The Arctic Expedition: A Most Extraordinary Sudoku Grid
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- Опубліковано 5 сер 2024
- ** TODAY'S PUZZLE **
A debut on the channel tonight for Cale Schoon who has created one of the most extraordinary grids we've ever seen. Our job is to find a path for Polly the Polar Bear across the entire arctic tundra, which might sound easy but, Simon claims, isn't!!
Play the puzzle at the link below:
sudokupad.app/28k5j6fvfe
Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply. Create a path to bring Polly the polar bear (r2c2) back to her home in Snow City (r9c9). To explore the entire tundra efficiently, the path must visit each cell in the grid exactly once. The path can only move between orthogonally adjacent cells whose digits differ by 2 or more. Some cells are covered in Unfriendly Ice, which prevents Polly from turning. Her path can only change direction on a cell if it is 'friendly', meaning its digit matches its row, column, or box number. (Boxes are numbered in normal reading order.) Digits separated by a white snowball must be consecutive. Not all possible snowballs are necessarily given.
Thanks to all of you who have helped us achieve the milestone of 600,000 subscribers on UA-cam. Below you can find a link to a free puzzle pack we have curated to celebrate :)
/ ctc-600k-pack-106717179
** NEW SUDOKU HUNT BY PAWS RELEASED 1 JULY **
We've just launched a brand new competition - a sudoku hunt by Paws featuring lots of smaller-sized sudokus. It's intended to be a bit easier than usual as July is a holiday month for many of us so do have a go, especially if you're new to variant sudoku!
We've also got a new series of linked sudokus from rockratzero just out!
/ crackingthecryptic
Other treats on Patreon include:
- The Lord Of The Rings Sudoku Hunt by Blobz (and Simon's solve videos)
- Simon's solve of Sky-Skyscraper by Phistomefel has just been uploaded for our patrons.
- Mark's latest solve of The Times Club Monthly cryptic crossword
- Mark's latest series of solves of Connections, the daily New York Times puzzle based on the Only Connect wall game.
** BRAID STREAM **
You can watch our recent stream at this link:
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ALSO on Amazon: Search for “SudokuPad”
▶ Contents Of This Video ◀
0:00 Theme music & puzzle intro
1:27 Check out gdc's amazing cell!
2:11 Paws' Sudoku Hunt Released
2:40 Mark vs Connections
3:14 Rules
6:54 Start of Solve: Let's Get Cracking
▶ Contact Us ◀
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email: crackingthecryptic@gmail.com
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We also post the Wordle In A Minute videos on TikTok. - Розваги
Yellow has to be the worst color choice for the path on a snow themed puzzle
But also the funniest
Can't expect Polly to complete such a long journey without tinkling along the way.
@@TheKtunoalong the way sure but the whole way?
@@jeremyweller590 Marking the path to find her way home maybe?
@@TheKtunocould've been worse I guess. Polar bears are vicious he could've picked red for the path
Path in yellow?! Simon, no! You know what yellow snow is!
He doesn't because he hasn't eaten it.
"Don't worry, it's lemon"
Polly has bladder problems
Well, Poly needs a way to remember where she has walked...
In the words of Frank Zappa: Don't eat the yellow snow!
Simon - I don’t mind the interruptions from the young ones. I’m sure you do lose your train of thought for a few moments; but I just love that you and Mark can run this channel as work - but what glorious work it can be! - and support home duties too. Much better than being stuck in the City week after week!👏👏
At this point I’m convinced maverick is just mark, how else would he know exactly when Simon is recording
"I wonder if I've missed a trick", what worked for me was pencil marking ALL of the turn options (1-3 digits). And then as digits were eliminated I was able to eliminate turns. I used a color to indicate if a cell's pencil markings were "just corner markings" or "real digit options". It made the puzzle massively easier.
I did the exact same thing. I also colored cells that could not contain turns. When I drew in the path over said cells, I removed the color and the pencil mark as you did.
It sure seemed to help lighten the logical load when constructing the path.
Me at 14:04 - how on earth is Simon getting this 8 pencilmark? Hitting pause, even played back the video several times. Still no clue. Than: ooohhh. I think my brain finally also starts to ignore black digits 🤣
How on earth could we imagine to do sudoku so early on, right? 😂
That's when you know you've made it as a sudoku genius 😎
This looks like a fun one. But video length suggests it's not the kind of fun I'll try for myself 😂 I think I'll just snuggle down with a blanket and a nice cuppa and watch Simon do the hard work
Yellow snow 😂 love it. This is even better than purple water.
