(99% Sneaky here) "Well done Simon!" "You nailed it!" "Awesome solve!" 🙂 Big shout and thank you to the CtC community members who pitched suggestions for messages to be placed on the diagonal! (You know who you are) 🙏🙏
I happened to solve it on LMD this week, but I didn't want to comment about it there because I didn't want to spoil the surprise. I had about the same reaction as Simon when I realized what was happening. And as he said, it's a very pleasant solve.
I think one of the reasons these fog sudokus are so popular is the fact that each clue leads you on to the next, taking care one of the biggest problems a solver may have, which is where to look next. This means you can have somewhat difficult puzzles without ever feeling lost.
I'm always happy when I can solve a puzzle without Simon's help. This was a great puzzle, with not too difficult, but always interesting logic. Thanks for showcasing it, Simon!
Yes. But nothing as frustrating as being stuck just after revealing "You're doing great!", grr. A hiccup that let the rest solve itself in one flow but still frustrating.
Simon’s ability to think “big picture” is so impressive. I realized the 5 has to go either on the arrow or in the circle the same way he did, but after that, I had to slowly whittle down the options, and it feels so much simpler when Simon looks at in terms of where the low digits can go
On this puzzle in particular, every single comment should be positive and kind! What a fun way to use the fog in a fog of war puzzle! This definitely seems very doable, as well, so I will put it on my list to try. Thanks, Simon!
I'm sad didn't make the connection when I was solving that the positive diagonal was saying positive things, but when Simon pointed it out that was the nerdiest moment of my day -- and my days are pretty darn nerdy,
Thank you 99% Sneaky, I really needed this today. Seeing those little comments as I progressed genuinely cheered me up, it wasn’t until I found the fifth one that I caught the pun, and that made me smile for the first time today. Thank you!
Such a fun puzzle, and the positivity of the diagonal was downright charming! It was also fun to see so many of you in chat on the SudokuCon livestream over the weekend: thanks to everyone who turned out, and especially to anyone who donated. Boston 2025, here we come! 😺💙
24:35. Initial break in came quite easy for me. Trick being 5 can't go on green. Do like that the puzzle wasn't too linear meaning more gives in the path to solve. Having a point where you break into the fog in box 3 away from all the other cleared fog was a cute touch.
This is a wonderful example of the joy of fog of war puzzles: a clean well-defined solve path that perfectly reveals a new clue for a clever mini-puzzle every step of the way.
Simon, I literally watch CTC every night right before sleep, in bed on my iPad, Specifically your videos, and have since the beginning of the channel. Thank you so much for being so consistent. I love the content and have learned so much from you!
"I've often wondered actually, if I've read out a birthday as sort of somebody's name, and then from somebody, whether anybody listening has had a birthday that day and does have a friend called that, that has found out subsequently it wasn't that friend that recommended their birthday and it was just coincidence." Many of us have said this before, and I'll say it now. I would absolutely love to have a conversation with Simon at a party. This is definitely the sort of thing I wonder all the time.
Rules: 04:42 Let's Get Cracking: 08:42 Simon's time: 31m53s Puzzle Solved: 40:35 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! The Secret: 4x (09:28, 09:34, 12:12, 22:41) Three In the Corner: 3x (30:53, 31:42, 34:47) Bobbins: 2x (19:02, 28:35) Goodliffing: 1x (37:22) Chocolate Teapot: 1x (30:44) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Ah: 16x (14:11, 16:39, 19:18, 20:44, 21:44, 23:20, 27:37, 30:17, 30:41, 30:53, 31:10, 31:18, 33:35, 37:32, 38:02, 39:25) Hang On: 8x (05:00, 24:53, 30:10, 31:10, 31:42, 32:27, 37:00, 37:46) Sorry: 7x (04:17, 12:53, 12:59, 20:38, 24:53, 35:22, 35:45) Lovely: 6x (04:14, 04:17, 19:18, 23:20, 23:20, 40:14) Brilliant: 5x (04:34, 38:29, 38:32, 41:18, 41:18) Beautiful: 4x (00:58, 31:23, 34:14, 41:10) By Sudoku: 4x (04:28, 23:54, 25:40, 27:46) Obviously: 4x (10:20, 11:13, 14:02, 27:05) Clever: 3x (23:24, 31:37, 41:16) Witty: 3x (31:34, 31:34, 38:34) Nature: 3x (08:34, 11:29, 11:32) In Fact: 2x (16:59, 27:26) The Answer is: 1x (29:02) Gorgeous: 1x (34:31) Whoopsie: 1x (15:53) We Can Do Better Than That: 1x (25:52) What Does This Mean?: 1x (24:39) Pencil Mark/mark: 1x (24:26) Cake!: 1x (02:28) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Ninety Nine (8 mentions) One (80 mentions) Black (14 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Low (21) - High (8) Even (11) - Odd (4) Higher (5) - Lower (3) Black (14) - White (9) Column (12) - Row (7) 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!
It took me 31 minutes to finish this puzzle, including staring blankly for 5 minutes before I realized i'd missed something really obvious. This is really cool. I like approachable fog-of-war puzzles, they are very satisfying.
