26:35 Not sure how much of a difference it actually makes in this instance, but speaking generally IMO refusing to use valid cage-furniture logic because "I don't know if I'm supposed to know" doesn't give fog sudoku setters enough credit. Since the invention of the fog variant setters have gotten very clever about how they control what info we have when and I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that if you can see it you're meant to be able to see it...
That's not exactly what was going on. He was refusing to use cage-fog logic that was in a borderline gray area, where he couldn't remember precisely whether a couple of small dashes would be visible outside of the fog, or not. He wasn't ignoring general cage-fog logic, just one specific instance, which, as he noted, was "arcane".
@@allendracabal0819 I don't think its a grey area, especially not in this particular puzzle. You can see that the cage line has to be in the visible cell by looking at the 8 cage in the bottom right.
@@xandermouser2216 a lot of us must’ve missed that because one video he said he was starting to not feel well and wasn’t sure he was gonna make it through the video and then the next few days after that we’re all pre-recorded videos from sometime ago
Welcome back to full health, Simon. I just thought of a devilish idea for fog of war creators: the idea of having a fully fogged out grid, where the first digit HAS to be worked out by trial and error, but you can then complete the Sudoku... no matter where that digit was. (This would have to be normal fog, of course). I imagine the grid would have to have a lot of clues all over the place to cover all contingencies.
27:04 Simon, just look at the cages already in view. The dashed line always goes into any cage on its edges or corners. You have bent cages already visible showing how it would look.
This is a very nice puzzle for novice level solvers like myself, it takes you through the puzzle step by step, keeping your eyes on what's relevant for solving the next part.
One digit/value is twice the other could be technically more correct for a black dot, as well as easier to understand. eg in a 0-8 puzzle with modifiers it would be possible to have a 0:0 dot.
27:08 over the years Simon has made this “assumption” many times. And he’s never been wrong. However he has dismissed it every time.🤔 Never change Simon, never change.
Well, I ALMOST solved that on my own. I got stuck, pulled the video to what I was stuck on. Simon paused the video and said “You can get this square”. I left it paused until I solved that square, then solved the rest of the puzzle on my own. Simon just told me where to look. 😂😂😂
32:15 solve for me, love fog puzzles because it's much clearer to me where to look when, stopping me from my usual tilting at wild geese on the wrong end of the grid.
Lovely puzzle. Really masterful use of so-called "cage furniture" to aid deductions. Even the clues that seemed uncomfortable unrestricted ended up giving me useful information once I had the sense to look them in the eyes.
18:13 Oh no, the return of Simon's most dangerous pencil-marking habit of just deleting all the pencil marks and re-marking with all the options, losing useful narrowing of options previously done
Yes, he does this a bit too often for my comfort too, with corner pencil marks in particular; although, he doesn’t wipe out centre pencil marks too often just to replace them again with more centre pencil marks! His ‘grid memory’ is often surprisingly good even when he does this - although he does occasionally losing efficiency, particularly given his scattergun approach to basic sudoku in general. For a beginner to intermediate solver (like me), it is not a habit I would recommend we emulate. :)
_"Dinamic fog"_ is not an appropriate way to describe the innovative _"fog of where"_ introduced by *James Sinclair.* Standard fog is not static. It moves away very quickly when you place correct digits, and fog of where does the same. The only difference is where it lifts, not how swiftly it reacts. I would call it *smart* or *selective* or *remotely controlled* smog.
OMG!!! What a wonderful poem from Michael to Jenna Marie!!! And to have Simon with the dulcet tone voice read it to her!!! I hope we will hear the wonderful answer soon!! Also - great to have a foggy puzzle and Simon back live and well!!! Oh and happy birthday Michael!!
Great to see you my friend. Happy holidays. Hope you have been well❤. The poem was exquisite indeed and Simon certainly did it justice😊😊 Simon with fog is a match made in heaven. Splendid to have him back for us "live" 😊😀😁
39:05 for me. That was some pretty cool logic in the top left. I feel like I dialed in on what it meant decently fast. EDIT: Also I wonder what the intended path was later on. I was able to use uniqueness to solve the 2 15 cages (they can't both be 6+9 because they'd make a deadly pair and none of these rules can break a deadly pair). Man I love when uniqueness lets me skip steps. It feels like accessing a late game area in a video game before you are supposed to get there and grabbing some massive xp or late game gear.
