And also about Simon not fully developing its effect on those magic squares. I mean, when you get that one square in magic square is a [3,7] then the opposite of it is a [3,7] as well. Same with [1,9]s. But Simon being Simon totally ignores the obvious and follows the most complicated way of solving. =)
Semi. Not out loud. And that not the only point but as Simon remarked at the end he didn't apply the principles. Also not always making use of the symmetry. Such as being able to place one 37 in the center box, allowed the other 37 to be placed as well. But I also think the main reason why I'd be "screaming" is that I remember reading about the magic boxes and just not remembering how those went. Once that's out there, it's (not entirely) plain sailing...
One of those puzzles where Simon is hindered by being too clever. Looking for really difficult solutions rather than following the simple questions he'd already asked
I said exactly the same thing about it yesterdays puzzle. He’s often finding logic that’s absolutely unnecessary to solve a puzzle which can be interesting but takes unnecessary time 😅
Thanks, Brigitte. That was the perfect puzzle to teach Simon the advantage of using Sudoku in Sudoku puzzles. I personally also think his favorite green and purple colours are in the way. Lighter colours would make it easier to see that the 159 triples of both magic squares almost force the 159 triple onto the dutch whisper line in box 3. You could have 19 with another high or low digit and 5 in the corner. But as Simon already had the colouring up to that paritiy change it was twice clear this rinky dink (technical term for a corner) in the line had to be the parity change. Can't believe I did that in ~45 min, one of the rare cases I beat Simons time. And I know, I didn't have to talk at the same time, makes a vast difference, still makes me proud.
I've been saying for a long time that using dark colours makes it really difficult to see what's going on, but no, Simon has got it stuck in his head that orange and blue are perfect for colour-blind users and so must be used for odd/even or high/low when they are known, and in every other situation will go for colours that, sure, they're nice colours, but they're horrible to do sudoku with when you're writing pencil marks over them because you can't see the pencil marks.
@@stevieinselby I remember a red/green blind even remarked the red and green of the default Sudoku Pad colour palette are far apart enough to be distinct, if just by saturation and brightness. There are other colour blindnesses and Mark calling his cyan/turquise light blue is an indicator for me he should take a test. Theoretically light blue and yellow should be the choice for good separation in bright colours. It would also help if the digits would not stick to dark blue but change to white when the background colour is dark enough. I personally adjusted the default colour palette with all brighter colours, it sticks to your own usage of the Sudoku Pad throughout all puzzles. It does, of course not change anything about colours in the videos.
after you did a bunch of coloring I spotted that R6C4 has to be 5. You can't have 2 purples in a row. You can't have 2 greens in a row. So it's a 5 and it places a 1/9 pair on either side. I'm SUPER EXCITED I saw that. lol
Same tbh. I have just been using the fast forward until he got it, because it was one of the rare isntances where my brain was screaming something Simon hadn't spotted 😅
I solved it this way too. It's just funny that Simon didn't see this when he had just explained it at the start of the puzzle---the fact that Dutch whispers must use a 5 to change over from high to low...
73 Minutes for me. A puzzle that 2 years ago, I NEVER would have even attempted. Thank you, CtC, Mark, Simon, for all the entertainment and Sudoku lessons you have provided us. And thank you to Br1312te for a challenging puzzle
One of the best gifts ever, from both my partner and simon, thank you both! I was asked by my friend what kind of cake i wanted and i thought of simons wishes when i asked for a chocolate cake. Its very yummy and was definitely the right choice
I've been watching for years but never been this early. As for the birthday announcements, I do want to say it's almost exactly 9 months after valentines day...
About the timing from Valentine's day - my birthday is Nov 20. My sister is the 27. My brother is the 28. My stepmom refused to celebrate Valentine's Day for that very reason. So my two youngest sisters are the end of December and the first week of January... go figure.
@@zenmaster76a friend of me and I worked out given the weeks we were bork early wrt prediction that we were conceived in the same week. Continents apart 😂
Took me 80 minutes. I loved this one, using the 5's to turn Dutch whispers into German and link the 2 magic squares, then coloring High/Low pairs. Wound up placing 5's and coloring the entire grid before uncovering the disambiguating 4.
