So excited to see this one solved here. Thanks to everyone who tested and recommended it. During the setting, I decided early on to try out the rule that restricts line movement and then instantly found something that made me want to keep that rule. I was very Impressed how powerful the pseudo rule is which I used for the first time with this puzzle.
I loved this puzzle. I'm realizing I'm almost as good at solving as Simon now! My only remaining weaknesses are the break-in, the middle part and the end. The rest I'm pretty good at!
@@Aetheraev never thought I'd get a reply like this two months later 😅 but for the record cahunas (or variations of that spelling) can also mean testicles
@@HitchHitchHitch Haha fair, I didn't notice it was months old. But that spelling is only by mistakenly conflating the two words (especially the two phrases "big cojones" and "the big kahuna"). It's (arguably) an eggcorn like "for all intensive purposes" or "to pass mustard".
This is the kind of puzzle that makes you feel like you're almost in conversation with the setter; like there's a give-and-take, back and forth as you solve it. Do you know what I mean? So good.
Outstanding piece of work... a classic gdc zipper + fog masterpiece. What a brilliant way to use that pseudo rule... as soon I realised what you'd done with forcing where the middle of the long line must go, I let out an audible gasp. And having a given digit on it as a prize seemed witty and appropriate :) Thoroughly deserved feature
Having seen the rules, I didn't think I was in a fit state to solve this on my own. Even after getting the first couple of digits, I still didn't think I could. But I'm _so_ glad I persevered. This unfolded spectacularly. Pyrotechnics of logic!
18:05 I feel like Simon skips a necessary step here, though it's a simple one-the cell in question does indeed have to be an 8 IF its counterpart is also natural (the missed simple step is to note that its counterpart would also have a 15 value if shaded and so would repeat the 1 in box 9)
ya something similar happened at 15:51 regarding r7c9. while it's blue, it's counter part might bot be. so marking it as a 7 or 9 was not valid yet. if we try to make it's counterpart orange, we do get into a contradiction right away though as it's value would be either 16 or 18, and require r7c9 to be a 0 or -2. since the counterpart of r7c9 is also blue, now we can say that they are a 79 pair.
This!! I had the same doubt at this part of the video (assuming bth sides of the zipper are "natural") and paused to ask for clarification in the comments.
Simon did not miss the step - he just did not describe the logic. It was obvious that if the counterpart was not natural it was 15 and would require that cell to be another 1 in box 9.
@@mstmar How could its counterpart not be a natural 79? If it was not natural it had to be equal to 16 which cannot work. Simon does not always describe every possible obvious deduction. It was clear to me watching the video why it had to be a natural 79 without him explaining it precisely.
Finally I did it after 1h30 ! I usually don't manage to finish them but this one had a really beautiful balance between all the rules. Congrats to gdc !
you don't want the conflict checker on, but you want fog to clear even when it shouldn't. In a way the fog is kind of like a conflict checker, but not a grid wide one.
I think this is a key reason why some people don't like FoW puzzles (it's certainly * not * because they "don't understand it" as Simon has said). Simon's giddy excitement every time he gets a digit right to clear some fog makes it seem more like a ring toss carnival game than a sudoku puzzle (which, I will admit, is kind of endearing). FoW gives the setter and solver another tool to use, which adds appeal, but there are drawbacks. It's a matter of taste - and I resent any claim that it's a matter of ignorance.
@@RollcageTV personally I have no qualms about the conflict checker. Hell a lot of the time I pencilmark 1-9 in every cell first thing and then eliminate. It works better in the CTC app than sudoku pad. CTC if you tap 1-9, it will highlight all the cells. In sudoku pad it won't do anything. There is no way to show me all cells with a 1 candidate or placed digit. I do love FOW though.
Simon never worries about his logic in non-FOW puzzles so I wish he would stop worrying EVERY TIME HE DOESN'T CLEAR FOG! He is a genius so just stop it already! LOL
I finished in 82 minutes. This was a beautiful puzzle that required a lot of thought at each step. I think my favorite part was spotting that r6c9 had to belong to the zipper in column 6 in box 8, which at first looked impossible. I greatly enjoyed this one, but I did have to concentrate out of fear of messing up. Great Puzzle!