I don't know if it was intended or not, but I kept making deductions here and there in the puzzle without a logical path, maybe I didn't think hard enough about the new information I had or I missed some clever and deep deductions that make the puzzle go for a less bumpy path. Nonetheless, I ended up in 29:22, good time for me.
I remember doing a puzzle once where it was explicitly stated in the rules. Not only the fact that it had a unique solution, but that you had to use it to be able to solve the puzzle. So if it's stated like that, yes I would use it. Otherwise I would assume it has a unique solution but not use it.
Yes, and it has been done. There was a puzzle that explicitly required you to use uniqueness to solve it - "Killed them with Uniqueness" by AFrayedKnot on 27 June 2021 - which was an absolutely fantastic puzzle, one of those ones that just has you laughing your head off as you solve it, well worth checking out.
Same here, started watching again a week ago. Enjoying these dynamic fogs. There's a video titled like "Breakthrough in Fog" 3 weeks ago, it all started there.
To be honest, sometimes i don't see the conclusion he makes. Why the 1 on the first row above the 5? At 24:39 oh now i see it because of the 3 in the top row.
20:55 why does he assume that the 16 extends into box9? those could have been 2 different cages. There is no rule that says that cages cannot overlap. Either he is working with a different set of rules than us or he is making a giant leap of faith here.
It isn't stated, but isn't it a standard rule that cages don't overlap? It's like cage furniture. It's only convention that means a cage boundary in one cell means the cell on the other side of the boundary isn't in the same cage that has done a tight u-turn. By similar convention, cages never overlap.
Hi Simon and all the the CTC testers. Thanks a lot for giving my puzzle a go on the channel. Really appreciated.
It's a really good puzzle - you definitely earned the feature.
@@steve470thnaks❤
I loved your puzzle!
OMG!!!! I hope he emails back what she said. That was the sweetest proposal and omg omg omg omg!!!!!!!!!!
I paused the video to start looking at the comments
Simon is right about one thing, the world needs more love.
Amen!!!
Absolutely beautiful. I'm on the edge of my seat! I need an answer!
26:35 Not sure how much of a difference it actually makes in this instance, but speaking generally IMO refusing to use valid cage-furniture logic because "I don't know if I'm supposed to know" doesn't give fog sudoku setters enough credit. Since the invention of the fog variant setters have gotten very clever about how they control what info we have when and I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that if you can see it you're meant to be able to see it...
I agree
That's not exactly what was going on. He was refusing to use cage-fog logic that was in a borderline gray area, where he couldn't remember precisely whether a couple of small dashes would be visible outside of the fog, or not. He wasn't ignoring general cage-fog logic, just one specific instance, which, as he noted, was "arcane".
@@allendracabal0819 I don't think its a grey area, especially not in this particular puzzle. You can see that the cage line has to be in the visible cell by looking at the 8 cage in the bottom right.
@@maximix5447 Obviously, Simon didn't notice that cage, or he would have commented differently.
Wait is this Simon back now and not a long ago previously recorded video? Seems like it so glad he's okay!
I'm out of the loop. I've only seen the comments on the past few videos about them being prerecorded. What happened to Simon?
He was always fine he was just in new york
@@xandermouser2216 a lot of us must’ve missed that because one video he said he was starting to not feel well and wasn’t sure he was gonna make it through the video and then the next few days after that we’re all pre-recorded videos from sometime ago
@@xandermouser2216 Not via American Airlines this time we hope!
@@xandermouser2216 where did they say this?
If the question is "What's for dinner?" I'm going to be very upset. Good luck, Michael!
❤
😄😊
00:48:40 for me. Wonderful puzzle. Love how fog and cages can work together with the clue position! Kind comment.
Welcome back to full health, Simon.
