stuff... ;-) Yet two little remarks:
1) At the very start of the video, the title says "Think Outside Tge Cage", but the 3rd word seems to be wrogn.
2) Simon is of course right that the 21-clue is the only one that can possibly contain the X-pentomino, however, what about the possibility that the X-pentomino is the only pentomino without a given clue? It actually isn't, because that would isolate some white cells, but this option seems to be never explicitly excluded in the video.
Yes, but the I Pentomino could be nowhere else
4:53 I believe he misunderstood the rules it says in the top left that 24 cell would not count
87:38, simply beautiful
really lovely puzzle!!
@Simon, @Mark
Please create playlists with Simon and Mark videos. Tks
Very nice.
The rules, attached to the link stipulates that the clues are positioned on the top left corner of the pentomino...... :( which threw me way off
Simon always mixes V and L
Man, breaking into this was rough. You really need to figure out A. That R1C7 is part of the hidden pentomino. B. The completed 7/W cage. C. That Row 3 of region 3 is a 789 triple in the 41 cage. D. That the 41 cage can't can't go into region 2. (allows you to figure out all, or most, of the the shapes of the hidden, 24, and 23 pentominos) E. That R7C9 is either part of the 21 cage or the 32 cage. F. That at this point there is only one location into the entire grid left for the X cage. G. The F cage and 9 cage limitations.
It probably took me 4-5 hours to break into this puzzle and another 1 to complete.
I probably shouldn't call them cages since they can have repeated digits...
I misread the rules and thought that the cell with the number has to be the top left cell of its pentomino
I can’t wait for the GAS app!!! Also, dominos sounds like a great name as well and another good app.
Oh. Another suggestion for an app - Pentominoes and snakes!
Alternative title: "Man spends 18 minutes drawing a W"
19:45 I think I misunderstood the rules also everyone already knew that
Please ask you thumbnail maker to make it more obvious which is Simon and which is Mark. I can't tell you how many times I've had to backspace when it turns out to be Mark.
Thanks in advance.
The rules do not make sense bsed on your solving method. The rules indicated "If a pentomino has a number in the top left position the its cells sum to that amount. IT should read, If a pentomino contains a value the cells of the pentomino sum to that amount.
I wasted a good amount of time until i gave up and watched the solve and the moment simon started talking I went wait the rules said X, you are reading it wrong, and then he solves it still not following rules.
Rules say "cell with clue in its top left corner" not where that cell will be in pentominoes.
@@janiriitakangas6764 Thank you. I was also misreading the rule and was very confused until I read your clarification.
I misunderstood it also. I was so confused. The instructions were confusing.
I made the same mistake!
@@rankinsean ditto
19:54 R1C4 cannot be taken by any "killer clue".
31:50 for me - I'm really impressed with my time on this one. I admit that when I was figuring out the shapes, I had two choices for the X and tried one to see if I could fill it in and came up with what turned out to be the right answer.
When I looked at Simon's answer, I realize I only had 1 X in the first place, and I would've run into a problem right away if I tried the other one. :)
Couldn't that 23 pentomino have continued down, allowing the pentominoes at the top fill more spaces below?
No, because the white space of the puzzle is completely tiled with 12 pentominos, and 11 clues are given, so the only unclued pentomino must be at the top of the grid, and the 23 pentomino must run up there to grab some space.
@@victorfinberg8595 Thank you!
Very excited for both upcoming apps!
I'm beginning to think I hate pentomino puzzles. I screwed up twice, but solved it on the third attempt. Not easy, but not terribly hard, either. Just don't make a mistake and your good. lol
Simon used the T, I used the V since it had to be minimized without using both a 3 and a 4 on the vertical, so it had to use 356 with the 7 and 8 placed giving a 9 to the left of the thermal forcing it to be 678 giving 4 and 9 to complete box 2 forcing the remaining T cells to add to 6 and only one way with 3 and 1 being eliminated, so 24 with the box two 4 resolving it.
Spent 4 hours on this puzzle. Couldn't finish the killer sudoku part, lol. Gave up. Enjoyed the vid, tho.
The 7 cage/pentomino is so easy........aarrgghh
Oof. I solved the sudoku only to realize while watching the video that I made a mistake during my solve and got lucky. Unfortunate.