Thanks to your comment about the 28 minute mark, I was able to finish my solve. Sometimes it is just knowing what to think about or look at, and you sparked a thought which allowed me to ask the right question!
I finished in 28:39 minutes. This was a very cute puzzle. The break-in was satisfyingly nice. I needed those encouraging messages, because my last few Sudokus I have tried on this channel haven't gone very well, so it's nice to get encouragement. As always, it feels good to beat Simon's time. Great Puzzle!
Completed in about 55 mins but I left the timer running while doing other stuff, I doubt I was less than 45 minutes overall Got a little bit hairy with the arrow in the middle box but it was more restricted than I thought The supportive messages throughout were helpful very happy to have completed a FOW because I love the format, thank you for including
@@michaelmatter1222That’s really interesting to hear: solving your puzzle reminded me so strongly of the humour in that other puzzle where the diagonal went haywire but also had little comments along the way
@@kindlin, there are some people in the comments with the 16-17 minutes as well and one even with less than 11 so my solve isn't special at all. !!! SPOILER !!! I got the breakthrough very fast - first you can see that 5 is on the arrow in box 1 (since it can't be on black dots and german whispers line). Same thing with 7 and 9 - one of them has to be on the arrow cause they can't be both on the adjacent cells if german whispers line. So we get 7 or 9 in the arrow circle with 5 and 2 or 4 on the arrow. And now the question is about 8 - it can't go on german whispers line since it's already has 7 or 9 and it can't go on arrow since arrow is filled so it goes on the black dot with 4 and now we have digits - 7 5 2 on the arrow, 1 and 9 on german whispers.
@@AleksandrYgA I went through a similar, yet slightly more convoluted thought process for my break in, but I was happy that I got all of boxes 1/9 filled in with various pencil marks by about the 20m mark. Then the 8 took me a few minutes to realize it was important, and so on. Each step is basically 1 to 5 minute to piece together as I carefully look around trying to figure out what the next possible thing might be. I rarely start flowing through a puzzle, even when it seems like you should; when I do, it's because the variant logic struck a chord with me and I see how it works together. But sudoku is consistently the bane of my solves.
@@kindlin, in some types of sudoku I make a lot of mistakes or get stuck. Maybe it's a matter of experience or maybe my type of thinking is just not suited for these types
Did this puzzle last week, was such a fun solve :) Felt good to solve it on my own and then see Simon doing the puzzle after and that I did a lot of the same logic steps! Not very often that happens :P
00:38:35 This puzzle has multiple points where I got stuck for a bit and felt like I just wasn't getting it until I started thinking about possibilities. Enjoyable though. The break in is also clever with the jumping between box 1 and 9 as each has logic that keeps affecting the other and opens other spots.
27:12 for me - I should've realized from the beginning the diagonal has to go from bottom-left to top-right, otherwise it would clash with the box 1 & 9 clone rule.
This was the first puzzle on this channel I solved, and it was incredibly fun. I was stuck at one point so I had to cheat a little bit by looking at the video, and I realised I was just incredibly dumb. Great feature, as always. I hope there's going to be more accessible ones like these.
A remarkably clever puzzle, and I loved the positive messages that kept appearing as I worked the diagonal! My time today was 17:05, solver number 6683.
4:20 I'm reminded of a story Raymond Smullyan told. IIRC, at 23 students in a classroom, the odds are about even that two persons share a birthday. He was teaching a class of about 19 students, making it rather unlikely that two would share a birthday. One student challenged this and said, "I would bet that two students here share a birthday." To teach a lesson, Smullyan went to the roster and asked everyone his/her birthday. He paused in the middle and asked two students, "Are you twins?" Oops. 27:30 One of 23 has to be in block 5 column 4, so you can't have 23 adding to 5. You must have 24 adding to 6. 30:50 A chocolate-teapot triple: it melts as soon as anything is done with it. Definitely a highly positive diagonal.
70:51 for me. After a very fast and smooth break-in, I eventually came to a grinding halt which was only overcome by a lot of pencilmarking and deductions regarding the arrow in box 5. There might have been a simpler way to do it. So I'm going to watch the video now. ;-) Loved it! Edit: I can see now that I took basically the same solving path as Simon, but I tended to be quite a bit slower with normal sudoku...
solved in 31:50. I gotta say, it took me a few minutes to remember the "boxes 1 & 9 are clones" rule after reaching parts of the grid outside of them. but after that, it was just a matter of penciling meaningful information into the grid so I'd find any cells already locked to a single digit.
Now I want a negative diagonal puzzle with messages like: "Give up!" And "Nobody can solve this!" Or a puzzle with both where the messages argue back and forth when you follow the proper solve path.
30 minutes, almost on the dot! A rare moment of beating Simon's time! ... of course I know he stops to explain things so his 'real' time would be much faster than mine. But still, as a way to establish the handicap, I'm still pleased with just being close to his time. Sweet puzzle, in all senses of the word!
Somehow I glossed over the diagonal rule-I assumed the punny meaning was the only one🙃 But as a consequence I got the “almost there” as my last bit of cleared fog, which was a nice touch.
