was a little late to wake up today, this was an absolute treat to watch!! found what i was aiming for perfectly :D big shoutout to jovi for helping me get the final version of the puzzle you see today, i consider this puzzle very much so set by the both of us, yall should try her puzzle negativity as well because its stunning 💫
I have to ask shye, did you use the type 3 Phistomefel ring when setting the puzzle? (ring pushed all the way out and boxes pulled in) I found it immensely helpful in spotting the logic and immediately extending it to the far corner of box 7. The cross check was slightly helpful toward the end, but Simon made it clear it wasn't necessary to finish the puzzle at all.
Another fun solve. A small part of me wishes Simon hadn't returned to the software when he found the cells that were eliminated from being red & green, but it still was fun to point out where it fell short.
Shye's classics are very quickly becoming my favourite puzzles on this channel. There's so much incredible logic built into them, with so little to work with.
PLOT TWIST: Mark's real last name is Bowman, and after a bifurcation technique was named after him, he changed his name to Goodliffe and entered sudoku witness protection.
When seemingly darkness prevails (In England, not in New South Wales) We find here on Cracking Some light that was lacking And puzzles that just tip the scales.
"It's like watching magic being performed" - *stares at a field of numbers for a minute and comes up with a comprehensive algorithm for solving a puzzle that computer could only prod with random numbers and pray to Turing*
@@dominik.peters Recently, some of the authors of the sudokult gospel (Shye, Jovi_al, and Sam Cappleman-Lynes) have named hard classic puzzles off of roller coasters and roller coaster elements. Boomerang, Cobra Roll, and Takabisha come to mind, as well as this. I'm not sure why they started the naming scheme, but it's certainly a trend
I am soooo happy to have solved this puzzle strictly logically without hints. I find these difficult classic sudokus that stump computers more intimidating even than Phistomefel's, and often resort to bifurcation on them or watch the video for hints. So I'm not at all displeased to have taken over an hour. I am particularly impressed with how the puzzle maintains difficulty after the break-in yields digits, which is not easy for a classic.
He got lucky at 35:00 when he used that incorrect pencilmarking to place a 4 in r8c9. It could still have been an 8 (until you identify r8c3 is a naked single 8 in the row).
Let's Get Cracking: 05:11 Puzzle Solved: 35:36 Simon's time: 30m25s What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! You Rotten Thing: 3x (27:37, 27:39, 32:05) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Bingo: 7x (03:33, 03:36, 03:50, 05:26, 05:30, 10:02, 24:16) Clever: 5x (01:59, 02:01, 17:27, 35:52, 37:04) Naked Single: 4x (24:45, 28:00, 30:58, 34:32) Beautiful: 4x (16:32, 21:47, 22:19, 36:55) By Sudoku: 4x (24:52, 29:43, 32:35, 33:06) In Fact: 4x (00:37, 02:51, 25:11, 26:15) Goodness: 3x (35:36, 35:43, 35:52) Sorry: 3x (09:27, 13:51, 34:59) Hang On: 3x (11:51, 21:36, 30:58) Good Grief: 2x (03:52, 07:08) The Answer is: 2x (11:09, 26:04) Barbaric: 2x (02:06, 02:09) Obviously: 2x (15:00, 26:09) Out of Nowhere: 1x (28:25) Lovely: 1x (29:31) Breaks Open the Puzzle: 1x (25:57) Fascinating: 1x (36:34) Schrödinger Cell: 1x (19:55) Bonkers: 1x (20:36) Approachable: 1x (04:45) Surely: 1x (29:07) Think Harder: 1x (15:50) Unbelievable: 1x (31:52) Pregnant pause: 1x (27:49) Marries Up: 1x (22:38) Which Means What?: 1x (17:12) Wow: 1x (28:09) Most popular digit and colour this video: Two (117 mentions) Green (6 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Even (5) - Odd (0) 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!
I managed to solve this without massive amounts of difficulty. Credit to this channel because 6 months ago I wouldn't have had a clue how to approach it.
It was a brain cracking 52:47 but I got there. I got the 89 pair in box 2 quite early on without cottoning on that the 1/2 duplets in row 2 and column 8 were a telegraph. Once I saw that, my mind went in muttering quasi-Simon mode and I encouraged myself with the occasional 'Hang on!' and 'Now, *that* is almost interesting...' - and then the peripheral penny dropped. I had reason to regret that my cooker is electric which limits the linguistic flavour of my jubilant shouts. The latkes weren't any less tasteful. What a puzzle! My logic was very similar to Simon's whose solve was the usual joy to watch.
Just posting to celebrate my first ever win against the machine- going to watch Simon do the solution now see if he did it same way I did! And thankyou- it’s only taken me about two years to get to the stage where I can do this sort of thing and it’s almost exclusively from watching your stuff! Thanks to Shye as well
King Da Ka is the tallest Roller Coaster in the World. It's located in Jackson, New Jersey. I've actually been on the roller coaster once because I live not too far away from the Six Flags its located at.
I got the same 1-2 logic but I did it bit different. I used variation of the phistomefel's. Boxes 1, 3, 7 and 9, four most center cells have to be found in box 2, 4,6 8 in row1, column1, row9 or column9 and in the 4 corners of the sudoku. This is very powerful for the solve. You can immediately notice there is something going on with 1-2 combo and even in the later parts of the solve this logic helps a lot. But yeah it still took me 50 minutes, it was a hard one.
Kingda Ka is a coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson NJ USA; it's more of less my 'local' amusement park, and I've ridden this a few times. Incredible acceleration!