Absolutely amazing. I had an idea of authoring a combo Fog of War and Ying Yang ... I did a quick search and found that it's already been done ... but this rendition is truly wonderful!
Yes!!! This is two puzzles in a row where I didn't use the checker early or any help from the video! Let's go!!! solved in 76:49!!! I love fog and yin yan puzzles a lot. I actually thought this puzzle was quite hard at times and we got a pretty rare yin yang setup which was fun to realize! I almost didn't attempt this puzzle because my mind really struggles with "lying cells" or pseudocells lol.
Normally I would only try the featured sudoku myself if the video is around 30 minutes. I am so glad that I decided to try this nevertheless. And to my surprise I didn't get stuck along way! This might be the most satisfying sudoku I've ever solved!
This puzzle was absolutely amazing! I was able to solve it in just about an hour and could not wait to watch Simon solve it and discover all the little things! I had to pause at 29:00 though. Now I want to know what the third secret of yin yang puzzles is!
Sheesh. I couldn't understand the directions so I had to watch until you explained it. But then I was able to solve on my own from there! I'm terrible at sudoku so I'm pretty impressed with myself. Incredible ruleset!
Super excellent puzzle. Difficult but remarkably approachable. The fog does a LOT of work- I suspect I wouldn't be able to do it if it had been uncovered from the beginning.
I am much closer to the CTC times on fog of war than the conventional puzzles. Simon and Marc have a better grasp of where to look for the next clue. Fog of war eliminates many of the fruitless options. Rather than fog it's more like a pointer for what to concentrate on.
It now looks like a nine-tails instead of a dog. Also the mirror behind you makes it look like you took a picture of a ceiling lamp and put it on the wall behind you which I find amusing. Nicely done on the puzzle Simon!
From the video length I thought I wouldn't be able to solve this one, but I eventually got it in 50:32! It was tricky but a lot of fun, and I never felt too stuck.
Another great one! It was a long solve but it didn't feel extremely difficult (not a walk in the park but not grueling hard either). Once more the fog really helped to focus on small areas of the grid, allowing the logic and rules to really sink in for a very smooth solve!
This is a great puzzle. I'm glad to see Simon solve it, I wanted to see his reaction to it. Specially to that one amazing cell he referenced in the title.
Finished in 39:13. Lovely interaction between the zipper, yin-yang and shaded value ruleset which lead to a somewhat straightforward solve as long as you were progressing all those rules fairly equally. Fun puzzle!
28:54 Simon says he knows 3 secrets to yin yang. 1) no checkerboards 2) only 1 change of colour in the perimeter ... anyone know what the 3rd very complicated secret is?
So curious what it might be. He said it hasn't been necessary yet on the channel so hopefully a setter can make a ying yang that forces him to use it ;)
Not sure if this is what he means but there are some corollaries of the checkerboard rule. For example, if O, X represent the two different shades and - represents a blank cell O - X O - O The top middle cell above must be X. - O O O - - O - O The centre cell above must be X.
I saw the doggie and was thinking, "Simone should mention the doggie" and then he mentioned it. I don't know how to explain the type of chemical hit that gave me to have a thought and then Simone mention that thought and it be unrelated to the concept of solving a puzzle XD
This was a very interesting ruleset, though I struggled to keep it straight in my mind and had to backtrack a couple of times to fix errors. But I still feel like it's a puzzle type I'd like to see more of.
38:33 finish. This was so much fun. I drew diagonal lines to help keep track of the cell totals, with each line step being a difference of one. It may not have made things quicker, but it definitely made it easier to compare cell totals for potential shading. An excellent puzzle!
I don’t know if this was said or not, but this has been the closest finished solution to Simon’s yin-yang example of an E, when he’s explaining the rule. Might be a bit curvy of an E, but pretty close.