A Polar Bears weight is a great conversation starter... After all, they're enough to break the ice 🤦♂️😂
1:13:30 "A tiny win, for the good guys" had me spit up my drink 😂
I had an immersive audio experience when Simon said Maverick was about to come back and then a plane flew over my house 😅
The trick that sped things up a lot for me was marking lose ends with which digits would make them friendly, and not using corner marks for anything else.
I did the same, but with centre marks and a yellow colour to remind me they were special. Very effective to find out which turns are possible.
Absolutely loved the little interruptions. We have had bad thunderstorms here in North Carolina today as well.
👍🏻👍🏻 Fantastic puzzle, delighted to help Polly 🐻❄ get to Snow City ❄ in just under an hour - after looking at the video length, I nearly didn't even give it a try, but I'm very glad I did.
And no Simon, I don't think you did miss a trick in terms of the strategy, it just felt like being constantly distracted was interrupting your train of thought and so you weren't seeing some things as quickly as normal, especially remembering to check for adjacent digits. Your solve seemed to follow broadly the same plan as mine, so if you missed a trick then I did as well (although that certainly isn't impossible 😎)
Another turning point, artwork plucked from the snow,
Time grabs you in the frosty mist, directs you where to go...
Polly doesn't go "bum bum bum bum bum" nor "dam da dam da dam". Polly goes "weeee weeee weeee"
1:20:22 for me - I used green as a line and by the end I was having trouble reading the numbers. I should've used yellow like Simon used, despite the implications of "yellow snow".
very gratified to scroll down and see that everyone else also thought of "yellow snow" when you chose yellow for the path. polly really ought to see a vet for that incontinence
I finished in 135 minutes. This was a cute themed puzzle wit a neat ruleset. It sounds simple, but can be surprisingly complex. I had a lot of fun trying to calculate the friendly paths and ruling them out. Great Puzzle!
Simon is so sweet to his kids!! (Homework in July??)
Here in the Netherlands there are still two weeks to go until summer break as well. I'm counting down! We get 6 weeks. Not 104 days😊
fun fact: polar bears known for their high stamina
Boy, cold and terrible weather sounds wonderful right now, us in the Pacific Northwest USA are in the midst of a week of 100 degrees F (38C) 😭 I will try to cool down with this 🤣
Same here in US southeast! 🥵
1:14:50 I got to this exact position, literally every number pencil mark was the same as Simon's, and I got stuck. I at least feel vindicated that Simon had a rough time escaping it too. Thanks for un-stucking me, Simon!
the second my app refereshes. perfect timing. Time to get cracking.
What a puzzle! It took me almost two hours, but I enjoyed it very much. An absolutely brilliant and clever puzzle.
That took me 3 hours and some serious brain wrecking to solve, but what an amazing journey 🤩👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Absolutely stellar 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Very proud of my time: 57 Minutes and 10 Seconds
What a great puzzle ❤ Thought it would be super hard, but actually never got stuck. The flow is really great with this one. Bit like a fog puzzle, you always know where to look next.
I can't imagine doing this puzzle without immediately highlighting every known non-friendly cell and marking new non-friendly cells whenever digits are entered. Simon repeatedly discovers non-friendly cells he missed for ages because he only checked for them ad hoc. He really made this hard on himself by choosing not to mark anything.
I was hoping that this puzzle would distract me from the hot weather here - thankfully, I got to watch you solve it while sitting in my air-conditioned house. Definitely to hard a puzzle for me - thanks, Simon, for the impressive solve.
That's a really awesome concept
I'm sure there will be more of these in future
Took me over 5 hours, but I did it! Very neat to see Simon see what I saw. ❤
This was awesome, took me an hour and a half
YESSS ANOTHER ONEEE
Really enjoyed the video❤! You can most definitely tell Simon is tired because I was 1 step ahead of him several times, witch usually never happens (I’m a sudoku noob)
1:32:07 found a really efficient coloring method for determining which cells can be turned on
This puzzle just didn't give up ! :)
wow.... took me nearly 3 hours. I stalled HARD at the same place Simon did around 1:16:00 not realizing r4c4 couldn't be a 5 (and nevermind the slow going elsewhere :) ). I was convinced I screwed something up and kept going back to check the path logic and such. Good puzzle for a Sunday --- I wouldn't have the time for it during the week.
crazy clever setting
Finished in 70:53. Interesting logic with the unfriendly ice restricting turns and the next number on the path having to be non-consecutive with the previous number. Makes for a very interesting solve throughout.
Fun puzzle!
I would never normally attempt a 4/5 difficulty puzzle, but after watching Simon start filling out the lines, I decided to do it and definitely don't think it was difficult. It was long, but no tricky logic.
Does anyone know some other puzzles with similar rule set as this? Id love to try more.
I misread the rules and thought the path had to turn in every friendly cell. Then had to start again and eventually finished in 92 minutes.