Pentomino mnemonic: FILiPiNo, T to Z.
What annoys me a bit is that Simon choose a 5th colour... you can tile every map with 4 colours. No need for yellow. :-(
It's better to use as many colours as possible. Don't want to play favourites, now.
L P V Y, L P V Y
Really enjoyed this. First 5 minutes went without anything but then I noticed the 7 W-shape and things started to go around. It was actually pretty straight forward coloring puzzle after that. I like these puzzles where there is clear path to finish. In the end it took 25 minutes.
The rule about sum clues is a bit ambiguous, since the "in its top left corner" part could apply both to the cell in question AND the pentomino in question. Here I spent 5 minutes trying to figure out how the 41 clue in c9 would work, because I considered it the top-leftmost cell in a pentomino.
Yup. Just gave up to watch the video and didn't realize I misunderstood the rule.
Was thinking the exact same thing. Normal cage rules require the clue to be in the top-left most square.
I think a marginally less ambiguous wording might be: "If any cell in a pentomino contains a small clue in its top-left corner, the pentomino must sum to that number"
Doesn't change much for me, as I wouldn't make much headway on this puzzle, with or without that change 😂
@@xnisfuzzy yeah, something like that would work nicely. oh well, mistakes happen, and I definitely didn't solve it completely in the end, so no harm no foul. :D
I was also assuming out of habit the "top left" referring to the pentomino first, but as you also seem to have found out the 41 clue couldn't work then. Also it would have allowed for the possiblity of some clues being of limited worth, because the rules didn't state the clues would have to be in the top left corner, only that if they were there, they would give the sum for the pentomino. So with that unintended reading of the rules any clue not being in the top leftmost corner of a pentomino wouldn't tell you anything about the total of the cells covered by that pentomino.
xnisfuzzy or just “any clue in a cell refers to the sum of the pentomino containing that cell.” Don’t know why we need to mention the position of the clue in the cell.
I've always thought a good name for an XV/kropki app would be either "neighbors sudoku" or "fenceline sudoku," since the commonality between those clue types is they tell you about the relationship between neighboring cells and the clues are on the "fence" between the two cells they affect...
There is a past episode entitled "Neighbors"
I find the wording of the rules ambiguous: The "its" in "its top left corner" can be read to refer to the pentomino, not the cell.
I was also irritated by the clues in the "top left corner", but it just means that some cell that is part of the pentomino has a clue in the top left corner. It drews me to the rules for killer sudoku ...
I was actually looking for this comment to clarify to myself that that is what it meant lol - I was especially confused because he did another pentomino cage sudoku recently-ish where it *was* the top left corner of the cage and that was the break-in 😂
I was hung up on that for a long time too. And I was wondering how "top left corner" of a pentomino can even be defined, since there are many pentomino configurations where its top row doesn't contain a cell of its leftmost column and vice versa.
But it is easy to resolve which is the correct reading: It can't refer to the pentomino, look at the 39 clue!
Just discovered this Channel 2 days ago and im already hooked I love sudoku puzzle but never knew it could be this hard im so lost lol my dad was the one who 1st introduced me and I still solve some but only easy and medium one with numbers already in them haha
Welcome aboard. It's a brilliant channel with such a positive and supportive viibe. I watched for at least a year before I attempted to solve any puzzles and enjoyed every minute of being a viewer. Now I'm addicted to solving too. You're on the start of an exciting journey.
Welcome! Don't hesitate to browse through past videos from the last two years. Some of them are really enjoyable.
Then a guideline would be to try those puzzles where Simon takes no more than half an hour, and Mark 20 min. Simon spends more time explaining stuff, whereas Mark is more of a speed solver.
Would definetly get both a GAS and domino app. Great puzzle and solve as always!
Simon - your joy is our joy!! To help your voice, drink hot tea with lemon & honey (you can add a touch of gin for medicinal purposes 😉)
I thought his voice sounded a bit rough 🤔 Please look after yourself Simon! ❤🤗
Edit: I missed the part where he said he had a cold 😪 Get well soon Simon!