Great puzzle with some new twists and logic to be found. Fairly approachable. Took 54:41 to finish including some dumb sudoku gaffes at the end that added a few minutes.
Very fun puzzle at 26:11 I figured out the 2 lines didnt belong to eachother by realising the only cell the middle could be in would be a pseudo with 1 higher then the orange line, therefore the blue would have to be 1 which wasnt possible with the 1 already being in the grid
I hope Simon will use hexadecimal notation in future. Like 10 is A, 14 is E. Then he could still use corner marks with actual numbers. Also it is easier to write down one letter instead two corner marks for 14
while that is absolutely true and maybe a good shorthand for someone using it often, for me it would be counterproductive since i would know quicker that row 6+column 8 = 14 than figuring out what number E equals to. having said that i still would have prefered it over simon's corner marks since a mix of pseudo-cell and "real" corner marks was too messy for me personally
Wow, it took me "only" 1 hour longer than Simon. Maybe he is too relaxed on his holidays 🤣 or I had a push in intelligence over night 😂 I suggest it was the former, as usually it takes me days to solve a 3 star sudoku 😅
It would probably help you if, whenever you find that a line circle is a pseudo value, no other cells that share the line on the same diagonal or higher can be pseudo cells. Take for instance at 47:36 the example of R5C5. The line passes through R4C6 and it is on the same diagonal as R5C5. R4C6 therefore cannot be pseudo as it would equal the value given to R5C5 and you'd have to put a zero on the line. My point is that once you find such logic that is ALWAYS an impossibility, you should hammer it home that any time you find a pseudo cell in a circle, you can immediately color all cells on the line that are on the same or higher diagonal, blue.
At 18:06 i dont think the 8 is justified because simon's doesnt consider r9c6 being pseudo and r8c9 being natural. Of course this isnt actually possible because it would mean the natural is a second 1 in box 9
The start of this puzzle almost felt miracle-esque after reading the rules and seeing the grid yet the linearity of the logic prevailed. Also: Does anyone else find it really difficult to see the purple lines against the grey fog? Not sure if there's a way to adjust the colour or settings to make it easier to see....
45:14, I felt like I started reall fast (the line that ends in r8c6 blew my kind when I figured it out), then got stuck for like 10 minutes trying to figure out how the regions went in boxes 1 and 4.
I’m oddly amused that there is exactly one cell in the grid where a pseudo cell on a line contains the digit it’s pseudo cell is contributing to its zipper line.
Not sure if that was mentioned at the beginning of the video, but what is a "sudo cell"? And why the hedgehog switch to orange and blue for shading after nearly always using dark grey/black and green in the other videos? and "perhaps it's something else to think about" at 39:10 - no it isn't. it's exactly the same question but for the other side of the line. This happens quite often that you take a look at one half of a situation, get nothing and then (probably assuming the logic is symmetric) not investigating the other half.
explanation for pseudo cells starts at 9:00 and imho it was a good choice sticking to pseudo since "well this cell has to be shaded because if it's unshaded it's value is x and then this shaded cell is not shaded and this other one gets shaded instead..." you get the gist, it gets confusing. to me at least.. considering the colors i think simon just likes using orange/blue since they are (supposedly) the easiest to distinguish for people with color vision deficiency
I took a brief look at the rules, and I'm confident this will be a puzzle that's more fun to watch than to attempt. Good for Simon, since most of the time when I do the puzzle, I never bother to watch the video. ;P
Well, i solved the puzzle but I'm not sure what the special cell was. It was a really good puzzle, it seems unfair to say 1 digit was better than the other 80.
If anyone sees this. I have just recently started to get into these beyond just soduko rules sodukos. In this puzzle why did the first number he did (1) have to be a (1) in that place. On that line the 2 last places had to be 16, the 2 next places had to be 16, why didn't the 2 places on either side of center not have to be 16. I know mathematically they couldn't be by soduko ruless, but why did those 2 places next to the center circle square not have too add up to 16 when the 2 squares 2 out and 2 squares 3 out from center did. PLEASE HELP.