When I did this today, I forgot that I'd done this six months ago or so, but no matter. I solved it anew, with no memory of my previous attempt. My Sudoku has definitely improved, thanks to this channel. There's still room for plenty more improvement. Around 9:00 you gave me the heads-up with the 12 pair placed at the center. I had already noticed the 12s in boxes 1 and 9, and placed the 12 pair at the center, but didn't make the connection on my own. I needed the heads-up. With a little TLC, I managed to place the same 12 in the top-right and bottom-left corner -- the same digit as the center. (You need to go horizontally and vertically to force it there.) I called that digit A, leaving B for the other 1 or 2. Some time later, I had to show that B was in an extreme cell of the horizontal and vertical cells. The rest was grunge, frustration, and over-pencilmarking. But I solved the puzzle. 18:10 In place of using 1 as a help to visualize, use A for the number in question and B for the other number. Also IIRC, a B in any cell other than an extreme cell of the middle row forced B into both extreme cells of the middle column. 28:20 The 12 pair out of nowhere, I placed as A and B (not an AB pair). Using A and B, I could fill out the entire middle block and the entire middle column except for a 7B pair in the extreme cells.
I actually managed the jovi_al puzzle in 38:29. It does require looking ahead a bit, but since there are a lot of squares with only two options, I didn't find it too difficult to visualize. Very satisfying puzzle to solve, some beautiful logic in place in my opinion. SPOILERS AHEAD: basically the break in is that if you place a 9 in either r7c4 or r8c4, it forces all the cells in box 2 and 8 in such a way that there is no room for a 5 in column 3 (r9c6 becomes a 5, ruling it out of r9c3 and r2c5 becomes an 8 forcing the 8 in box 1 into r1c3, thereby eliminating the possibility of placing a 5 in column 3). I wonder if this is what Mark found, because I cannot believe that Simon would not be able to find this.
Interesting solution. I solved it by spotting a chain involving 5's and 8's. Basically if r1c3 is a 5, r9c6 is a 2, and if r1c3 is not a 5, r9c6 is also a 2.
I solved the jovi_al puzzle in 11:28 without seeing Mark's trick :-). Found relationship between 5 and 8 in box 1 reflecting on position of 5 in box 8 and it was smooth sailing from there :-)
Oh my god! I managed to do that in 31minutes without even sneaking at the video (I did see that it was one of this computer knows nothing puzzles) and I did remember you saying last time one of these came up that the 1&2 was a hint from the setter so once I spotted that middle cell I started with the colouring. What a puzzle and amazing that I could solve it - this channel has taught me so much (I mean, extreme sudoku solving isn't an amazingly transferable skill but I'm happy!)
Simon needs to just solve using colors as if this was an alternative rule set sudoku. E.g skip the “assume green is a 1” and just plot which cells can be green and which can be blue (blue being the compliment of green in this case)
I think this is probably the first time i have EVER solved a puzzle quicker than Simon! And a classic sudoku no less (which I typically am terrible at!). I like to think it will be a recurring trend but I am far more realistic than that! Nonetheless, I am taking this small victory!
Great puzzles. Take a bow, Shye! Great solve. Take a bow, Simon! And I am so proud that I was able to solve the second puzzle AFTER WATCHING Simon's solve of the first puzzle. Without Simon's miraculous solve of the first puzzle, I would never ever have been able to do solve the second one.
Perfect puzzle for December 1st, with those red squares like the points on an advent crown. Also nice to end with a practical example of "nobody puts 9 in the corner". At least, not THAT corner.
This sudoku took me about 35 mins to figure out, but the second one, I thought I was going to be majorly stuck, but I managed to get it in 20 mins and 19 seconds! Once I figured out 2 of the 9's everything just fell into place, one digit at a time. (it was a little hard for me to see because I had to color in some cells to not confuse my pencil markings). For something so hard, I was impressed with myself on the time, and no hints with that! I think I just miraculously came across solution as a beginners luck thing, but watching enough of these videos gave me lessons in different techniques I don't typically use, and I happened to decided to use one of the harder ones for me to usually see (I'm half blind) for the Jovi_al's sudoku and would have never used it if I hadn't learned it from this channel.
Yes, for the second one the break-in doesn't seem as complex to me as is implied. It was certainly hard to spot, for me, but not harder than usual for this channel. It revolved around noticing that having a 5 in row 3 column 5 forced 5s in r9c6 and then r1c3, leaving boxes 1 and 2 both requiring an 8 in row 2. So we can exclude 5 from r3c5 and the rest of the solve is fairly routine.
@@GeorgeFoot sounds like a different approach than I took, interesting. I'll have to give it another look to see how you saw that. ^_^ For anyone curious, I pencil everything in at most of 2 options in each box, then I went through each line (vetically/horizontally), and colored by their number where 1-9 can only fit in two spots, and saw that 9's made a weird pattern. there was only two spots in I think row 2 and 8 that could have two solutions for 9 to go, and the other options were in fact shared in column 5. Hopefully that can assist others if they see the pattern that way, and decipher from there. ( I don't typically scan the rows/columns like that, and this channel was the place that taught me that technique, but I rarely use it because it's hard on my eyes to see, hence the coloring option to help make the noting a little easier to stand out).
was double checking how I did it, and I forgot hey didn't share column 5, they were offset because box five column five is a 129 triple. opps, sorry if that threw anyone off, but there is a pattern there if you look, I don't know if I can explain how I figured out the placing of the 9's, but those 2 9s were my first digits. Just tried the 5s route, yeah, that's a lot easier to see. lol didn't even noticed that, when I colored in 9s could only show in r2c6, r2c8 and r8c2, r8c4, the pattern stood out much easier than 5s, but processing it was much more difficult, but once you showed the 5s, yeah, so much easier to plop everything from there. still 20mins and 23seconds but I lost some time trying to see the route with the 5s, but once I saw what you meant with the 8's yeah, it just flowed much more smoothly than my route. Intriguing.