Today I finally defeated Jay Dyer and one of her master pieces Soap Opera. You have to battle equal sum lines and treat Schrödinger's Cells with care. Thanks to Simon and Mark that believed in me and therefore did not take the fight themselves.
I finished in 23:12 minutes. This puzzle really clicked with me and I was bale to use my special technique to its maximum effect. I think my favorite part was seeing that the big line started and ended on different parities, so there had to be an odd amount of switches that occurred. This means that they could only be one or three 5's on the line. However, if you maximized it and tried to put three 5's on the line, one would go in r2c6 and the other would go in r4c8, leaving no place for 5 in box 3 on the line. This permeated and gave the 5 in box 7, which disambiguated everything and was quite satisfying to see. As always, it feels good to beat Simon's time. Great Puzzle!
28:38 for me. And I spent 2 min just admiring the logic. I did not see the video yet, but I guess Simon likely spent 20 min just admiring the logic as well 😅. It's really beautiful
Since the testers often get a mention on the channel but only remain in the background, it might be an idea to introduce them to the audience, so they can get the due credit. and we get to know Simon's and Mark's team.
Same here ... I got through in under 20 minutes without particularly racing, and while I'm sure Simon spends a few minutes explaining magic squares, which I'm not going to waste time telling the cat about 😼, I didn't see anything there that I thought should drag it out too long, just a load of high/low colouring then narrowing down the pairs of digits until the unfoggified 4 sees a 4-6 cell. Now to watch the video and see what Simon misses (or what unjustified leap of logic I made that bypassed a load of the puzzle!)
Really cool puzzle. 36:01 for me. The easy break-in starts from the fact that Dutch whispers, in the absence of a 5, *must* trade off high/low the same way that German whispers do. Because the 2/8s in box 5 are opposite high/low, the ends of the two long whispers must be opposite high/low, and since they're both odd-length, there must be at least one 5 on each line.
You may deduce that there is exactly *one five* on the top right Dutch whisper line : considering the length, there must be an odd number of fives, but if there were three, one has to be in R2C6, the other in R4C8 and there would be no place for a 5 in box three (that is, on the dutch whisper).
I recognize that's true in this case, but there's times where one can go 9-5-9 on a Dutch whispers line to add extra 5's without breaking the oscillation
"Sator arepo tenet opera rotas" would translate roughly as "Arepo the sower holds the wheels carefully", which on the face of it is gibberish. The significance of the inscription is an open question.
@@tylerowens True, but only part of it. It's a square that you can read horizontally or vertically with the same words - so a magic square tying in with the both the immediate rules of the puzzles and the solution which requires disambiguation.
Thanks for the birthday / retirement shoutout for my dad Graham, the photo was indeed from his final flight! He hasn’t seen this video yet but I’ve sent him the link. I must have put a typo in the email- Shirley isn’t his daughter, she’s his son’s fiancé!
If memory serves, the Sator Square has some obscure vaguely religious reinterpretation as the letters can be rearranged to spell PATERNOSTER twice (sharing the N) with 2 As and 2 Os left over (representing alpha and omega)
@50:20 "Simon's brain isn't working," Simon said. - The profound symmetry along the positive diagonal reveals that the two 3-cell lines in boxes 4 & 8 are what breaks the symmetry. Every single thing is symmetric except for 6 squares. Those 6 squares must break the symmetry. Everything has to be pairs until a digit in those 6 is determined.
Something additional to remember about 3x3 magic squares using 1 through 9 is that they are all rotations or reflections of the same square, to wit: 8 1 6 3 5 7 4 9 2 I don't know if that would have saved you any time, but it might have. Another great solve! Thank you.
Have we seen a puzzle that only had a little bit of fog like this before? Clever way of holding back on a given digit until the break-in has been worked out 😄
I got it in 22:59. Another one for me on the scoreboard. That's 3 for me and 99+ for Simon. I'm catching up! But seriously, I've only gotten good at these from watching Simon and Mark.
Simon focusing on the 6 on the leftmost orange line and not being able to disambiguate the 1 and 2, despite 2 not being four away from 5 on that line was painful but I can’t judge, I probably wouldn’t have got that far in the puzzle 😂, great video as always.