Very nice. I loved the very positive diagonal. There was some interesting logic in this at times. The start was particularly nice. I liked the way the line in box 2 had to have an 8, and the way the arrow in box 8 worked. The whole interaction between boxes 2, 5, and 8, starting from getting the 8 on the line was lovely. @ 26:28 - "There's definitely a 2 on it" - and this is a classic example of why you keep getting stuck. You put 2 on the arrow in C5, in box 8 there's a 2 in C6, so where's 2 in C4? Right where a minute earlier you claimed you couldn't tell whether it was a 2 or a 3. This now means that 3 in C4 must be in box 5, and therefore not on the arrow, so the arrow is 24=6. All you needed to get all of that was to spend a couple of seconds following up on your deduction about 2 being on the arrow.
32:00 for me. I made the correct deduction of the 8 on the whisper line in box 2 and then had to have Simon help me see that R4C4 couldn’t be a 7. Smooth sailing after that 😊
I miss the days of the very first fog of war puzzle where you only had a handful of lives... which actually did prevent Simon from mistyping every second digit...
Note that you can do the whole puzzle without assuming the blue diagonal extends into the fog. For example, at 36:00, do sudoku on the 7 in box 4, which leads to getting a 76-pair and a 5 in box 2. And it carries on from there.
Oh I can't wait to see how Simon destroys this one. After hearing it was a lower difficulty, I actually decided to attempt one of these featured non-standard Sudoku puzzles! And you know what? In just under two hours, I got it solved on my own! Now to play the rest of the video and watch it get utterly destroyed!
Well heck. I realized with the additional black dot revealed that R8C7 and R8C8 had to be 4 and 8 because 3 and 6 didn't work. But even though it occured to me to put the 2 in R8C6 I marked the other cells as a 4-8 pair instead of putting the 4 between the two black dots. And although that did resolve itself later even without the obvious, it involved some weird set of 4-8 pairs that somehow forced the center square to not be 4 and to be 2 instead.
36m31s for myself. That's pretty close to Simon's time, interesting. I got stuck on the implications of the whisper line in box 2 for quite a while, but other than that the path was fairly clear.
I feel like Simon was being over cautious about using the diagonal, the rules explicitly say " *the* marked diagonal," which if you take them at their word arguably mean you can assume the rising diagonal is marked out the gate since the falling one is not (though not if you're being super-cautious since it doesn't explicitly say "the marked *major* diagonal"), but at very least once you can see that any cells on the rising diagonal are marked you know from the rules that that constraint applies to the whole diagonal, just like once you see half a white dot you can use that constraint even though you can't see the whole of that clue yet...
I'm inclined to agree with you, but I do remember a 6x6 fog of war sudoku from a couple of months ago that seemed to have two diagonal lines that turned out to be not quite what they seemed. Granted, the rules of that puzzle referred to them as "blue lines" rather than diagonals, but still. It's a very fun puzzle and today's sudoku reminded me of it because of the little words of encouragement you get along the way. The sudoku's called Fog X by Chameleon, check it out if you haven't. (Simon did a video on it about 4 months ago titled "The Funniest Sudoku Ever!")
Btw, much simple way to think about arrow in box 1 and digits in box 9 is to think about where 579 will go in box 9. We know 5 is on arrow cells, but then 7 and 9 can't both be on arrow, and they can't both be adjacent on a green line, so one of them is on arrow and one of them is on the line. But if you put 9 on arrow, arrow will be 4,5 and with 4 missing from the black dots you can't put 8 there, and you can't put it next to 7 on green line, so there'd be no place for it in box 9 at all. So arrow must be 7,5,2
Very nice find. I myself eventually stumbled into realizing that there was a strong limitation on the low digits 1 through 4. The arrow needed at least one. Each Kropki dot needs at least one. And the green line needed exactly one. That's all four. So immediately you know that the kropki dots have to be using 6 and 8. From there it's 1 or 2 on one side of the arrow, and 5 or 7 on the other (9 is obviously out), and the 1 breaks there because 6 and 8 have been used already. The 5 also has nowhere to go but on the arrow with the 2, since you can't make 1/4 or 2/3 after filling the kropki dots. The rest breaks wide open from there. I like how I managed to completely avoid the realization of just how limited 5 was in those boxes, since I got it via seeing the 2 on the line and not having a 3 anymore. Never occurred to me it couldn't be anywhere but on the arrow even from the beginning.
@@riluna3695I prefer my way, cause I'm very bad at counting, I know numbers 1, 2 and many 😄 But seriously, it's very hard for me to see limitations on specific type of digits (like high-low, odd-even, etc), without pencilmarking everything. So I'm glad there is a way I described, otherwise it'd take me much more then few minutes I actually spent on this, to get the first digit)
This was a fun and satisfying solve, and I really enjoyed the ‘positive’ diagonal pun… I think the pun might have been even better if the messages were on the negative diagonal instead (still with the non-repeating rule on the positive diagonal), so you would then have two ‘positive’ diagonals 😀
85 minutes for me, though I did have some bad logic finding the 5 in box 9 thinking the green line extended. Got stuck a few times not noticing some stuff like where 7 could be in box 8. All in all for a 99% sneaky puzzle it was very approachable.