@7:53 Simon mentions Shye telegraphs what she's trying to get you to see. That made me notice that in box five the 4,7, and 8 are pointing towards box three. Then I saw that the 1 and 2 in both boxes one and six also point into box three. I don't know if this would still have been solvable without the arrow, but that was 100% what clued me in.
36:37 for me for the first puzzle. That was a fascinating solve! Spoilers for my solve path below: SPOILERS 1. I noticed right away that this puzzle reminded me of another one some time ago, where r5c5 and r1c9 had to be the same digit, and had to be either a 1 or 2. Sure enough, the same was true for this puzzle, and both of those digits had to be a 1 or 2. 2. However, r9c1 also had to be the same of those digits! Symmetrical reasoning at work. 3. Then I looked around, and eventually noticed that r9c5 and r5c9 had to be the other of 1 or 2. 4. That meant I was able to cross certain other digits off, and get some numbers in the ring. 5. Then, I used the numbers found, the given digits, and the phistomefel ring, to solve.
A shame that the solve from 35:00 onwards wasn't logical due to the 8 vs. 9 misclick a bit earlier. But at least all the hard stuff had already been done by that point.
wow, l actually could find all those tricks in 16 mins, than ofc couldnt find that naked 5, but actually feels good to do something almost as fast as Simon
29:46 for me - it took me almost 20 minutes to figure out the 1&2's and then it fell into place from there. Wait, did I get it faster than Simon? I must be having as especially clever day today.
havent had this much fun on a regular sudoku in a while !! I was set on just watching the video but as soon as you drew the square in box 3 I became interested and worked everything out myself...I had an easier time than you by cleaning up my colours early one and have just one for 12 in the center/one for the other 12
for some context, king da ka is a roller coaster at six flags great adventure. it’s pretty simple-you get pushed up a huge slope, go down a vertical slope, then go over one more hill before it ends. it’s famous for being very tall and very fast, though i don’t think it’s the tallest or fastest any more. worth a visit if you’re ever around new jersey!
wow, my first CTC sudoku i solved mostly myself! i needed a bit of help with the 1/2 logic to spot it but from then i managed to do it myself! at first the pattern of how the numbers are placed reminded me of Phistomefel and i wonder if you can actually use that there. even though i needed that liitle nodge to get started on solving the puzzle i feel like this is a GAS for me. good job shey!
I found exactly 3 numbers Andrew's solver couldn't find - the 9s in B4 and E6, and the 3 in F6 - then I gave up, because I couldn't find the pattern. lol Still proud of the fact I could find 3 numbers the computer couldn't. :)
12:36 for me. Probably the first time I don’t struggle with a hard classic sudoku, I hope it means I’m getting better at those as well. Edit: 14:33 on jovi_al’s one. Didn’t find a single piece of logic, just tried for a few minutes and then bifurcated. I’ll go back to see if I can find anything at all.
I wouldn't call jovi_al's puzzle monstrous difficult. I just made my usual pencilmarking and checked where would I put 3. I marked a solution, then I marked where would I put 5. Then I noticed I couldn't put in 8, and that solved my cells in the middle. After that, it was normal CTC sudoku.
Very interesting. Similar logic to a couple of Shye's other unsolvable puzzles, without which I wouldn't have had a clue. It took me longer to spot the full 12 interaction, but after that, possibly because I'd spent longer pencil-marking, it seemed to finish easier than Simon's.
Thank you for both links. I started with jovial. The middle columns - I really appreciated the careful construction. Of course, I didn't do any justice to the puzzle. After sorting the options in the middle column, I sort of half argued 9 in box 2 (I.e, bifurcated based on half baked logic) and it worked out without any issues. So in some metric, the puzzle is one digit away from collapsing. Apologies and my thanks to the constructor.
There is a square r9c3 that can only be a 56. If it's a 5, r8c5 becomes a 5, and r3c6 becomes a 5. If it's a 6, then column 3 now has a 49 pair, therefore r4c3 is an 8, therefore r2c1 is an 8, therefore r3c5 is an 8, therefore r3c6 becomes a 5. I hope that's correct.
@@Arcessitor I solved it similarly. I would say the weak squares in the puzzle are r3c5, r3c6 and r9c6, and there was multiple paths to solve it involving those squares. I followed a chain with 5's and 8's from r1c3 via r2c1, r2c5 and r9c3 in my case. What I did was look at r1c3 and if r1c3 was a 5, r9c6 would be a 2. If r1c3 is not a 5, r9c6 is also a 2.
Kingda Ka is a roller coaster at a Six Flags in New Jersey, I think it’s the fastest roller coaster in the world. I believe it was named after a tiger from the same theme park.
I did this as 1-2 coloring puzzle. You could eliminate 12 from top center like that. I don't know if that was bifurcation or not but it helped to solve the puzzle.
30:55 Here you didn't spot the fact in the 2nd 3x3 box that the 1s and 2s were blocked into the 3rd row, which will give the 8 and 9 in the 2nd row! And it would've helped you with the coloured boxes too!
Looks like a mistype in box 9 (469 for 468) led to 4 being placed prematurely, forced by the 69 in the row. But I could see that if it were correctly marked, the 4 in column 3 would have taken care of it anyway.
30:35 Simon: 'I'm tempted to look at row 2 or box 2' - Yes! 12 pair! Simon: '9 here and let's ignore the box for now' Mental power was probably drained by finding that awesome 12 pattern that I would've never found.