The words of the "Sator" square are in Latin. One of the words, "Arepo", appears to be a name, as it's not a known Latin word. Translated into English, the sentence says, "Arepo the sewer turns his wheels with care."
My silly memory trick for remembering the parity of the outer cells is to count the perimeter sides of those cells. One side on the perimeter? 1 is odd, so that's 1379. Two sides? 2 is even, so that's 2468.
Some times I think of Simon as Sherlock Holmes, following a trail of footsteps that lead into a room, but instead of following them in order he looks at one odd footprint and then leaves to find the cobbler who re-soled the shoe. It's usually easiest to take steps in order, detective.
This puzzle actually took me less time than today’s Mark’s puzzle (despite the video being 2x longer than marks). I think honestly the best way to approach it is to use to colors for high and low and look for pairs (19, 28, 37 and 46) and just do sudoku with these. Simon always tries to avoid doing sudoku in sudoku puzzles therefore sometimes gets stuck in simple puzzles like that one 😅
You know you're a true cracking the cryptic fan when you alsp choose green and purple for the coloring. Coincidentally even ended up with the same high/low matching colors. I did choose yellow for 5s though (I usually do), so i was a bit blue (heh) Simon chose yellow and then went to blue.
I agree that fog of war puzzles can have some expansion in the use of the fog tool in the hands of a brilliant constructor such as Br1312te here. I enjoyed this puzzle and loved watching you enjoy it, Simon. Thank you!
31:44 for me - I was struggling to find the start for 20 minutes, so I peeked at Simon's answer, and he went for the three length lines in the squares. Once I got those in, I solved it in 10 minutes.
I got really stuck after I placed the 5 in the middle box, like really stuck, but you got me past that, re-oriented my approach, and the solve was super smooth after that. So thanks for the help, Simon! 😉
Right around the 49 minute mark in the video, right when you got the double pencil marks in the top magic square, I saw a cool way to determine the 5 in box 4 If the 5 is not on the dutch whisper, R5C2 has to be purple, but all 4 purple digits are already looking at that cell so it must be a 5 Also a similar thing with the 5 in box 8 (around the 51 minute mark), if the 5 is on the line, the next digit must be a 19, but since there’s a green 19 in the box, R9 C5 must be the purple 19, which means R9C4 must be green, and it already sees all 4 green digits so the 5 can’t be on the line and you can color the box 8 line
I solved this in 30:49 and am pretty proud of myself. I did a lot of coloring and used ABCD for 19 28 37 46, made finding available values quite easy, at least for my brain.
I really liked the setup for R5C2, which sees all the purple options, so it must be a 5. P.S. Simon Eventually got it by sudoku, but it was available _way_ earlier.
I solved it in 32:21, which is way shorter than I thought it would take as I normally take equal to the length of the entire CTC video. For me, having firm color associations for each number helped me break this puzzle. [for me 1-yellow, 2-blue, 3-red, 4-green, 5-orange, 6-purple, 7-lt grey, 8-black, 9-dark grey.]
I know Simon is not known for pencil marking cells, but if you do, you can logically color pretty much the entire puzzle before you enter the 5's and the rest of the digits.
22:19 for me. Went pretty smooth. Decided to guess low and high (in pencil marks only of course). Made it much easier to track numbers. Of course i guessed wrong and had to renumber everything :D
speaking of magic squares I have a suggestion for the fog puzzle that is a completely blank grid 100% fog with multiple magic squares. the rules mention that box 4 is a magic square. All magic squares are green. Instead give a random square in box 4. Any will do. Then you don't have to mention that box 4 is a magic square in the rules.
That was a painful watch! So much so that after 1 minute i just ended up doing the puzzle on my phone myself though i was not planning to today as i had other things going on!
33m40s one of rare times where I am not only finally capable of completing the featured sudoku, but beat Simons time (despite that he liberally spends his time explaining things in great precise detail. I hope I didn't cheat by accident... I found myself not needing to use the 3 long line in the touching corners of boxes 2,3,6 but i suspect it may have been from doing as much high/low color filling as i could across the whole grid.