Man how do people get it so fast I got 43 minutes and I was so happy to get sub 1 hour on a puzzle attempted by Simon, and here I see people have done it in around 15 minutes
I have a UA-cam playlist containing every CtC Fog of War Puzzle on the channel (I think and hope). I have not gotten around to all of them, so the playlist is just slowly growing. Time to add another to the list. Fog of War Sudokus are probably my favorite kind of Sudoku, with general Dynamic/Interactive Sudokus being the strongest second.
Nice idea. I think I will create a playlist containing all puzzles that can be solved with *placeholder digits.* I have been studying this fascinating technique since when Mark used it for the first time in a video, about two years ago, and I think its power and validity are widely underestimated, even by Mark and Simon.
@@JediJess1 Well, Mark's video was published on october 2021 and was called *Mmm ... Muffins.* That's how I learned about *placeholders.* Notice that Mark was really afraid about the disambiguation and wanted to disambiguate as soon as possible. That is not advantageous❗ You need to delay the disambiguation up to the end, whenever possible. *Unfortunately,* he was lucky and did not need a transformation. It would have been nice to see his technique. 👉 See also my comment below that video for more details.
At one point I had a column in box 2 with 81 and a pencil marked 23 and a column in box 8 with a 81 and a pencil marked 35. So, I knew if both marks turned out to be a 3, that would result in banding. This would mean a 9 with a minimum of 4 and 6 on column 5 in box 5, two of which would need to go on the arrow. So, I knew both couldn't be 3s. I even colored the 23 and 35 boxes to remind myself. This information was never useful in my solve, but i enjoyed noticing it.
(99% Sneaky here)
"Well done Simon!" "You nailed it!" "Awesome solve!" 🙂
Big shout and thank you to the CtC community members who pitched suggestions for messages to be placed on the diagonal! (You know who you are) 🙏🙏
I happened to solve it on LMD this week, but I didn't want to comment about it there because I didn't want to spoil the surprise. I had about the same reaction as Simon when I realized what was happening. And as he said, it's a very pleasant solve.
Now for a negative diagonal which makes fun of you and fills in fog as you enter digits lol
THank you for the puzzle. This was the most complicated sudoku I have ever managed to solve on my own, and the positive comments helped keep me going!
@@simonl4523 💙
@@Acylumgaming noooooooooooo!
"I enjoy the Sudokus, especially when they're kind"
😉
That'double nailed it! Great comment!
brilliant :D
Exactly 😸
I think one of the reasons these fog sudokus are so popular is the fact that each clue leads you on to the next, taking care one of the biggest problems a solver may have, which is where to look next. This means you can have somewhat difficult puzzles without ever feeling lost.
love when he figured out the "positivity" of the diagonal.
I'm always happy when I can solve a puzzle without Simon's help. This was a great puzzle, with not too difficult, but always interesting logic. Thanks for showcasing it, Simon!
Yes. But nothing as frustrating as being stuck just after revealing "You're doing great!", grr. A hiccup that let the rest solve itself in one flow but still frustrating.
Simon’s ability to think “big picture” is so impressive. I realized the 5 has to go either on the arrow or in the circle the same way he did, but after that, I had to slowly whittle down the options, and it feels so much simpler when Simon looks at in terms of where the low digits can go
I looked at where 7 and 9 can go, namely not on the black dots and not both on the green line, so one of them must be somewhere on the arrow.
I want every puzzle to have a positive diagonal with positive messages!!! ❤❤❤ this puzzle!!! 🤗
The positive messages contained in his solve is sooo perfect for this community!!
@@davidrattner9 yes!! 😊
On this puzzle in particular, every single comment should be positive and kind! What a fun way to use the fog in a fog of war puzzle! This definitely seems very doable, as well, so I will put it on my list to try. Thanks, Simon!
I really do enjoy when setters use FOW in a playful way, and this puzzle uses it in a playful and kind way.
This puzzle was SO fun to solve! It had a wonderful flow and the encouragements were lovely!
I'm sad didn't make the connection when I was solving that the positive diagonal was saying positive things, but when Simon pointed it out that was the nerdiest moment of my day -- and my days are pretty darn nerdy,
Thank you 99% Sneaky, I really needed this today. Seeing those little comments as I progressed genuinely cheered me up, it wasn’t until I found the fifth one that I caught the pun, and that made me smile for the first time today. Thank you!
💙
Hi Simon, just wanted to let you know, your positivity and explanation of the logic just always makes my day! Thanks so much!!
Such a fun puzzle, and the positivity of the diagonal was downright charming!
It was also fun to see so many of you in chat on the SudokuCon livestream over the weekend: thanks to everyone who turned out, and especially to anyone who donated. Boston 2025, here we come! 😺💙
This is the most positive puzzle I have ever seen! It does cheer me up a lot!
What a brilliant and funny concept. Glad the negative diagonal didn't have any messages on it haha
I knew exactly what this was going to be as soon as I saw the title - excellent choice for a feature, very fun puzzle with an equally fun conceit.