One way to prove that the W has to be in the position it is in is to realize a W pentomino can be broken down in to a diagonal chain of three cells plus a diagonal chain of two cells, and that the three diagonal cells have to be 1 to get the 7 total and so must be in different boxes. It's pretty quick to see that there's only two ways to get those to cross three boxes without crossing the shaded cells in the neighborhood of the 7, and one of those can't be completed and connect to the 7 without blocking off a single white cell...
Someone should make an "Oops All Ws" puzzle where you just have to fill the grid up with lots of Ws
(or some given subset of the grid, rather, I suppose)
Rules: 02:53
Let's get cracking: 05:39
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Lovely: 10 (23:04, 26:37, 29:09, 30:27, 30:43, 35:05, 35:42, 35:42, 40:43, 41:12)
Sorry: 4 (12:07, 15:26, 28:30, 41:18)
Beautiful: 4 (13:53, 25:20, 29:07, 40:35)
Hang On: 4 (13:00, 13:28, 26:32, 29:38)
Bobbins: 2 (26:07, 36:05)
The Answer is: 2 (28:01, 33:31)
Good Grief: 1 (39:44)
Cooking with Gas: 1 (32:21)
Apologies: 1 (00:21)
Naked Single: 1 (34:26)
Secret: 1 (31:29)
Nonsense: 1 (16:57)
Clever: 1 (02:13)
Incredible: 1 (02:31)
By sudoku: 1 (39:51)
Approachable: 1 (01:38)
Of All Things: 1 (38:23)
FAQ:
Q1: What is a Simarkism?
A1: A Simarkism is something that Simon and Mark typically or frequently say.
Q2: How do you do this so fast?
A2: I'm not made of flesh and blood, but of sand ...
Q3: Why don't you include 'XX' and 'YY'?
A3: Probably it's already on the list ('Scooby-Doo' for example), but not mentioned in this video. But if you think it's not, tell me what you'd like me to include and there's a good chance I'll add it!
Q4: You missed 'XX' at 'YY:ZZ'!
A4: That could very well be the case! Human speech is hard to understand for computers like me, especially British sometimes! Point out the ones that I missed and maybe I'll learn!
Q5: Could you turn these statistics into videos?
A5: I've been playing around with the idea and I'm open to input as to what people would like to see. Let me know if you are interested in this and/or have suggestions.
Q5, definitely. Btw, you've got a gift, bruv. From now on, I'll try sand instead of Parmesan on my pasta 🤣🤣
Wait, a Simon video without Maverick? That's madness!
Amazing brain, your videos are inspiring, thank you!
Got the 1-1-1-2-2 immediately, then missed that there are only 11 clues and got very desperate how to fill in the top... Finally after lots of mistakes I did it :)
32:16 finish. I went right to the 7 clue right away, then attempted to break off "blocks" to determine which cells had to go together. The shapes fell into place quite nicely, but then had to remember that the shapes were not cages and could have repeating digits (even AFTER having repeated digits in other shapes, LOL). Always love puzzles like this.
The rules are confusing. Does the “top left corner” refer to the cell with the clue or the pentomino itself. Simon chose the first interpretation and he managed to solve the puzzle. I wonder if that was luck or experience with such rules.
When I first read the rules I thought the clue cell had to be in the top left corner, but there were too many clue cells that just simply wouldn't work if that were the case, so I re-read the rules and actually it does only say that a pentomino containing a cell with a clue in the top left corner will sum to that total.
I guess my brain saw it the wrong way initially.
English is not my first language, so the fact that Simon picked that interpretation with no hesitation whatsoever makes me wonder if there is something in the syntax that only native speakers can detect.
@@Al-uv3dn no, it is confusing for native speakers, too... we've done so many puzzles in the past where one has to build cages of various sizes & the cell with the sum is required to be in the topmost/leftmost cell of the cage.
It's very easy to interpret the instructions in this way... I even read it 3x, still unsure!
But interpreted that way, it was soon evident the grid could not be tiled.
Guess a quick look at the bottom part of the grid resolves the question immediately. The two clues in the bottom row could never work with the alternative rule.
So, yes, experience!
@@Al-uv3dn Now that is a very interesting question!
There are a couple of answers.
First, there are two versions of the rules. They are
1) "If a pentomino contains a cell with a small number, its cells sum to that number."