We've had enough of these videos now that the makers of that sudoku solver need to get working on an update! But that's the power of the soduku community for you. :)
You probably could have finished it faster if you remembered the 1/2 restriction in box 7 when you were flushing out box 4 & 8 but amazing job as always
I solved the Jovial puzzle in 41 minutes, absolutely a mess of pencil marks of every potential digit before I could work on narrowing down the first digit.
Brilliant solve. Tremendous logic, but not too difficult to follow. I did wonder if it would muck things up when you pencil marked 459 instead of 458 at the end.
10:00 If you make r5c6 a 1/2 then it forces a 1/2 pair in column 7 of box 6, leading to a 1/2 pair in column 9 in box 3 and you must now place a 1/2 in r1c5. This locks 1 and 2 in box 7 to be in column 1 AND on row 9 but there is only one cell that conforms to both rules and it can't have two values.
It took me close to two hours, but I cracked it in the end. I spotted the basic logic of the 1s and 2s rather quickly, but unfortunately failed to fully grasp the nature of the virtual pair cross-interaction, meaning I had to do a lot more long-handed elimination work. I also made a premature assumption on what went where, and had to backtrack and struggle for another long stretch before finally figuring out the break-through. I can't say my exact time because I played with it on pause for a while.
34:56 4 8 double in row 8 is resolved to 8 in column 2 and 4 in the "469" cell. If Simon hadn't misclicked he would have certainly seen that anyway. The way he eliminated that 9 that should have been an 8 had me worried though.
When I tackled this puzzle, I had an intense sense that box 2 would have eventually come to a 789 triangle at the top. I put it in and made a lot of progress, but I then watched Simon solve and was pleased to see I was right, but intuition is not logic.
If Shye can create these and you are able to solve them you both are "other-worldly" I can't even follow your logic train as I'm listening let alone figure it out without the training wheels.
Pausing the video to see if anyone thinks that is a cheat by looking at the other screen a second time to see what he missed? And I am Simon's biggest fan, just seeing what others think about that.
All he really got from that was a brief headstart in identifying the restricted digits, which is something that even a halfwit like me can brute force eventually. He did all of the clever stuff himself.
was a little late to wake up today, this was an absolute treat to watch!! found what i was aiming for perfectly :D
big shoutout to jovi for helping me get the final version of the puzzle you see today, i consider this puzzle very much so set by the both of us, yall should try her puzzle negativity as well because its stunning 💫
This is truly magnificent, Shye! Thank you!
Truly a master class set. Thank you so much for this treat!
Stunning setting, shye. Thanks so much. The logic was beautiful.
I have to ask shye, did you use the type 3 Phistomefel ring when setting the puzzle? (ring pushed all the way out and boxes pulled in) I found it immensely helpful in spotting the logic and immediately extending it to the far corner of box 7. The cross check was slightly helpful toward the end, but Simon made it clear it wasn't necessary to finish the puzzle at all.
Someone has to figure out how to make up a puzzle which includes Schrodinger cells just to blow Simon's mind! 🤣
"It was like watching magic being performed"
It's funny to see how Simon feels about setters the way I feel about his solves.
You don't give yourself the praise you deserve often enough, so Simon: take a bow
not just a bow, a bowman's bingo!
How Simon manages to always solve these by coming up with brand new techniques is stunning to me every time. He’s awesome.
Another fun solve. A small part of me wishes Simon hadn't returned to the software when he found the cells that were eliminated from being red & green, but it still was fun to point out where it fell short.
A bellboy in Hilbert’s hotel
Proclaimed that, for all he could tell,
The room-numbers there
Would not fit a square
In a puzzle by Phistomefel
Those are some fine Limericks, and I'm from Limerick.
Bravo
You know they're doing too many puzzles with variants when Simon says "by sudoku" in a puzzle where only normal sudoku rules apply.
He always does :-)
Shye's classics are very quickly becoming my favourite puzzles on this channel. There's so much incredible logic built into them, with so little to work with.
PLOT TWIST: Mark's real last name is Bowman, and after a bifurcation technique was named after him, he changed his name to Goodliffe and entered sudoku witness protection.
When seemingly darkness prevails
(In England, not in New South Wales)
We find here on Cracking
Some light that was lacking
And puzzles that just tip the scales.
"It's like watching magic being performed" - *stares at a field of numbers for a minute and comes up with a comprehensive algorithm for solving a puzzle that computer could only prod with random numbers and pray to Turing*
INCREDIBLE logic from shye. Great solve Simon! I always love seeing shye’s puzzles featured
Kingda Ka is the world's tallest roller coaster at almost 139 meters and reaches a maximum speed of 205 kilometers per hour
And Kingdom Come is where you get rocketed off to if the roller coaster breaks.
Any ideas why this puzzle might be called that? Only thing I can think of is the green square going up then down..?
@@dominik.peters Recently, some of the authors of the sudokult gospel (Shye, Jovi_al, and Sam Cappleman-Lynes) have named hard classic puzzles off of roller coasters and roller coaster elements. Boomerang, Cobra Roll, and Takabisha come to mind, as well as this. I'm not sure why they started the naming scheme, but it's certainly a trend
I am soooo happy to have solved this puzzle strictly logically without hints. I find these difficult classic sudokus that stump computers more intimidating even than Phistomefel's, and often resort to bifurcation on them or watch the video for hints. So I'm not at all displeased to have taken over an hour. I am particularly impressed with how the puzzle maintains difficulty after the break-in yields digits, which is not easy for a classic.
Simon! My heart was in my mouth when you said 468 and put 469 pencil marks in box 9!