Managed this one without any help in 16 minutes. Proud of myself. Stunning opening. Brilliant construction.
That was a lot of fun to solve. I especially loved how there was still fog relatively close to the 'endgame' AND it still revealed a clue!
24:35. Initial break in came quite easy for me. Trick being 5 can't go on green. Do like that the puzzle wasn't too linear meaning more gives in the path to solve. Having a point where you break into the fog in box 3 away from all the other cleared fog was a cute touch.
This is a wonderful example of the joy of fog of war puzzles: a clean well-defined solve path that perfectly reveals a new clue for a clever mini-puzzle every step of the way.
Simon, I literally watch CTC every night right before sleep, in bed on my iPad, Specifically your videos, and have since the beginning of the channel. Thank you so much for being so consistent. I love the content and have learned so much from you!
A clever puzzle with a sense of humor - didn't try it myself because I so vicariously enjoyed your enjoyment during your solve!
I truly loved the break-in of this. Great job, 99%Sneaky!
I also liked the affirmations. I thought I wouldn't, but I did. Thanks!
I walked my daughter through this puzzle as I solved it this morning. Nice family time.
Aww 🧡
solved this one on my own and i think i learned a bit from it :) thanks for sharing, and now to see simon's solve!
"I've often wondered actually, if I've read out a birthday as sort of somebody's name, and then from somebody, whether anybody listening has had a birthday that day and does have a friend called that, that has found out subsequently it wasn't that friend that recommended their birthday and it was just coincidence." Many of us have said this before, and I'll say it now. I would absolutely love to have a conversation with Simon at a party. This is definitely the sort of thing I wonder all the time.
Rules: 04:42
Let's Get Cracking: 08:42
Simon's time: 31m53s
Puzzle Solved: 40:35
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
The Secret: 4x (09:28, 09:34, 12:12, 22:41)
Three In the Corner: 3x (30:53, 31:42, 34:47)
Bobbins: 2x (19:02, 28:35)
Goodliffing: 1x (37:22)
Chocolate Teapot: 1x (30:44)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Ah: 16x (14:11, 16:39, 19:18, 20:44, 21:44, 23:20, 27:37, 30:17, 30:41, 30:53, 31:10, 31:18, 33:35, 37:32, 38:02, 39:25)
Hang On: 8x (05:00, 24:53, 30:10, 31:10, 31:42, 32:27, 37:00, 37:46)
Sorry: 7x (04:17, 12:53, 12:59, 20:38, 24:53, 35:22, 35:45)
Lovely: 6x (04:14, 04:17, 19:18, 23:20, 23:20, 40:14)
Brilliant: 5x (04:34, 38:29, 38:32, 41:18, 41:18)
Beautiful: 4x (00:58, 31:23, 34:14, 41:10)
By Sudoku: 4x (04:28, 23:54, 25:40, 27:46)
Obviously: 4x (10:20, 11:13, 14:02, 27:05)
Clever: 3x (23:24, 31:37, 41:16)
Witty: 3x (31:34, 31:34, 38:34)
Nature: 3x (08:34, 11:29, 11:32)
In Fact: 2x (16:59, 27:26)
The Answer is: 1x (29:02)
Gorgeous: 1x (34:31)
Whoopsie: 1x (15:53)
We Can Do Better Than That: 1x (25:52)
What Does This Mean?: 1x (24:39)
Pencil Mark/mark: 1x (24:26)
Cake!: 1x (02:28)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Ninety Nine (8 mentions)
One (80 mentions)
Black (14 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
Low (21) - High (8)
Even (11) - Odd (4)
Higher (5) - Lower (3)
Black (14) - White (9)
Column (12) - Row (7)
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 love how positive the positive diagonal was. Great puzzle, lots of fun. I'm still something of a puzzle novice so the encouragement is great. 😁
It took me 31 minutes to finish this puzzle, including staring blankly for 5 minutes before I realized i'd missed something really obvious.
This is really cool. I like approachable fog-of-war puzzles, they are very satisfying.
Thanks to your comment about the 28 minute mark, I was able to finish my solve. Sometimes it is just knowing what to think about or look at, and you sparked a thought which allowed me to ask the right question!
That couldn't be more straightforward! Everything was given. Completed in 11m40s.
I finished in 28:39 minutes. This was a very cute puzzle. The break-in was satisfyingly nice. I needed those encouraging messages, because my last few Sudokus I have tried on this channel haven't gone very well, so it's nice to get encouragement. As always, it feels good to beat Simon's time. Great Puzzle!
Completed in about 55 mins but I left the timer running while doing other stuff, I doubt I was less than 45 minutes overall
Got a little bit hairy with the arrow in the middle box but it was more restricted than I thought
The supportive messages throughout were helpful
very happy to have completed a FOW because I love the format, thank you for including
that was so fun! the little notes were so cute! I was smiling the whole time after uncovering the first :)
I like how one witty puzzle from couple months ago made simon forver doubt how clues extend into the fog
That puzzle was a big source of inspiration for this puzzle :)
@@michaelmatter1222That’s really interesting to hear: solving your puzzle reminded me so strongly of the humour in that other puzzle where the diagonal went haywire but also had little comments along the way
@@simonl4523 The rules didn't call the curve a diagonal. They used "line" instead. BTW, the setter was Chameleon.