Cale Schoon like the speedcuber (3x WR holder)? That's so cool, literally 😁
Good solve! I couldn't come up with a clever way to rule out turns besides brute forcing each possibility as I came across them. Very curious if there's a better way to do it! 71 minutes flat for me.
34:11 for me. Great puzzle, really enjoyed it!!
Interesting rules, thanks, though not sure I'd want to do another of these for a while.
56:06
That was crazy fun.
Echoing Simon's sentiments about tracking friendly cells, I decided to forgo the ability to use corner marks for Sudoku in the early stages by marking up each cell with corner marks for its permitted friendly values, deleting as a cell could no longer use them, or had been passed through by my line. This made tracking possibilities a lot easier (e.g. seeing two neighbouring cells only have the same potential friendly number, but joining them made them both corners came up as a possibility a lot, but was precluded by those marks).
Poor Polly must be positively dizzy at the end of all that. I know I am. 😂
2:16:23 - Wow! What an incredible puzzle. Really chuffed to have solved it unaided.
Great solve, very enjoyable to watch from start to finish. But it should be illegal to have winter themed puzzles in the middle of summer lol Most Canadians can relate.
Not sure how hard it would be for you to do, but when you have a longer pause you might want to just watch the last 30 seconds of the recording you have to figure out what is the situation.
As a programmer I often have similar interruption issues (bad managers being bad and interrupty) and it always helps me to replay the last few moments before the interrupt.
It is @36:03, and I'm wondering when Simon will ask, "Where does 4 go in box 7" and realize it can't go in c1r7 because c1r8 is 3, which means it must be in c3, which means in box 4, the 4 is in c1. He asks @37:33 if you're curious.
Amazing and brutal puzzle. Hard and logical throughout, but particularly brutal ending. Even after solving the path and 80% of the digits, the last handful of digits took almost 30 minutes! One of the hardest I've solved. 104:45.
if you turned back into the 8, you'd need a friendly 7/8/9. 8 is ruled out by sudoku. 7 and 9 are consecutive with 8. So it can't turn back onto the 8.
I know this drove me mad! Simon made all of these logical deductions separately, and used them for box 7, but didn't put them together whenever he thought about box 9!
Simon, you are a real Polly-Math
From around 50:00, box 2 is very restricted in terms of how many more turns the line can make. You can only use 5 as a column number and 2 as a box/row number. This significantly constrains the possible paths of the line in box 2.
42:43 he got so lucky that he thought he supposedly ruled out the 5 there after the break haha. Seems like the break did him a favor
Perhaps surprisingly, I had a much easier time with this puzzle by abandoning the usual center notation and marking each cell with the possible friendly options. When a cell was emptied of center marks, it became a required pass-through. It took a bit of lateral thinking not to take those marks as the only possibilities (until the path was known to turn in that cell), but I'd argue based on the video that it was an easier sort of lateral thinking.
I wonder if this is the same Cale Schoon as the fast rubik's cube solver.
What was the over/under for how many times Simon said Polly?
72 mins for me. Really nice puzzle. Not too easy, but at no point did I feel hopeless. Actually, the harder part was after the route, last 20-30 digits
Missed opportunity by Simon to aPOLLYgise after the interruptions.
63:08 for me. A rare puzzle where I beat Simon's time (even excluding the interruptions). I think this just suited my methodical, but uninspiring, approach of just constanly asking "can this be a corner" over-and-over again. Concentrating on those places where introducing one corner forced multiple corners, increased the chance of it breaking and being ruled out.
I did notice that at around 28:00, r8c7 couldn't be an 8 because it would force 7 in box 7 and two 9's in row 9.
Me too. I did this puzzle last week (or the week before) on LMG. It took me less than an hour. It wasn't that difficult, just takes a bit to get a grip on the rules.
Simon really needs a maverick puzzle where it passes his house on the grid
Polly goes, Polly goes, polly gone.
Beginning around 12:52, why couldn't R8/C2 been a 7? He states it's because 9 will then be consecutive with 8 in either R8/C1 or R9/C2, but why is that a problem? It's not a requirement Polly turn if the numbers are consecutive, just that she has the option to.
Edit: Never mind. Missed the rule about moving orthogonally and needing a difference of two. Sigh. My bad! Thanks for the video =)
28:55 highlight of the vid: Simon acting out as a skating polar bear.
After 82 minutes and not seeing what to do next, I looked at the video and saw my path made several wrong turns. Guess I'm just gonna watch this video instead of dojng it myself.
73:25 for me. That was a nice puzzle!
Very hot here!! We’ve at least had daily showers that help for a little while till it gets hot and muggy! And my A/C seems to be going on the fritz. 🥵 Have fun in the snow, Polly!