I didn't clock the 5 in box 7 for. along time, so I covered most of the grid in 19, 28, 37, 46 pairs. Then the revealed 4 sorted everything. Maybe took longer, but much more beautiful.
This is the first time I blew away Simon's time. 16:09 for me. I can't believe this was a hard puzzle for Simon. I began with the obvious two 5's at the center of magic squares. 4 and 6 cannot be the center of a Dutch Whisper when its neighbors are both odd. That gives easy 2-8 pairs in the corners of both magic circles. If you color the squares next to them as both high or both low (use blue or orange or such). Then it basically becomes a parity puzzle with complications. Obviously the two lines connecting both magic squares needed a 5 somewhere along it. These get placed easily. This eventually puts a 5 in the bottom left and everything unravels from there.
Very nice design , completely letterable/colourable pairwise solve. didn't need the given till the end . Ended up w 5 wrong cells(3 with 2 following due to coloring err but didn't affect the rest of the solve surprisingly). Mad that I didn't see this turn into a D5/XV letter scheme after you DD the magic squares , woulda saved on some pen marking...
I'm really hoping you'll add more hints for one of the puzzles on the new fog app. It's the only puzzle I couldn't solve. Most I didn't need hints. Only the last few puzzles needed them. But this was in the teens or abouts. The rule is that you need to count the odd and even digits and specify how many of each in the circles. I got most of box 3 for sure. A little bit around it..........and I got stuck and there is almost nothing in hints for that puzzle. Interestingly enough.......I didn't need the hints for the progress I did get.
In a room with 23 people theres a 50.73% chance that there is at least one shared birthday. in a room of 70, theres a 99.99% probability that there is a pair that share a birthday.
I tried but didn't finish this puzzle a few days ago. However, during the short time that I did sit down with it, I had a moment where I thought about the whisper line that passes through r6c4 and, somehow, concluded that it had to be a 5 which did turn out to be correct as it cleared the fog in r7c3. But then, like 5 minutes later, I found myself thinking, "Hang on a minute? Why did it actually *have* to be a 5?" and no matter what I did I couldn't figure what my reasoning had been or why I was so certain about it. Oh well.
November 11 babies were likely conceived across valentines day :) when i worked in obstetrics imaging we used to have to plan for ebbs and flows around holidays etc.
I've been skipping the long videos more and more lately. I just don't have the time......but.....I do love wrogn puzzles. I want to see that one. I don't care if it takes 20 minutes for the rules (maybe mention if they are standard so I can skip that part or not)
Anyone else wait to put the 5 in box 7? Once I saw that it was going there I knew it would disambiguate everything so I decided to spend the time coloring and limiting everything to high/low pairs. Put in the 5, saw the 4 and then filled everything in.
About 5 seconds after placing the first three fives (boxes 1, 5, 9) it dawned on me... That's Phistomefels ring ... The corresponding 2 fives can only go in box 3 and 7... in Box 3, together with the polarities this places 5 and 1-9's immediately
It was easy if you know few tricks about magic squares to start with. 30:02 for me. But I frequently end up wasting too much time in coloring everything and using mouse instead of keyboard.
22:40 for me. Might be the most I've ever beaten the video time by. I feel like I wasted about 5 minutes rediscovering the layout possibilities of perfect squares (I always forgot evens in the corners is the easy way to remember).
00:46:52 for me. Loved the finish as I didn't put the fog '5' in until I had colored almost every square, so it was just fill in the numbers when the given digit was shown!!!!!! Kind comment.
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Anyone else screaming about r6c4 being a 5 for a while?
And also about Simon not fully developing its effect on those magic squares. I mean, when you get that one square in magic square is a [3,7] then the opposite of it is a [3,7] as well. Same with [1,9]s. But Simon being Simon totally ignores the obvious and follows the most complicated way of solving. =)
How long did that take SImon!!!
I would wake up every one around the house, it is not yet 5am.
Semi. Not out loud. And that not the only point but as Simon remarked at the end he didn't apply the principles. Also not always making use of the symmetry. Such as being able to place one 37 in the center box, allowed the other 37 to be placed as well. But I also think the main reason why I'd be "screaming" is that I remember reading about the magic boxes and just not remembering how those went. Once that's out there, it's (not entirely) plain sailing...