I would love to give this one a go - but I can’t wrap my head around the Pseudo rule. “The value of a shaded sell is the sum of its row number and its column number.” - The way I understand this rule, the shaded cell in Row 1 Column 3 should be 4, but in the example given it’s 2. Anyone able to explain this in easier terms?
If r1c3 in the example puzzle is a pseudo cell, it counts as a value 4 (1+3) for zipper lines independent of the digit in this cell. The only way to resolve the digit in a pseudo cell is via sudoku (rows, columns, boxes).
It's very confusing that the thingies are called "shaded cells" in the description, and Simon call them "pseudo cells" in his interpretation of the rules.
They're both! They're shaded cells as per the Yin-Yang constraint, but all shaded cells are pseudo cells as per the pseudo cell constraint. If you open the puzzle, the rules have a header that says pseudo when explaining the rules. Thus it has both properties at all times. The word didn't make it to the on-screen rules in the video though.
So excited to see this one solved here. Thanks to everyone who tested and recommended it. During the setting, I decided early on to try out the rule that restricts line movement and then instantly found something that made me want to keep that rule. I was very Impressed how powerful the pseudo rule is which I used for the first time with this puzzle.
This was such a joy to solve. What a brilliant puzzle. I felt so happy when I deduced the one in box 6. Thank you so much!
This is definitely one of my favorites of all time! Is the something that you found the forced pseudos in r8c6 and r6c9? I loved the "given" 2 also!
What a fantastic puzzle that was! Thanks, gdc!
Just astonishing from you gdc..again!! Still raising the bar! Fabulous!
This is easily one of my all-time favorites. It is so, so good. 👏
I loved this puzzle. I'm realizing I'm almost as good at solving as Simon now! My only remaining weaknesses are the break-in, the middle part and the end. The rest I'm pretty good at!
Haha I read the first half of this and thought to myself, "check out the cahunas of this guy" 😅 - glad I read on!!
You're so close!
@@HitchHitchHitch "Cojones" you mean. "Kahuna" just means an important person
@@Aetheraev never thought I'd get a reply like this two months later 😅 but for the record cahunas (or variations of that spelling) can also mean testicles
@@HitchHitchHitch Haha fair, I didn't notice it was months old. But that spelling is only by mistakenly conflating the two words (especially the two phrases "big cojones" and "the big kahuna"). It's (arguably) an eggcorn like "for all intensive purposes" or "to pass mustard".
Nothing is as constant in the universe as Simon worrying about digits being wrong when they don't clear fog in an already all-cleared area.
it's my usual (non alcoholic) drinking game whenever he solves fog puzzles. interesting quirk for sure
This is the kind of puzzle that makes you feel like you're almost in conversation with the setter; like there's a give-and-take, back and forth as you solve it. Do you know what I mean?
So good.
Outstanding piece of work... a classic gdc zipper + fog masterpiece. What a brilliant way to use that pseudo rule... as soon I realised what you'd done with forcing where the middle of the long line must go, I let out an audible gasp. And having a given digit on it as a prize seemed witty and appropriate :) Thoroughly deserved feature
Having seen the rules, I didn't think I was in a fit state to solve this on my own. Even after getting the first couple of digits, I still didn't think I could. But I'm _so_ glad I persevered. This unfolded spectacularly. Pyrotechnics of logic!
Constructing a fog of war puzzle where the next digit is in a foggy cell is genius setting, frankly.
18:05 I feel like Simon skips a necessary step here, though it's a simple one-the cell in question does indeed have to be an 8 IF its counterpart is also natural (the missed simple step is to note that its counterpart would also have a 15 value if shaded and so would repeat the 1 in box 9)
ya something similar happened at 15:51 regarding r7c9. while it's blue, it's counter part might bot be. so marking it as a 7 or 9 was not valid yet. if we try to make it's counterpart orange, we do get into a contradiction right away though as it's value would be either 16 or 18, and require r7c9 to be a 0 or -2. since the counterpart of r7c9 is also blue, now we can say that they are a 79 pair.