What puzzle was that?
ua-cam.com/video/pnfYpG4dFl8/v-deo.html@@officiallyaninja
Beautiful puzzle... I love the positive diagonal!
16:11 for me, very approachable, maybe the best one to introduce someone to a fog of war puzzles
Wow, only 5x faster than me, rofl. I'd have been interested to see you blow thru this.
@@kindlin, there are some people in the comments with the 16-17 minutes as well and one even with less than 11 so my solve isn't special at all.
!!! SPOILER !!!
I got the breakthrough very fast - first you can see that 5 is on the arrow in box 1 (since it can't be on black dots and german whispers line). Same thing with 7 and 9 - one of them has to be on the arrow cause they can't be both on the adjacent cells if german whispers line. So we get 7 or 9 in the arrow circle with 5 and 2 or 4 on the arrow. And now the question is about 8 - it can't go on german whispers line since it's already has 7 or 9 and it can't go on arrow since arrow is filled so it goes on the black dot with 4 and now we have digits - 7 5 2 on the arrow, 1 and 9 on german whispers.
@@AleksandrYgA I went through a similar, yet slightly more convoluted thought process for my break in, but I was happy that I got all of boxes 1/9 filled in with various pencil marks by about the 20m mark. Then the 8 took me a few minutes to realize it was important, and so on. Each step is basically 1 to 5 minute to piece together as I carefully look around trying to figure out what the next possible thing might be. I rarely start flowing through a puzzle, even when it seems like you should; when I do, it's because the variant logic struck a chord with me and I see how it works together. But sudoku is consistently the bane of my solves.
@@kindlin, in some types of sudoku I make a lot of mistakes or get stuck. Maybe it's a matter of experience or maybe my type of thinking is just not suited for these types
@@AleksandrYgA Your way of thinking is clearly quite adept for these types of things.
That was great fun to solve. Lovely puzzle! Thank you 99%Sneaky!
Did this puzzle last week, was such a fun solve :) Felt good to solve it on my own and then see Simon doing the puzzle after and that I did a lot of the same logic steps! Not very often that happens :P
Almost got stuck a few times, but finished in 21:04, really nice puzzle! Yet another great one from 99%Sneaky!
Took me about an hour to get it out with no help. Nice puzzle, always like the confirmation of entering correct numbers!
Finished in 17:31. Pretty straightforward puzzle. Very approachable for first time fog-of-war sudokuers....
17:15 ... a lot of fun (and I suppose I should be grateful that this didn't involve the 'negative diagonal')
Nice puzzle!
I happened to solve this one a few days ago, and enjoyed the encouragement along the way 😄 took 26 minutes
Finished in 26:45. I cannot understate how much I love these fog of war sudokus... especially when I can do them myself.
00:38:35 This puzzle has multiple points where I got stuck for a bit and felt like I just wasn't getting it until I started thinking about possibilities. Enjoyable though. The break in is also clever with the jumping between box 1 and 9 as each has logic that keeps affecting the other and opens other spots.
Nice puzzle! I thought it was straightforward and unique!
Whoaaaa I did it! Super happy that I try and got in!!! Unbelivable!! Great great sudoku. Thanks for the video (18:15) 🤗
27:12 for me - I should've realized from the beginning the diagonal has to go from bottom-left to top-right, otherwise it would clash with the box 1 & 9 clone rule.
Fun puzzle! It was a very nice difficulty level and I loved seeing the positive messages on the positive diagonal ^^
loved this puzzle, thanks to the creator and Simon!
That diagonal was very positive indeed ☺
Nice start, a bit tougher than I was expecting but in the end fairly smooth, with or without motivational messages.
Wow, 20 minutes, a truly positive experience.
All the positivity restored 3's faith in its religion, apparently.
This was the first puzzle on this channel I solved, and it was incredibly fun. I was stuck at one point so I had to cheat a little bit by looking at the video, and I realised I was just incredibly dumb. Great feature, as always. I hope there's going to be more accessible ones like these.
Lovely puzzle. Very smooth solve path. The mark of a well set puzzle.
A remarkably clever puzzle, and I loved the positive messages that kept appearing as I worked the diagonal!
My time today was 17:05, solver number 6683.
4:20 I'm reminded of a story Raymond Smullyan told. IIRC, at 23 students in a classroom, the odds are about even that two persons share a birthday. He was teaching a class of about 19 students, making it rather unlikely that two would share a birthday. One student challenged this and said, "I would bet that two students here share a birthday." To teach a lesson, Smullyan went to the roster and asked everyone his/her birthday. He paused in the middle and asked two students, "Are you twins?" Oops.
27:30 One of 23 has to be in block 5 column 4, so you can't have 23 adding to 5. You must have 24 adding to 6.
30:50 A chocolate-teapot triple: it melts as soon as anything is done with it.
Definitely a highly positive diagonal.