Longer about the 1 in R5C1 that had to go next to the 5.
One of those puzzles where Simon is hindered by being too clever. Looking for really difficult solutions rather than following the simple questions he'd already asked
I said exactly the same thing about it yesterdays puzzle. He’s often finding logic that’s absolutely unnecessary to solve a puzzle which can be interesting but takes unnecessary time 😅
Very rare indeed. I was able to see why it’s a 2 out of 5 stars and kept getting ahead of Simon.
Nothing quite like a puzzle where your *grit* is partly covered in fog.
Thanks, Brigitte. That was the perfect puzzle to teach Simon the advantage of using Sudoku in Sudoku puzzles. I personally also think his favorite green and purple colours are in the way. Lighter colours would make it easier to see that the 159 triples of both magic squares almost force the 159 triple onto the dutch whisper line in box 3. You could have 19 with another high or low digit and 5 in the corner. But as Simon already had the colouring up to that paritiy change it was twice clear this rinky dink (technical term for a corner) in the line had to be the parity change.
Can't believe I did that in ~45 min, one of the rare cases I beat Simons time. And I know, I didn't have to talk at the same time, makes a vast difference, still makes me proud.
I've been saying for a long time that using dark colours makes it really difficult to see what's going on, but no, Simon has got it stuck in his head that orange and blue are perfect for colour-blind users and so must be used for odd/even or high/low when they are known, and in every other situation will go for colours that, sure, they're nice colours, but they're horrible to do sudoku with when you're writing pencil marks over them because you can't see the pencil marks.
@@stevieinselby I remember a red/green blind even remarked the red and green of the default Sudoku Pad colour palette are far apart enough to be distinct, if just by saturation and brightness. There are other colour blindnesses and Mark calling his cyan/turquise light blue is an indicator for me he should take a test.
Theoretically light blue and yellow should be the choice for good separation in bright colours. It would also help if the digits would not stick to dark blue but change to white when the background colour is dark enough.
I personally adjusted the default colour palette with all brighter colours, it sticks to your own usage of the Sudoku Pad throughout all puzzles. It does, of course not change anything about colours in the videos.
after you did a bunch of coloring I spotted that R6C4 has to be 5. You can't have 2 purples in a row. You can't have 2 greens in a row. So it's a 5 and it places a 1/9 pair on either side. I'm SUPER EXCITED I saw that. lol
Same tbh. I have just been using the fast forward until he got it, because it was one of the rare isntances where my brain was screaming something Simon hadn't spotted 😅
Same here. For maybe the first time, I felt smarter than Simon!
I solved it this way too. It's just funny that Simon didn't see this when he had just explained it at the start of the puzzle---the fact that Dutch whispers must use a 5 to change over from high to low...
@@WilliamSpieth I think it's a requirement. It causes a lot of progress.
Same in box 3 - there has to be a polarity switch on the long line and it can only by via a 5 in r2c8
73 Minutes for me. A puzzle that 2 years ago, I NEVER would have even attempted. Thank you, CtC, Mark, Simon, for all the entertainment and Sudoku lessons you have provided us. And thank you to Br1312te for a challenging puzzle
Same! It's crazy how much I've learned from CtC, and in such a relatively short time.
One of the best gifts ever, from both my partner and simon, thank you both! I was asked by my friend what kind of cake i wanted and i thought of simons wishes when i asked for a chocolate cake. Its very yummy and was definitely the right choice
I've been watching for years but never been this early. As for the birthday announcements, I do want to say it's almost exactly 9 months after valentines day...
About the timing from Valentine's day - my birthday is Nov 20. My sister is the 27. My brother is the 28. My stepmom refused to celebrate Valentine's Day for that very reason. So my two youngest sisters are the end of December and the first week of January... go figure.
It's a fun game I like to play to raise the level of awkward, asking people to think about what event preceded their birthday by ~9 months😈
@@zenmaster76a friend of me and I worked out given the weeks we were bork early wrt prediction that we were conceived in the same week. Continents apart 😂
Took me 80 minutes. I loved this one, using the 5's to turn Dutch whispers into German and link the 2 magic squares, then coloring High/Low pairs. Wound up placing 5's and coloring the entire grid before uncovering the disambiguating 4.