This!!
I had the same doubt at this part of the video (assuming bth sides of the zipper are "natural") and paused to ask for clarification in the comments.
I worked it out after some thought but that tripped me up, too.
Simon did not miss the step - he just did not describe the logic. It was obvious that if the counterpart was not natural it was 15 and would require that cell to be another 1 in box 9.
@@mstmar How could its counterpart not be a natural 79? If it was not natural it had to be equal to 16 which cannot work. Simon does not always describe every possible obvious deduction. It was clear to me watching the video why it had to be a natural 79 without him explaining it precisely.
Proudly solved it by myself in 119 minutes, now to see all the wonderful things Simon noticed that I just plain missed 😂
00:49:12 for me. Might be one of my favorite puzzles in quite a while! So much logic packed into one puzzle. Loved it! Kind comment.
My time was 44:47, great puzzle. Couldn’t see which cell was the “miracle” though, until I watch Simon do it in a much more elegant way than me
Finally I did it after 1h30 ! I usually don't manage to finish them but this one had a really beautiful balance between all the rules. Congrats to gdc !
1:06:33 - That’s my new favourite puzzle - gorgeous logic all the way through. Loved it!!!
Processed uranium ore is known as yellowcake, so it's always disturbing to hear of someone eating it, with or without chocolate icing.
maybe Uranium is delicious and they just tell us it's dangerous so they have more for themselves!
you don't want the conflict checker on, but you want fog to clear even when it shouldn't. In a way the fog is kind of like a conflict checker, but not a grid wide one.
I think this is a key reason why some people don't like FoW puzzles (it's certainly * not * because they "don't understand it" as Simon has said). Simon's giddy excitement every time he gets a digit right to clear some fog makes it seem more like a ring toss carnival game than a sudoku puzzle (which, I will admit, is kind of endearing). FoW gives the setter and solver another tool to use, which adds appeal, but there are drawbacks. It's a matter of taste - and I resent any claim that it's a matter of ignorance.
@@RollcageTV personally I have no qualms about the conflict checker. Hell a lot of the time I pencilmark 1-9 in every cell first thing and then eliminate. It works better in the CTC app than sudoku pad. CTC if you tap 1-9, it will highlight all the cells. In sudoku pad it won't do anything. There is no way to show me all cells with a 1 candidate or placed digit. I do love FOW though.
Normally if I dont understand a rule it will start to make sense as I watch the video, but this one has me competely lost.
Took me 114 minutes and it was just glorious from start to finish. Beautiful all the way!
What an extraordinary puzzle. Again I needed Simon's help with the colouring at the beginning, then I enjoyed solving the puzzle on my own.
actually got through this one in under two hours I'm quite pleased with myself. Beautiful puzzle!
Simon never worries about his logic in non-FOW puzzles so I wish he would stop worrying EVERY TIME HE DOESN'T CLEAR FOG! He is a genius so just stop it already! LOL
" how on earth do you do anything" always a good start to a puzzle lol
I finished in 82 minutes. This was a beautiful puzzle that required a lot of thought at each step. I think my favorite part was spotting that r6c9 had to belong to the zipper in column 6 in box 8, which at first looked impossible. I greatly enjoyed this one, but I did have to concentrate out of fear of messing up. Great Puzzle!
Absolutely amazing. I had an idea of authoring a combo Fog of War and Ying Yang ... I did a quick search and found that it's already been done ... but this rendition is truly wonderful!
Yes!!! This is two puzzles in a row where I didn't use the checker early or any help from the video! Let's go!!! solved in 76:49!!! I love fog and yin yan puzzles a lot.
I actually thought this puzzle was quite hard at times and we got a pretty rare yin yang setup which was fun to realize!
I almost didn't attempt this puzzle because my mind really struggles with "lying cells" or pseudocells lol.
After a stressful and long day, this video was just what I needed to relax. Brilliant fog puzzle!