I just thought of a devilish idea for fog of war creators: the idea of having a fully fogged out grid, where the first digit HAS to be worked out by trial and error, but you can then complete the Sudoku... no matter where that digit was. (This would have to be normal fog, of course). I imagine the grid would have to have a lot of clues all over the place to cover all contingencies.
Great break-in and lovely deductions in the mid-solve! Loved it!
Always a joy to see you write about puzzles on here. 😀
27:04 Simon, just look at the cages already in view. The dashed line always goes into any cage on its edges or corners. You have bent cages already visible showing how it would look.
This is a very nice puzzle for novice level solvers like myself, it takes you through the puzzle step by step, keeping your eyes on what's relevant for solving the next part.
Normaly the solve is the most exciting part of the video.
Today however 😍
One digit/value is twice the other could be technically more correct for a black dot, as well as easier to understand. eg in a 0-8 puzzle with modifiers it would be possible to have a 0:0 dot.
Ow dear that would be trippy 😂
27:08 over the years Simon has made this “assumption” many times. And he’s never been wrong. However he has dismissed it every time.🤔
Never change Simon, never change.
Well, I ALMOST solved that on my own. I got stuck, pulled the video to what I was stuck on. Simon paused the video and said “You can get this square”. I left it paused until I solved that square, then solved the rest of the puzzle on my own. Simon just told me where to look. 😂😂😂
Welcome back, Simon!
32:15 solve for me, love fog puzzles because it's much clearer to me where to look when, stopping me from my usual tilting at wild geese on the wrong end of the grid.
Lovely puzzle. Really masterful use of so-called "cage furniture" to aid deductions. Even the clues that seemed uncomfortable unrestricted ended up giving me useful information once I had the sense to look them in the eyes.
That poem was so beautiful, good luck Michael!
I loved the Christmas Three song.
1:08:09 - Brilliant puzzle!
18:13 Oh no, the return of Simon's most dangerous pencil-marking habit of just deleting all the pencil marks and re-marking with all the options, losing useful narrowing of options previously done
He fixes it at 20:14 for anyone screaming 😂
Yes, he does this a bit too often for my comfort too, with corner pencil marks in particular; although, he doesn’t wipe out centre pencil marks too often just to replace them again with more centre pencil marks! His ‘grid memory’ is often surprisingly good even when he does this - although he does occasionally losing efficiency, particularly given his scattergun approach to basic sudoku in general. For a beginner to intermediate solver (like me), it is not a habit I would recommend we emulate. :)
22:29 for me! Was nervous by the semi-long episode length, but got it done relatively smoothly!
_"Dinamic fog"_ is not an appropriate way to describe the innovative _"fog of where"_ introduced by *James Sinclair.*
Standard fog is not static. It moves away very quickly when you place correct digits, and fog of where does the same. The only difference is where it lifts, not how swiftly it reacts.
I would call it *smart* or *selective* or *remotely controlled* smog.
OMG!!! What a wonderful poem from Michael to Jenna Marie!!! And to have Simon with the dulcet tone voice read it to her!!! I hope we will hear the wonderful answer soon!! Also - great to have a foggy puzzle and Simon back live and well!!! Oh and happy birthday Michael!!
Great to see you my friend. Happy holidays. Hope you have been well❤.
The poem was exquisite indeed and Simon certainly did it justice😊😊
Simon with fog is a match made in heaven. Splendid to have him back for us "live" 😊😀😁
@ Also hope you are well and have happy holidays!! ❤️❤️❤️
I remember solving this - it is beautifully conceived.
Fog of war is my favourite puzzle type.
I had so much fun with this one! The cage shenanigans felt so stupid in truly the best possible way
@45:26 Why can't the bottom digit not be a 2? Or why can't the middle box digit not be a 7? I can't see it at all!
At First I was also surprised. But there‘s already a 7 in the middle box. Just Sudoku. 😊
Never been so early! Love your channel!
What a fabulous puzzle.
44:21, got stuck a lot of times. That 8 cage in box 7 did a lot of work that took me forever to see.