You got really lucky that the logic worked at the end even with accidently putting "469" in box 9, instead of "468" (Which you had meant to put)
He got lucky at 35:00 when he used that incorrect pencilmarking to place a 4 in r8c9. It could still have been an 8 (until you identify r8c3 is a naked single 8 in the row).
@@RichSmith77 That's what I was referring to. I really thought he'd messed everything up, but it still worked out.
“This square acquires the mantle of greenness.” I am amazed by how Simon locked onto this logic with the 1/2.
Let's Get Cracking: 05:11
Puzzle Solved: 35:36
Simon's time: 30m25s
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
You Rotten Thing: 3x (27:37, 27:39, 32:05)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Bingo: 7x (03:33, 03:36, 03:50, 05:26, 05:30, 10:02, 24:16)
Clever: 5x (01:59, 02:01, 17:27, 35:52, 37:04)
Naked Single: 4x (24:45, 28:00, 30:58, 34:32)
Beautiful: 4x (16:32, 21:47, 22:19, 36:55)
By Sudoku: 4x (24:52, 29:43, 32:35, 33:06)
In Fact: 4x (00:37, 02:51, 25:11, 26:15)
Goodness: 3x (35:36, 35:43, 35:52)
Sorry: 3x (09:27, 13:51, 34:59)
Hang On: 3x (11:51, 21:36, 30:58)
Good Grief: 2x (03:52, 07:08)
The Answer is: 2x (11:09, 26:04)
Barbaric: 2x (02:06, 02:09)
Obviously: 2x (15:00, 26:09)
Out of Nowhere: 1x (28:25)
Lovely: 1x (29:31)
Breaks Open the Puzzle: 1x (25:57)
Fascinating: 1x (36:34)
Schrödinger Cell: 1x (19:55)
Bonkers: 1x (20:36)
Approachable: 1x (04:45)
Surely: 1x (29:07)
Think Harder: 1x (15:50)
Unbelievable: 1x (31:52)
Pregnant pause: 1x (27:49)
Marries Up: 1x (22:38)
Which Means What?: 1x (17:12)
Wow: 1x (28:09)
Most popular digit and colour this video:
Two (117 mentions)
Green (6 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
Even (5) - Odd (0)
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!
Acquires The Mantle Of...
Good bot
Least popular digit could be a good addition. About the rest, amazing bot
Does "36:56 Cracks The Puzzle Open" count as "Breaks Open The Puzzle"?
@@nanamacapagal8342 Definitely should! Fixed my script so it will include those in the future!
I heard Phistomofel once set a classic sudoku with a five-star difficulty rating and 80 given digits.
🤣
hmm.... 80 digits are given, but some are errors. change 20 and add the final to make a working grid. A puzzle like that might meet the criteria.
Phistomefel once accidentally set a deadly pattern in a puzzle. There were no survivors.
@@Pheehelm HA accidentally
I managed to solve this without massive amounts of difficulty. Credit to this channel because 6 months ago I wouldn't have had a clue how to approach it.
Awesome for you!
I threw this in sudokuwiki and it said it couldn't solve it without the forbidden strategy: backtracking. (Which is basically bifurcation on steroids)
It was a brain cracking 52:47 but I got there. I got the 89 pair in box 2 quite early on without cottoning on that the 1/2 duplets in row 2 and column 8 were a telegraph. Once I saw that, my mind went in muttering quasi-Simon mode and I encouraged myself with the occasional 'Hang on!' and 'Now, *that* is almost interesting...' - and then the peripheral penny dropped. I had reason to regret that my cooker is electric which limits the linguistic flavour of my jubilant shouts. The latkes weren't any less tasteful. What a puzzle!
My logic was very similar to Simon's whose solve was the usual joy to watch.
Just posting to celebrate my first ever win against the machine- going to watch Simon do the solution now see if he did it same way I did! And thankyou- it’s only taken me about two years to get to the stage where I can do this sort of thing and it’s almost exclusively from watching your stuff! Thanks to Shye as well
King Da Ka is the tallest Roller Coaster in the World. It's located in Jackson, New Jersey. I've actually been on the roller coaster once because I live not too far away from the Six Flags its located at.
oh, i just saw this comment! i love this coaster, simple but a lot of fun, but the lines are always long!
I Finally got my Cracking the Cryptic Sudoku book in the mail. Thanks for all the effort.
in a word Awesome
Setting genius (shye) meet solving genius (Simon)! I love watching Simon master the masterful! 😍
I got the same 1-2 logic but I did it bit different. I used variation of the phistomefel's. Boxes 1, 3, 7 and 9, four most center cells have to be found in box 2, 4,6 8 in row1, column1, row9 or column9 and in the 4 corners of the sudoku. This is very powerful for the solve. You can immediately notice there is something going on with 1-2 combo and even in the later parts of the solve this logic helps a lot. But yeah it still took me 50 minutes, it was a hard one.
Kingda Ka is a coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson NJ USA; it's more of less my 'local' amusement park, and I've ridden this a few times. Incredible acceleration!
I love watching super intelligent people solve classic sudoku set by other super intelligent people. Thank you, and hats off.
Hodoku needs almost 20 forcing chains/nets to find the first digit. Today's puzzle is a MONSTER.
When I did this today, I forgot that I'd done this six months ago or so, but no matter. I solved it anew, with no memory of my previous attempt. My Sudoku has definitely improved, thanks to this channel. There's still room for plenty more improvement.
Around 9:00 you gave me the heads-up with the 12 pair placed at the center. I had already noticed the 12s in boxes 1 and 9, and placed the 12 pair at the center, but didn't make the connection on my own. I needed the heads-up.