Normally I would only try the featured sudoku myself if the video is around 30 minutes.
I am so glad that I decided to try this nevertheless. And to my surprise I didn't get stuck along way! This might be the most satisfying sudoku I've ever solved!
This puzzle was absolutely amazing! I was able to solve it in just about an hour and could not wait to watch Simon solve it and discover all the little things!
I had to pause at 29:00 though. Now I want to know what the third secret of yin yang puzzles is!
51:01 ... a wonderful combination of ideas (including my current favorite of fog)
Nice puzzle!
Sheesh. I couldn't understand the directions so I had to watch until you explained it. But then I was able to solve on my own from there! I'm terrible at sudoku so I'm pretty impressed with myself. Incredible ruleset!
Super excellent puzzle. Difficult but remarkably approachable. The fog does a LOT of work- I suspect I wouldn't be able to do it if it had been uncovered from the beginning.
I am much closer to the CTC times on fog of war than the conventional puzzles. Simon and Marc have a better grasp of where to look for the next clue. Fog of war eliminates many of the fruitless options. Rather than fog it's more like a pointer for what to concentrate on.
42 minutes for me! Amazing puzzle.
This is a great opportunity to show row and column numbers to make the math of shaded cells easier.
Way too complicated for me but I absolutely loved watching this be solved! It's pure genius.
Took me 150 minutes and a good fraction of that was just regular sudoku at the end lol. This one was great though, really enjoyed every minute.
It now looks like a nine-tails instead of a dog. Also the mirror behind you makes it look like you took a picture of a ceiling lamp and put it on the wall behind you which I find amusing. Nicely done on the puzzle Simon!
54:58 for me. Some pretty unique yet intuitive logic, i liked it!
When doing sudoku with pseudo cells, turn on "show row/col labels" to better keep track of the value of pseudo cells.
Wow! That was fun! 108 minutes. I did let Simon help me understand the application of the Pseudo rules, never used that before.
28:19
Incredible logic, especially at the opening. Brilliant.
From the video length I thought I wouldn't be able to solve this one, but I eventually got it in 50:32! It was tricky but a lot of fun, and I never felt too stuck.
93 minutes for me after watching Simon get it started so I understood the rules. Super cool rule set
Great solve from you Simon. Fog, pseudo, yin yang and zippers. What a quartet of variant Gdc! Hope you have been having a fabulous holiday.
Was a long but smooth and beautiful ride. Loved it.
Another great one! It was a long solve but it didn't feel extremely difficult (not a walk in the park but not grueling hard either). Once more the fog really helped to focus on small areas of the grid, allowing the logic and rules to really sink in for a very smooth solve!
Fun one, thanks, came together very elegantly. Unusual for a yin-yang in that it didn't rely on the perimeter.
This is a great puzzle. I'm glad to see Simon solve it, I wanted to see his reaction to it. Specially to that one amazing cell he referenced in the title.
1:06:00
simon: this 579 triple does absolutely nothing!
*me looking at the 79 pair*: 🥺🥺
26:41 for me amazing puzzle beautiful combination of rules
Finished in 39:13. Lovely interaction between the zipper, yin-yang and shaded value ruleset which lead to a somewhat straightforward solve as long as you were progressing all those rules fairly equally.
Fun puzzle!
Was pretty tricky at the beginning, also solved it in one hour! Thx
28:54 Simon says he knows 3 secrets to yin yang.
1) no checkerboards
2) only 1 change of colour in the perimeter
... anyone know what the 3rd very complicated secret is?
3. No 2x2 of the same colour.
So curious what it might be. He said it hasn't been necessary yet on the channel so hopefully a setter can make a ying yang that forces him to use it ;)
@@ajmunns 2x2s is a ying yang rule, not a secret.
Not sure if this is what he means but there are some corollaries of the checkerboard rule. For example, if O, X represent the two different shades and - represents a blank cell
O - X
O - O
The top middle cell above must be X.
- O O
O - -
O - O
The centre cell above must be X.