I will send you some of my beautiful 80ish degree weather with sun..along with people to help fix your a/c if need be.
Let's have fun in the snow and throw snowballs. 😁
@@davidrattner9 bring it on!!!!! 😃
1:21:32 for me! Lovely puzzle
It seems that the word Simon has been missing all along is "cul de sac": extending R2C6 in R1C6 would create a cul de sac in R2C5. And while Simon is quite acquainted with culs de sac, it has escaped him this time. 😄
Suck a fun sudoku! I don't know how much time it took me to solve it because I had to restart a few time because I made a mistake. But I had a lot of fun
Oh my solve was long and painful on this one............... still liked the logic of it but... the pain!
But you did have all four digits (5, 6, 4 AND 2) available in box 4 for four turns. How were you ignoring the 2 pencil marks?
34:37 ”...because we cannot use the column numbers. 1 and 2 are gone in those columns...".
He cannot turn on a 2 in column 2, box 4, because 2 already appears in the column (in box 7). He only has three digits (4, 5 and 6) available for turns in box 4, ever since 13:47 in the video.
1:24:08 for me, this was a very fun puzzle
has someone made a CTC bingo card yet? some ideas to fill out the spaces are "where is the X? And the answer is i don't know" - "Bobbins" - "The secret" - "Thats three in the corner"
Bobbins!!
I am so very envious of your horrible weather.
man I can't believe I know the creator of this puzzle from cubing (Rubik's cube solving)
Ow, my brain. I did it, but dear lord. You'd think it would get better once the path was done; I almost think it got worse.
Simon, I believe you were overly tired and distracted. Please get some good rest.
Frank Zappa song implied.
1:00:55 for me. quite hard, but still enjoyable.
I quite prefer sudokus that are not miracle sudokus ----- Not having numbers in the grid tends to make for some samey logic like thinking about high digits, or low digits, or even digits, or the ways to sum to x whereas having some clues leads to some more traditional sudoku logic--- where the digits 1-9 could instead be A-I or jumbled all around and nothing would change
I hashed out the path correctly, but boffed the number placement logic, couldn't correct my mistake. Sigh.
This video is brought to you by Polycell.
4 must be in box 7 column 3 ignored for a long time. Not sire how mich it would help.
Oof.... 105 minutes for me. Had to backtrack a couple of times when I realized I ended up with consecutive digits.
Simon’s joy at getting a 3 in the corner and disappointment when he doesn’t is just 🥹
Simon saying Polly can't move through a snowball isn't in the rules at 11:50 for the two cells r1c3 and r2c3 is false because it could be a 2,3 consecutive pair with the 3 in r1c3 and the 2 in r2c3 and I think this assumption breaks the solve, I'll edit when I've caught up to the point where it either doesn't or does.
Edit, I forgot the rule where the path has a difference of at least 2 between cells on the path making consecutive digits impossible to cross over. Large rule sets get me every time with the 1 rule I forget.
Resolve box 2
UH Oh. hour and a half. Dare I try it?
He was interrupted
@@jaymuse127 Well it took me 2:20 but I got it done!
I took that risk, too, and it took me about the same amount of time as you, but I really enjoyed it. Props to us! 👏😉
@@katiekawaiiI gave up twice. I'm really glad I picked it back up. Twice. Amazing puzzle and all the more satisfying after struggling!
the worst color choosing as always😂😂
I'm disappointed, Simon. You said, "If we do, do that."
Unless someone pooped their pants, it is never correct to say, "Do, do", you dodo.
I AM being kind! Trust me.
Follow up, should have waited. Possibly someone else pointed this out somewhere.
Simon, what is wrong with you?! How is it I'm over an hour into the video, and you haven't said to
yourself and/or us... "You can never have more than 3 turns in any one box"?
"If we do do that" is entirely grammatical. The first is an emphatic auxiliary verb and the second is the main verb of the sentence. It's not elegant, but he's not writing an essay. I'm struggling to see the kindness in inaccurately "correcting" someone's grammar, implying they're stupid, and then asking what's wrong with them.
Why would he say "you can never have more than three turns in any one box"?
For example, how is he supposed to know that, in box 6, there won't be a turn in row 4 on a 4, in row 5 on a 5, in row 6 (or any where) on a 6, in column 7 on a 7, in column 8 on an 8, in column 9 on a 9? Until options are ruled out by numbers appearing in other boxes, it seems to me that six is the upper limit on turns in any one box other than boxes 1, 5 and 9. Am I missing something?
It felt like that puzzle could have (wasn’t, but could have) been written with the idea of confounding Simon. So often Simon abandoned a positive path to do his good technique backwards-completion/fill in tasks, whereas a poorer technique generally would have resulted in an easier solve this time.