Finally a Christmas Three again ♥
26:48 this is true; you can see it in the bottom right
You know the video is going amazing when Simon is colouring!
39:05 for me. That was some pretty cool logic in the top left. I feel like I dialed in on what it meant decently fast.
EDIT: Also I wonder what the intended path was later on. I was able to use uniqueness to solve the 2 15 cages (they can't both be 6+9 because they'd make a deadly pair and none of these rules can break a deadly pair). Man I love when uniqueness lets me skip steps. It feels like accessing a late game area in a video game before you are supposed to get there and grabbing some massive xp or late game gear.
I don't know if it was intended or not, but I kept making deductions here and there in the puzzle without a logical path, maybe I didn't think hard enough about the new information I had or I missed some clever and deep deductions that make the puzzle go for a less bumpy path. Nonetheless, I ended up in 29:22, good time for me.
Good to see Simon back again, not just prerecorded! 👍
Glad to have you back! ❤ That 1 in box 8 was screaming for a very, very long time 😂😅
Loved that puzzle. Never seen a more interesting column 3! 37:11 here.
Finished in 42:43 with help from the video. Pretty good!
"we have never published a puzzle that has two solutions"
I'm pretty sure it's happened at least once, but it wasn't due to uniqueness issues
Early today - and a fog of war no less, what a treat.
39 minutes for me. Really great video. Love fog of war
Brilliant puzzle.
43:15 I would never shout about that, Simon. Maaaybe about the 3-4 pair in the same columm, but only a little
Happy birthday, Michael, and congrats on your daughter! I hope she says yes!!
26:32 for me.
If the rules included the statement, “This puzzle has a unique solution,” would you allow yourself to use uniqueness to disambiguate?
I'd love to see a Q&A style interview with Simon and Mark where they ponder questions like this!
I remember doing a puzzle once where it was explicitly stated in the rules. Not only the fact that it had a unique solution, but that you had to use it to be able to solve the puzzle. So if it's stated like that, yes I would use it. Otherwise I would assume it has a unique solution but not use it.
Yes, and it has been done. There was a puzzle that explicitly required you to use uniqueness to solve it - "Killed them with Uniqueness" by AFrayedKnot on 27 June 2021 - which was an absolutely fantastic puzzle, one of those ones that just has you laughing your head off as you solve it, well worth checking out.
Such a fun puzzle!
it's been a while since I watched CTC. I did see the original "dynamic fog" as you called it. Sounds like there have been more.
Same here, started watching again a week ago.
Enjoying these dynamic fogs.
There's a video titled like "Breakthrough in Fog" 3 weeks ago, it all started there.
To be honest, sometimes i don't see the conclusion he makes. Why the 1 on the first row above the 5? At 24:39 oh now i see it because of the 3 in the top row.
40:21 for my time. Good use of the fog to interact with the geometry of the killer cages. This gave rise to nice logic. Pleasant puzzle.
63:59 because it took me *way* too long to realize that the digit in R4C1 had to be in the 8 cage in box 7..
00:45:33
Is simon back? Or is it one more pre recorded video?
My tired brain took 83:03 to solve this.. But hey, it's a solve!
Nice puzzle. 37:11
Awesome!
Très bien 👌
36:03 for me.
how many people were completely thrown off by the "clue" being inside "" in the killer rules? :)
You didn't tick at the end
O Christmas 3!
20:55 why does he assume that the 16 extends into box9? those could have been 2 different cages. There is no rule that says that cages cannot overlap. Either he is working with a different set of rules than us or he is making a giant leap of faith here.
It isn't stated, but isn't it a standard rule that cages don't overlap?
It's like cage furniture. It's only convention that means a cage boundary in one cell means the cell on the other side of the boundary isn't in the same cage that has done a tight u-turn. By similar convention, cages never overlap.
As far as I know a cage in a killer sudoku can never overlapp with a other cage. It's common knowledge if you have solved a killer sudoku before!
There's also no rule saying the cages CAN overlap.
Solved it without help from the video.
18 minutes for me
35:33 for me