With a little TLC, I managed to place the same 12 in the top-right and bottom-left corner -- the same digit as the center. (You need to go horizontally and vertically to force it there.) I called that digit A, leaving B for the other 1 or 2. Some time later, I had to show that B was in an extreme cell of the horizontal and vertical cells. The rest was grunge, frustration, and over-pencilmarking. But I solved the puzzle.
18:10 In place of using 1 as a help to visualize, use A for the number in question and B for the other number. Also IIRC, a B in any cell other than an extreme cell of the middle row forced B into both extreme cells of the middle column.
28:20 The 12 pair out of nowhere, I placed as A and B (not an AB pair). Using A and B, I could fill out the entire middle block and the entire middle column except for a 7B pair in the extreme cells.
Wow, I couldn't believe I finished this puzzle within 30 minutes. Truly extraordinary and elegant logic.
I actually managed the jovi_al puzzle in 38:29. It does require looking ahead a bit, but since there are a lot of squares with only two options, I didn't find it too difficult to visualize. Very satisfying puzzle to solve, some beautiful logic in place in my opinion. SPOILERS AHEAD: basically the break in is that if you place a 9 in either r7c4 or r8c4, it forces all the cells in box 2 and 8 in such a way that there is no room for a 5 in column 3 (r9c6 becomes a 5, ruling it out of r9c3 and r2c5 becomes an 8 forcing the 8 in box 1 into r1c3, thereby eliminating the possibility of placing a 5 in column 3). I wonder if this is what Mark found, because I cannot believe that Simon would not be able to find this.
Thats where i found the hidden triple that put the 9 in r3c4
Interesting solution. I solved it by spotting a chain involving 5's and 8's. Basically if r1c3 is a 5, r9c6 is a 2, and if r1c3 is not a 5, r9c6 is also a 2.
I solved the jovi_al puzzle in 11:28 without seeing Mark's trick :-). Found relationship between 5 and 8 in box 1 reflecting on position of 5 in box 8 and it was smooth sailing from there :-)
By using your hint, I managed to easily solve the puzzle too.
How on earth are you supposed to find that 5/8 trick, though?
Oh my god! I managed to do that in 31minutes without even sneaking at the video (I did see that it was one of this computer knows nothing puzzles) and I did remember you saying last time one of these came up that the 1&2 was a hint from the setter so once I spotted that middle cell I started with the colouring.
What a puzzle and amazing that I could solve it - this channel has taught me so much (I mean, extreme sudoku solving isn't an amazingly transferable skill but I'm happy!)
Simon needs to just solve using colors as if this was an alternative rule set sudoku. E.g skip the “assume green is a 1” and just plot which cells can be green and which can be blue (blue being the compliment of green in this case)
Agreed... The use of color was uninformative this time 'round.
I think this is probably the first time i have EVER solved a puzzle quicker than Simon! And a classic sudoku no less (which I typically am terrible at!). I like to think it will be a recurring trend but I am far more realistic than that! Nonetheless, I am taking this small victory!
When Simon got the 1-2 pair in Box 6 and didn't immediately get the 1-2 in r9c5 and r1c7, that really annoyed me, but also made me feel smart
Great puzzles. Take a bow, Shye! Great solve. Take a bow, Simon! And I am so proud that I was able to solve the second puzzle AFTER WATCHING Simon's solve of the first puzzle. Without Simon's miraculous solve of the first puzzle, I would never ever have been able to do solve the second one.
"i dont know if i can solve this if the computer can't" then knocks out a 30m solve, man alive
It has a very long climb at the beginning, but once you get started, it goes really fast. Like, say, the world's tallest roller coaster.
I love seeing your solves of these amazing classic sudokus.
The fact that somebody can come up with this kind of puzzle completely blows my mind
I did it huzzah! I confess I check my progress against Simon to ensure I don't spend hours trying to solve it with an early mistake. Thank you Shye
Perfect puzzle for December 1st, with those red squares like the points on an advent crown. Also nice to end with a practical example of "nobody puts 9 in the corner". At least, not THAT corner.
Beautiful puzzle :) Found the break-in and solved in 29:53 :)
This sudoku took me about 35 mins to figure out, but the second one, I thought I was going to be majorly stuck, but I managed to get it in 20 mins and 19 seconds! Once I figured out 2 of the 9's everything just fell into place, one digit at a time. (it was a little hard for me to see because I had to color in some cells to not confuse my pencil markings). For something so hard, I was impressed with myself on the time, and no hints with that! I think I just miraculously came across solution as a beginners luck thing, but watching enough of these videos gave me lessons in different techniques I don't typically use, and I happened to decided to use one of the harder ones for me to usually see (I'm half blind) for the Jovi_al's sudoku and would have never used it if I hadn't learned it from this channel.
Yes, for the second one the break-in doesn't seem as complex to me as is implied. It was certainly hard to spot, for me, but not harder than usual for this channel. It revolved around noticing that having a 5 in row 3 column 5 forced 5s in r9c6 and then r1c3, leaving boxes 1 and 2 both requiring an 8 in row 2. So we can exclude 5 from r3c5 and the rest of the solve is fairly routine.
@@GeorgeFoot sounds like a different approach than I took, interesting. I'll have to give it another look to see how you saw that. ^_^
For anyone curious, I pencil everything in at most of 2 options in each box, then I went through each line (vetically/horizontally), and colored by their number where 1-9 can only fit in two spots, and saw that 9's made a weird pattern. there was only two spots in I think row 2 and 8 that could have two solutions for 9 to go, and the other options were in fact shared in column 5. Hopefully that can assist others if they see the pattern that way, and decipher from there. ( I don't typically scan the rows/columns like that, and this channel was the place that taught me that technique, but I rarely use it because it's hard on my eyes to see, hence the coloring option to help make the noting a little easier to stand out).
was double checking how I did it, and I forgot hey didn't share column 5, they were offset because box five column five is a 129 triple. opps, sorry if that threw anyone off, but there is a pattern there if you look, I don't know if I can explain how I figured out the placing of the 9's, but those 2 9s were my first digits.