Over 10,000 solves in only a week! Wow, this was a fun one. No wonder it's so popular.
Oh. There's compliments on every square of the marked diagonal, isn't there? It is the "positive" diagonal, after all.
That was a great puzzle! Even this dino farmer managed it! And it certainly appeals to a cryptic crossword solver's sense of humour .....
70:51 for me. After a very fast and smooth break-in, I eventually came to a grinding halt which was only overcome by a lot of pencilmarking and deductions regarding the arrow in box 5. There might have been a simpler way to do it. So I'm going to watch the video now. ;-) Loved it!
Edit: I can see now that I took basically the same solving path as Simon, but I tended to be quite a bit slower with normal sudoku...
51:19. I loved chipping away that one.
solved in 31:50. I gotta say, it took me a few minutes to remember the "boxes 1 & 9 are clones" rule after reaching parts of the grid outside of them. but after that, it was just a matter of penciling meaningful information into the grid so I'd find any cells already locked to a single digit.
Now I want a negative diagonal puzzle with messages like: "Give up!" And "Nobody can solve this!"
Or a puzzle with both where the messages argue back and forth when you follow the proper solve path.
The latter would fit in with a Ren themed puzzle
Be careful what you wish for 👻
30 minutes, almost on the dot! A rare moment of beating Simon's time!
... of course I know he stops to explain things so his 'real' time would be much faster than mine.
But still, as a way to establish the handicap, I'm still pleased with just being close to his time.
Sweet puzzle, in all senses of the word!
Somehow I glossed over the diagonal rule-I assumed the punny meaning was the only one🙃 But as a consequence I got the “almost there” as my last bit of cleared fog, which was a nice touch.
Very nice. I loved the very positive diagonal. There was some interesting logic in this at times. The start was particularly nice. I liked the way the line in box 2 had to have an 8, and the way the arrow in box 8 worked. The whole interaction between boxes 2, 5, and 8, starting from getting the 8 on the line was lovely.
@ 26:28 - "There's definitely a 2 on it" - and this is a classic example of why you keep getting stuck. You put 2 on the arrow in C5, in box 8 there's a 2 in C6, so where's 2 in C4? Right where a minute earlier you claimed you couldn't tell whether it was a 2 or a 3. This now means that 3 in C4 must be in box 5, and therefore not on the arrow, so the arrow is 24=6. All you needed to get all of that was to spend a couple of seconds following up on your deduction about 2 being on the arrow.
Great puzzle! More of this skill level please!
32:00 for me. I made the correct deduction of the 8 on the whisper line in box 2 and then had to have Simon help me see that R4C4 couldn’t be a 7. Smooth sailing after that 😊
30 min for me. Loved the logic woth the clones.
A great puzzle. Thanks
Was able to get it in 35:42, albeit with a couple of hiccups. Figuring out the logic to break in to the puzzle was really satisfying!
00:58:09 was my time. Fantastic fog puzzle! Requires an odd bit of out of the box thinking.
Good one 🤭
Yes, I enjoyed that. Very approachable.
This one was quite approchable, but not overcomplicated. Thanks @99% Sneaky for setting it up.
Finished in 32:25, loved the positive diagonal!! 🤣
@Simon - I was the 6921th solve in 7.7 days
00:40:00 for me. I love fog of war puzzles, it's really nice to know where to look at the start
I miss the days of the very first fog of war puzzle where you only had a handful of lives... which actually did prevent Simon from mistyping every second digit...
60:36
It was SO satisfying!!!
Really enjoyed the break in on this! I finished in 36:45.
Note that you can do the whole puzzle without assuming the blue diagonal extends into the fog. For example, at 36:00, do sudoku on the 7 in box 4, which leads to getting a 76-pair and a 5 in box 2. And it carries on from there.
I love a fog-of-war sudoku that uses it for storytelling or a punchline, and this one is particularly cute :)
Oh I can't wait to see how Simon destroys this one. After hearing it was a lower difficulty, I actually decided to attempt one of these featured non-standard Sudoku puzzles! And you know what? In just under two hours, I got it solved on my own!
Now to play the rest of the video and watch it get utterly destroyed!
Well heck. I realized with the additional black dot revealed that R8C7 and R8C8 had to be 4 and 8 because 3 and 6 didn't work. But even though it occured to me to put the 2 in R8C6 I marked the other cells as a 4-8 pair instead of putting the 4 between the two black dots. And although that did resolve itself later even without the obvious, it involved some weird set of 4-8 pairs that somehow forced the center square to not be 4 and to be 2 instead.
knda nice that this design was fully solvable when the B5: reveealed the B4:blackdot.
36m31s for myself. That's pretty close to Simon's time, interesting. I got stuck on the implications of the whisper line in box 2 for quite a while, but other than that the path was fairly clear.
I feel like Simon was being over cautious about using the diagonal, the rules explicitly say " *the* marked diagonal," which if you take them at their word arguably mean you can assume the rising diagonal is marked out the gate since the falling one is not (though not if you're being super-cautious since it doesn't explicitly say "the marked *major* diagonal"), but at very least once you can see that any cells on the rising diagonal are marked you know from the rules that that constraint applies to the whole diagonal, just like once you see half a white dot you can use that constraint even though you can't see the whole of that clue yet...