This version is unambiguous. I think that this is the version which arrived with the puzzle. In that case, Simon would not be confused, because that is the version he would have seen first.
Now, the rules you likely saw, the ones on the puzzle screen, are
2) "If a pentomino contains a cell with a small clue in its top left corner, its cells sum to that number."
This version is ambiguous if you take it out of context, but in the context of the puzzle, one version would make no sense, because it would result in orphaned sum clues and an unsolvable puzzle.
But also, it isn't really ambiguous if you look at the structure of the sentence carefully.
If a pentomino contains [phrase A]
a cell with [phrase B]
a small clue [phrase C]
in its top left corner, [phrase D]
etc.
Clearly, the hierarchy of this sentence goes A -> B -> C. But where does D fit? Does it belong with A or C? This is the ambiguity, and certain types of people such as technical writers and lawyers are trained to avoid such ambiguities. However, that is a specialized skill, and most other people don't, even if they are first-rate communicators. But there is a natural way of reading such phrase sequences, and that is to attach a phrase to the nearest other phrase. In this case, that would make D refer to C, not A. This is perhaps the experience that you are looking for.
On the other hand, you could argue that the sentence phrases could also be organized as ADBC, and because they were not, the only correct interpretation is A -> B -> C -> D. Compare this to the negative constraint that often crops up in sudoku variants.
Are we having fun yet?
The notification always gives me a positive boost. Keep it up simon
Lovely puzzle! Had to laugh when Simon said he kept looking at the L and thinking it was 56789 as that's exactly what I did and ended up in a right mess.
The title card says "Think Outside Tge Cage" tsk tsk
Rev up those downvotes >:)
Miracle sudoku had a lot of display issues with the first cage puzzle on an iPad mini. Especially in landscape. Things kept covering the puzzle or left some of the buttons pushed off the bottom of the screen.
Woo! Got this one in under an hour! That pentomino part took me a minute to figure, and the actual puzzle part was harder, but I never felt like I didn't have anywhere to look to get to the next step. Exquisite puzzle
Somehow i managed to solve this puzzle :) i think topology is my forte! Amazing puzzle, thanks a lot for sharing it!
There is presumably a phrase, wherein each of the Pentomino letters is used exactly once, that could be clued in as some kind of monstrous crossword with regular letters filling the gaps.
The first time I tried a pentomino sudoku about thee months back I didn't know how to go about it. I just guessed at patterns and failed miserably.
So I watched Simon's solve that day and I remember he said that the X and I pentominoes could be difficult to place.
For today's puzzle the 7 in r3c4 made that pentomino straightforward. I then figured out where the X could be placed. The 9 pentomino was then obvious. And the rest fell into place.
Thank you (yet again) Simon for your excellent tuition.
P.S. If a puzzle doesn't require colouring I feel disappointed.
Yeah that was beautifully compiled. Well done Chris.
A beautiful puzzle that gave a relatively easy opening with the 7 total pentomino. Usually these pentomino puzzles are not easy for me with too many ways of proceeding.
Great puzzle, kind of depressing to see simon solve it in 40 minutes though, after it took me two hours
I'm often not into the pentomino puzzles, but I've enjoyed this variant ruleset done here and previously by Kurchan in the "South American Sudoku Magic" video. Grateful for the puzzle links, as always.
The first part of this puzzle *really* reminds me of Simon Tatham's logic puzzles, which are by and far my favorite computer-generated logic puzzles on the internet.
I've noticed over a couple of weeks there seem to be a "word of the day" in Simon's daily puzzle videos. And I absolutely love it!
Word of the day: erroneous.
It was "recalcitrant" yesterday.
When I was a kid we had a picture book about a man named Moses. On page 1, Moses is standing upright, the caption reads: "Nose up, toes down." On page 2 he is diving into a pool, the caption reads: "Toes up, nose down." The rest of the book is similar except for the last page, which has Moses standing in a flowerbed, and the caption reads:
"Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously.
For nobody's toeses are posies of roses, as Moses supposes his toeses to be."
Simon should narrate a few books with his “new” voice. I vote the lot of Brambly Hedge ✅
VERY lovely puzzle, btw!! Thanks, Cris 👏
Absolutely LOVED this puzzle!