Just tried the 5s route, yeah, that's a lot easier to see. lol didn't even noticed that, when I colored in 9s could only show in r2c6, r2c8 and r8c2, r8c4, the pattern stood out much easier than 5s, but processing it was much more difficult, but once you showed the 5s, yeah, so much easier to plop everything from there. still 20mins and 23seconds but I lost some time trying to see the route with the 5s, but once I saw what you meant with the 8's yeah, it just flowed much more smoothly than my route. Intriguing.
Shye's puzzle has a wonderfully logical solution path.
Kingda Ka - The world's tallest roller coaster. Simon's solve of Kingda Ka - A roller coaster of emotion and admiration.
@7:53 Simon mentions Shye telegraphs what she's trying to get you to see. That made me notice that in box five the 4,7, and 8 are pointing towards box three. Then I saw that the 1 and 2 in both boxes one and six also point into box three. I don't know if this would still have been solvable without the arrow, but that was 100% what clued me in.
36:37 for me for the first puzzle. That was a fascinating solve! Spoilers for my solve path below:
SPOILERS
1. I noticed right away that this puzzle reminded me of another one some time ago, where r5c5 and r1c9 had to be the same digit, and had to be either a 1 or 2. Sure enough, the same was true for this puzzle, and both of those digits had to be a 1 or 2.
2. However, r9c1 also had to be the same of those digits! Symmetrical reasoning at work.
3. Then I looked around, and eventually noticed that r9c5 and r5c9 had to be the other of 1 or 2.
4. That meant I was able to cross certain other digits off, and get some numbers in the ring.
5. Then, I used the numbers found, the given digits, and the phistomefel ring, to solve.
Steps 1 and 2 were simple enough, but how did you get step 3??
I Love the logic with the ones and twos! Great setter and great solver!
A shame that the solve from 35:00 onwards wasn't logical due to the 8 vs. 9 misclick a bit earlier. But at least all the hard stuff had already been done by that point.
wow, l actually could find all those tricks in 16 mins, than ofc couldnt find that naked 5, but actually feels good to do something almost as fast as Simon
This puzzle was mind-bending for me, haha! Very nice, shye
29:46 for me - it took me almost 20 minutes to figure out the 1&2's and then it fell into place from there. Wait, did I get it faster than Simon? I must be having as especially clever day today.
What a great puzzle! And my favorite player. So entertaining and fun to watch.
havent had this much fun on a regular sudoku in a while !! I was set on just watching the video but as soon as you drew the square in box 3 I became interested and worked everything out myself...I had an easier time than you by cleaning up my colours early one and have just one for 12 in the center/one for the other 12
for some context, king da ka is a roller coaster at six flags great adventure. it’s pretty simple-you get pushed up a huge slope, go down a vertical slope, then go over one more hill before it ends. it’s famous for being very tall and very fast, though i don’t think it’s the tallest or fastest any more. worth a visit if you’re ever around new jersey!
Imagine having to do Sudoku in a Sudoku puzzle. Outrageous!
That was remarkable! Kudos to you and Shye!
Our great Setter, who sets it better,
Shye but no shame; rather hall of fame.
Thy Kingda Ka, for man, not machine!
The hardest part about this for Simon is having to do sudoku in a sudoku puzzle
I like that Simon said, “that’s a five by sudoku” in a classic sudoku puzzle
wow, my first CTC sudoku i solved mostly myself! i needed a bit of help with the 1/2 logic to spot it but from then i managed to do it myself! at first the pattern of how the numbers are placed reminded me of Phistomefel and i wonder if you can actually use that there. even though i needed that liitle nodge to get started on solving the puzzle i feel like this is a GAS for me. good job shey!
I found exactly 3 numbers Andrew's solver couldn't find - the 9s in B4 and E6, and the 3 in F6 - then I gave up, because I couldn't find the pattern. lol
Still proud of the fact I could find 3 numbers the computer couldn't. :)
Kingda ka IS a roller-coaster here at six flags great adventure (NJ). One of my favorite
The other puzzle you displayed in this vid, I did it as I watched you, took me 12 min
12:36 for me. Probably the first time I don’t struggle with a hard classic sudoku, I hope it means I’m getting better at those as well.
Edit: 14:33 on jovi_al’s one. Didn’t find a single piece of logic, just tried for a few minutes and then bifurcated. I’ll go back to see if I can find anything at all.
Very smart. I didn't see any of that 1 2 stuff and it took me twice as long.
I wouldn't call jovi_al's puzzle monstrous difficult.
I just made my usual pencilmarking and checked where would I put 3. I marked a solution, then I marked where would I put 5. Then I noticed I couldn't put in 8, and that solved my cells in the middle. After that, it was normal CTC sudoku.
Very interesting. Similar logic to a couple of Shye's other unsolvable puzzles, without which I wouldn't have had a clue. It took me longer to spot the full 12 interaction, but after that, possibly because I'd spent longer pencil-marking, it seemed to finish easier than Simon's.
Managed to solve it but holy hell what a challenge - by far the hardest puzzle I've solved on my own and it took me hours.
Thank you for both links. I started with jovial. The middle columns - I really appreciated the careful construction. Of course, I didn't do any justice to the puzzle. After sorting the options in the middle column, I sort of half argued 9 in box 2 (I.e, bifurcated based on half baked logic) and it worked out without any issues. So in some metric, the puzzle is one digit away from collapsing. Apologies and my thanks to the constructor.