@Aetheraev Would love to see a constructor out there to force Simon into using that secret one day 😇
Lovely puzzle... not often one sees a tree growing that way.
I saw the doggie and was thinking, "Simone should mention the doggie" and then he mentioned it. I don't know how to explain the type of chemical hit that gave me to have a thought and then Simone mention that thought and it be unrelated to the concept of solving a puzzle XD
1:06:12 Simon places a 579 in a box that has a 79 pair.
"The answer is nothing, I'm afraid. It's actually nothing."
😀
That was such a nice sequentially logical puzzle.
I didn’t understand this at all but still watched it
A M A Z I N G setting. Great solve. Thank u all
This was a very interesting ruleset, though I struggled to keep it straight in my mind and had to backtrack a couple of times to fix errors. But I still feel like it's a puzzle type I'd like to see more of.
Yay, I beat Simon by almost 10 minutes 🥳 What helped me greatly is filling the entire grid with the possible shaded values right from the start.
38:33 finish. This was so much fun. I drew diagonal lines to help keep track of the cell totals, with each line step being a difference of one. It may not have made things quicker, but it definitely made it easier to compare cell totals for potential shading. An excellent puzzle!
A rare game of connect the dog to the 4.
Finished in 45:54 with help from the video.
Proud to complete but strangely difficult to hold the various pseudo totals in my head. Had to keep re-adding and checking!! 🙂
I don’t know if this was said or not, but this has been the closest finished solution to Simon’s yin-yang example of an E, when he’s explaining the rule.
Might be a bit curvy of an E, but pretty close.
35:05 "I'm in a dark room, look at these 14s going down here" 💀
Bottler! Wonderful stuff, 100% enjoyment
21:44 for me. Fantastic puzzle!!
Great puzzle with some new twists and logic to be found. Fairly approachable. Took 54:41 to finish including some dumb sudoku gaffes at the end that added a few minutes.
this was one of ny fav ones in ages
Ooooh, I really liked this one. Solved in 48:41.
Horrah... love me a fog of war, or maybe I just like the instant gratification lol. I think this took me about 1 1/2 hours.
Very fun puzzle at 26:11 I figured out the 2 lines didnt belong to eachother by realising the only cell the middle could be in would be a pseudo with 1 higher then the orange line, therefore the blue would have to be 1 which wasnt possible with the 1 already being in the grid
I hope Simon will use hexadecimal notation in future. Like 10 is A, 14 is E. Then he could still use corner marks with actual numbers. Also it is easier to write down one letter instead two corner marks for 14
while that is absolutely true and maybe a good shorthand for someone using it often, for me it would be counterproductive since i would know quicker that row 6+column 8 = 14 than figuring out what number E equals to. having said that i still would have prefered it over simon's corner marks since a mix of pseudo-cell and "real" corner marks was too messy for me personally
Wow, it took me "only" 1 hour longer than Simon. Maybe he is too relaxed on his holidays 🤣 or I had a push in intelligence over night 😂 I suggest it was the former, as usually it takes me days to solve a 3 star sudoku 😅
It would probably help you if, whenever you find that a line circle is a pseudo value, no other cells that share the line on the same diagonal or higher can be pseudo cells.
Take for instance at 47:36 the example of R5C5. The line passes through R4C6 and it is on the same diagonal as R5C5.
R4C6 therefore cannot be pseudo as it would equal the value given to R5C5 and you'd have to put a zero on the line.
My point is that once you find such logic that is ALWAYS an impossibility, you should hammer it home that any time you find a pseudo cell in a circle, you can immediately color all cells on the line that are on the same or higher diagonal, blue.
Fun puzzle, just over and hour on the solve.
Absolutely lovely puzzle! Well, except for the pink lines on a grey background, that was kinda painful to read, lol
The puzzle title makes sense when you notice the final form of the shaded area 👀
At 18:06 i dont think the 8 is justified because simon's doesnt consider r9c6 being pseudo and r8c9 being natural. Of course this isnt actually possible because it would mean the natural is a second 1 in box 9
The start of this puzzle almost felt miracle-esque after reading the rules and seeing the grid yet the linearity of the logic prevailed.