I'm inclined to agree with you, but I do remember a 6x6 fog of war sudoku from a couple of months ago that seemed to have two diagonal lines that turned out to be not quite what they seemed. Granted, the rules of that puzzle referred to them as "blue lines" rather than diagonals, but still. It's a very fun puzzle and today's sudoku reminded me of it because of the little words of encouragement you get along the way.
The sudoku's called Fog X by Chameleon, check it out if you haven't. (Simon did a video on it about 4 months ago titled "The Funniest Sudoku Ever!")
It was possible to work ones way up from box 5 without assuming that the diagonal goes all the way.
Btw, much simple way to think about arrow in box 1 and digits in box 9 is to think about where 579 will go in box 9.
We know 5 is on arrow cells, but then 7 and 9 can't both be on arrow, and they can't both be adjacent on a green line, so one of them is on arrow and one of them is on the line. But if you put 9 on arrow, arrow will be 4,5 and with 4 missing from the black dots you can't put 8 there, and you can't put it next to 7 on green line, so there'd be no place for it in box 9 at all. So arrow must be 7,5,2
Very nice find. I myself eventually stumbled into realizing that there was a strong limitation on the low digits 1 through 4. The arrow needed at least one. Each Kropki dot needs at least one. And the green line needed exactly one. That's all four. So immediately you know that the kropki dots have to be using 6 and 8. From there it's 1 or 2 on one side of the arrow, and 5 or 7 on the other (9 is obviously out), and the 1 breaks there because 6 and 8 have been used already. The 5 also has nowhere to go but on the arrow with the 2, since you can't make 1/4 or 2/3 after filling the kropki dots. The rest breaks wide open from there.
I like how I managed to completely avoid the realization of just how limited 5 was in those boxes, since I got it via seeing the 2 on the line and not having a 3 anymore. Never occurred to me it couldn't be anywhere but on the arrow even from the beginning.
@@riluna3695I prefer my way, cause I'm very bad at counting, I know numbers 1, 2 and many 😄
But seriously, it's very hard for me to see limitations on specific type of digits (like high-low, odd-even, etc), without pencilmarking everything. So I'm glad there is a way I described, otherwise it'd take me much more then few minutes I actually spent on this, to get the first digit)
This was a fun and satisfying solve, and I really enjoyed the ‘positive’ diagonal pun… I think the pun might have been even better if the messages were on the negative diagonal instead (still with the non-repeating rule on the positive diagonal), so you would then have two ‘positive’ diagonals 😀
85 minutes for me, though I did have some bad logic finding the 5 in box 9 thinking the green line extended. Got stuck a few times not noticing some stuff like where 7 could be in box 8. All in all for a 99% sneaky puzzle it was very approachable.
Man how do people get it so fast I got 43 minutes and I was so happy to get sub 1 hour on a puzzle attempted by Simon, and here I see people have done it in around 15 minutes
Nice puzzle, smooth 23 min solve here
Funnily, the black dots are enough to erase 5 from arrow circle, as both 14 and 23 combinations to add to 5 eliminate all but one pair on the dots :)
Nice puzzle! Got stuck in the middle a bit but solved in about an hour
I managed to do this one! (usually I can't do them, but this one was manageable, and only took me an hour 🎉)
16:08 finish. Such a fun puzzle, and so positive!
I have a UA-cam playlist containing every CtC Fog of War Puzzle on the channel (I think and hope). I have not gotten around to all of them, so the playlist is just slowly growing.
Time to add another to the list.
Fog of War Sudokus are probably my favorite kind of Sudoku, with general Dynamic/Interactive Sudokus being the strongest second.
Nice idea. I think I will create a playlist containing all puzzles that can be solved with *placeholder digits.*
I have been studying this fascinating technique since when Mark used it for the first time in a video, about two years ago, and I think its power and validity are widely underestimated, even by Mark and Simon.
@@Paolo_De_Leva oh? Show me an example!
@@JediJess1 Well, Mark's video was published on october 2021 and was called *Mmm ... Muffins.*
That's how I learned about *placeholders.*
Notice that Mark was really afraid about the disambiguation and wanted to disambiguate as soon as possible. That is not advantageous❗
You need to delay the disambiguation up to the end, whenever possible.
*Unfortunately,* he was lucky and did not need a transformation. It would have been nice to see his technique.
👉 See also my comment below that video for more details.
@@Paolo_De_Leva I believe placeholder digits have been superseded by the colour options.
@@57thorns That's not true. *Colours* and *letters* are far less effective than placeholders.
At one point I had a column in box 2 with 81 and a pencil marked 23 and a column in box 8 with a 81 and a pencil marked 35. So, I knew if both marks turned out to be a 3, that would result in banding. This would mean a 9 with a minimum of 4 and 6 on column 5 in box 5, two of which would need to go on the arrow. So, I knew both couldn't be 3s. I even colored the 23 and 35 boxes to remind myself.
This information was never useful in my solve, but i enjoyed noticing it.