There is a square r9c3 that can only be a 56. If it's a 5, r8c5 becomes a 5, and r3c6 becomes a 5. If it's a 6, then column 3 now has a 49 pair, therefore r4c3 is an 8, therefore r2c1 is an 8, therefore r3c5 is an 8, therefore r3c6 becomes a 5.
I hope that's correct.
@@Arcessitor I solved it similarly. I would say the weak squares in the puzzle are r3c5, r3c6 and r9c6, and there was multiple paths to solve it involving those squares. I followed a chain with 5's and 8's from r1c3 via r2c1, r2c5 and r9c3 in my case. What I did was look at r1c3 and if r1c3 was a 5, r9c6 would be a 2. If r1c3 is not a 5, r9c6 is also a 2.
Kingda Ka is a roller coaster at a Six Flags in New Jersey, I think it’s the fastest roller coaster in the world. I believe it was named after a tiger from the same theme park.
I hear Phistomefel once set a classic sudoku with no given digits
Sounds tricky.
4:18 - 4:30 "And it was in this position that we have a brand new Simarkism"
I did this as 1-2 coloring puzzle. You could eliminate 12 from top center like that. I don't know if that was bifurcation or not but it helped to solve the puzzle.
30:55
Here you didn't spot the fact in the 2nd 3x3 box that the 1s and 2s were blocked into the 3rd row, which will give the 8 and 9 in the 2nd row! And it would've helped you with the coloured boxes too!
Looks like a mistype in box 9 (469 for 468) led to 4 being placed prematurely, forced by the 69 in the row. But I could see that if it were correctly marked, the 4 in column 3 would have taken care of it anyway.
Only Simon can gain understanding of where 2 digits go by using 4 different colors. Simon, you have an amazing brain, but how it works alludes me.
I have to congratulate my self for being able to do this sudoku :-) and thank Cracking the Criptics for being able to do so
30:35
Simon: 'I'm tempted to look at row 2 or box 2'
- Yes! 12 pair!
Simon: '9 here and let's ignore the box for now'
Mental power was probably drained by finding that awesome 12 pattern that I would've never found.
We've had enough of these videos now that the makers of that sudoku solver need to get working on an update! But that's the power of the soduku community for you. :)
You probably could have finished it faster if you remembered the 1/2 restriction in box 7 when you were flushing out box 4 & 8 but amazing job as always
freakin' incredible logic at the beginning
I solved the Jovial puzzle in 41 minutes, absolutely a mess of pencil marks of every potential digit before I could work on narrowing down the first digit.
Kingda ka IS a roller-coaster here at six flags great adventure (nj). One of my favorite
Brilliant solve. Tremendous logic, but not too difficult to follow. I did wonder if it would muck things up when you pencil marked 459 instead of 458 at the end.
10:00 If you make r5c6 a 1/2 then it forces a 1/2 pair in column 7 of box 6, leading to a 1/2 pair in column 9 in box 3 and you must now place a 1/2 in r1c5. This locks 1 and 2 in box 7 to be in column 1 AND on row 9 but there is only one cell that conforms to both rules and it can't have two values.
Oh... That's interesting. The exact same logic applies to Jovi_al's puzzle. Finished in 20:03
It took me close to two hours, but I cracked it in the end. I spotted the basic logic of the 1s and 2s rather quickly, but unfortunately failed to fully grasp the nature of the virtual pair cross-interaction, meaning I had to do a lot more long-handed elimination work. I also made a premature assumption on what went where, and had to backtrack and struggle for another long stretch before finally figuring out the break-through.
I can't say my exact time because I played with it on pause for a while.
34:56 4 8 double in row 8 is resolved to 8 in column 2 and 4 in the "469" cell. If Simon hadn't misclicked he would have certainly seen that anyway. The way he eliminated that 9 that should have been an 8 had me worried though.
Engine evaluation of the position : Unsolvable
Simon : Hold my coffee...
When I tackled this puzzle, I had an intense sense that box 2 would have eventually come to a 789 triangle at the top. I put it in and made a lot of progress, but I then watched Simon solve and was pleased to see I was right, but intuition is not logic.
28:01 for shye's; very nice, fun to figure out.
Wow. That was fun to watch. Thanks!
The puzzle : “Normal sudoku rules apply”
me : ah finally one i will be able to do… wait…
If Shye can create these and you are able to solve them you both are "other-worldly" I can't even follow your logic train as I'm listening let alone figure it out without the training wheels.
The logic to jovi_al's Negativity jumped out and grabbed me by the ears the minute I looked at it. There are days when autism is a superpower.
Pausing the video to see if anyone thinks that is a cheat by looking at the other screen a second time to see what he missed? And I am Simon's biggest fan, just seeing what others think about that.
He looked at it, then proved it logically.
I think it's just another attempt by Simon to make us think he is human and not AI.
@@glennmelven3414 Lol, yes.
Yea, it was a bit of a cheat, but it probably saved him 30 minutes of deduction before figuring out the geometry.
All he really got from that was a brief headstart in identifying the restricted digits, which is something that even a halfwit like me can brute force eventually. He did all of the clever stuff himself.
Not cheating
This one hurts my brain more than all the other ones with insane rules
I did Mark's puzzle in 18:42... found the trick fairly quickly... in columns 4, 5, 6... :)
I found a deduction in column 3 with 5s and 8s. I know there was one in c4, 5, 6, but I couldn't find it.
Could you please give a hint? I'm staring at this one for an hour, and I just can't seem to find it.
@@MyReligionIs2DoGood roping, the set of 3 identical digits vertically in each box 2, 5 and 8