Also: Does anyone else find it really difficult to see the purple lines against the grey fog? Not sure if there's a way to adjust the colour or settings to make it easier to see....
28:55 And now i want to know the third secret
I had a hard time finding good shading on top of the fog so it took me a while to solve. Let’s see how Simon did this!
42:01 for me. This one was a toughie. Very narrow line of solve.
Who else couldn't even understand this ruleset let alone go about solving it?
I love pseudoku cells! 🎉
53:45 to complete here. Some very fun logic to find out the lines, especially the one centred at r6c9
I don't think I've ever seen a yin yang with only 1 cell of 1 color in the boundary , wonder how common that is?
45:14, I felt like I started reall fast (the line that ends in r8c6 blew my kind when I figured it out), then got stuck for like 10 minutes trying to figure out how the regions went in boxes 1 and 4.
I’m oddly amused that there is exactly one cell in the grid where a pseudo cell on a line contains the digit it’s pseudo cell is contributing to its zipper line.
Not sure if that was mentioned at the beginning of the video, but what is a "sudo cell"? And why the hedgehog switch to orange and blue for shading after nearly always using dark grey/black and green in the other videos?
and "perhaps it's something else to think about" at 39:10 - no it isn't. it's exactly the same question but for the other side of the line. This happens quite often that you take a look at one half of a situation, get nothing and then (probably assuming the logic is symmetric) not investigating the other half.
explanation for pseudo cells starts at 9:00 and imho it was a good choice sticking to pseudo since "well this cell has to be shaded because if it's unshaded it's value is x and then this shaded cell is not shaded and this other one gets shaded instead..." you get the gist, it gets confusing. to me at least..
considering the colors i think simon just likes using orange/blue since they are (supposedly) the easiest to distinguish for people with color vision deficiency
I took a brief look at the rules, and I'm confident this will be a puzzle that's more fun to watch than to attempt. Good for Simon, since most of the time when I do the puzzle, I never bother to watch the video. ;P
Well, i solved the puzzle but I'm not sure what the special cell was. It was a really good puzzle, it seems unfair to say 1 digit was better than the other 80.
For me it was that very first 1. I've never felt smarter than I did putting in that 1 😋
52:53 for me, really interesting puzzle
58:17 but I forgot to keep an eye out for the title cell... guess I'll have to take Simon's word for it
If anyone sees this. I have just recently started to get into these beyond just soduko rules sodukos. In this puzzle why did the first number he did (1) have to be a (1) in that place. On that line the 2 last places had to be 16, the 2 next places had to be 16, why didn't the 2 places on either side of center not have to be 16. I know mathematically they couldn't be by soduko ruless, but why did those 2 places next to the center circle square not have too add up to 16 when the 2 squares 2 out and 2 squares 3 out from center did. PLEASE HELP.
50:46 for me.
re: 34:53 Ahem, we appreciate the comments especially when they're _kind,_ Simon; that goes for you too.
I would love to give this one a go - but I can’t wrap my head around the Pseudo rule. “The value of a shaded sell is the sum of its row number and its column number.” - The way I understand this rule, the shaded cell in Row 1 Column 3 should be 4, but in the example given it’s 2. Anyone able to explain this in easier terms?
If r1c3 in the example puzzle is a pseudo cell, it counts as a value 4 (1+3) for zipper lines independent of the digit in this cell. The only way to resolve the digit in a pseudo cell is via sudoku (rows, columns, boxes).
It's very confusing that the thingies are called "shaded cells" in the description, and Simon call them "pseudo cells" in his interpretation of the rules.
They're both! They're shaded cells as per the Yin-Yang constraint, but all shaded cells are pseudo cells as per the pseudo cell constraint. If you open the puzzle, the rules have a header that says pseudo when explaining the rules. Thus it has both properties at all times. The word didn't make it to the on-screen rules in the video though.