You're in good company, as even those learned historians haven't yet worked out what the meaning of "arepo" is
Possibly just a name invented to make the palindrome work :P
@@michaels4340That would make a Sator Square the literary equivalent to a Parker Square
Today I finally defeated Jay Dyer and one of her master pieces Soap Opera. You have to battle equal sum lines and treat Schrödinger's Cells with care. Thanks to Simon and Mark that believed in me and therefore did not take the fight themselves.
I finished in 23:12 minutes. This puzzle really clicked with me and I was bale to use my special technique to its maximum effect. I think my favorite part was seeing that the big line started and ended on different parities, so there had to be an odd amount of switches that occurred. This means that they could only be one or three 5's on the line. However, if you maximized it and tried to put three 5's on the line, one would go in r2c6 and the other would go in r4c8, leaving no place for 5 in box 3 on the line. This permeated and gave the 5 in box 7, which disambiguated everything and was quite satisfying to see. As always, it feels good to beat Simon's time. Great Puzzle!
28:38 for me. And I spent 2 min just admiring the logic. I did not see the video yet, but I guess Simon likely spent 20 min just admiring the logic as well 😅. It's really beautiful
Since the testers often get a mention on the channel but only remain in the background, it might be an idea to introduce them to the audience, so they can get the due credit. and we get to know Simon's and Mark's team.
They never name them. I wonder if that’s deliberate so that nobody nobbles them?
I always thought it would be fun to have a fog of war puzzle for the fog actually didn’t reveal anything at all
Fun puzzle! I’m not sure why this gave Simon so much trouble. 14:21 for me (and I rarely beat Simon’s time). 😄
Same here ... I got through in under 20 minutes without particularly racing, and while I'm sure Simon spends a few minutes explaining magic squares, which I'm not going to waste time telling the cat about 😼, I didn't see anything there that I thought should drag it out too long, just a load of high/low colouring then narrowing down the pairs of digits until the unfoggified 4 sees a 4-6 cell. Now to watch the video and see what Simon misses (or what unjustified leap of logic I made that bypassed a load of the puzzle!)
Really cool puzzle. 36:01 for me. The easy break-in starts from the fact that Dutch whispers, in the absence of a 5, *must* trade off high/low the same way that German whispers do. Because the 2/8s in box 5 are opposite high/low, the ends of the two long whispers must be opposite high/low, and since they're both odd-length, there must be at least one 5 on each line.
You may deduce that there is exactly *one five* on the top right Dutch whisper line : considering the length, there must be an odd number of fives, but if there were three, one has to be in R2C6, the other in R4C8 and there would be no place for a 5 in box three (that is, on the dutch whisper).
I recognize that's true in this case, but there's times where one can go 9-5-9 on a Dutch whispers line to add extra 5's without breaking the oscillation
I'm one of Simon's favourite people, and I'll soon have the t-shirt to prove it :)
"Sator arepo tenet opera rotas" would translate roughly as "Arepo the sower holds the wheels carefully", which on the face of it is gibberish. The significance of the inscription is an open question.
It's a palindrome
@@tylerowensOh really O'Reilly?
@@tylerowens True, but only part of it. It's a square that you can read horizontally or vertically with the same words - so a magic square tying in with the both the immediate rules of the puzzles and the solution which requires disambiguation.
Thanks for the birthday / retirement shoutout for my dad Graham, the photo was indeed from his final flight!
He hasn’t seen this video yet but I’ve sent him the link.
I must have put a typo in the email- Shirley isn’t his daughter, she’s his son’s fiancé!
If memory serves, the Sator Square has some obscure vaguely religious reinterpretation as the letters can be rearranged to spell PATERNOSTER twice (sharing the N) with 2 As and 2 Os left over (representing alpha and omega)
12:47 finish. Love how this one flowed from start to finish. Excellent!
@50:20 "Simon's brain isn't working," Simon said. - The profound symmetry along the positive diagonal reveals that the two 3-cell lines in boxes 4 & 8 are what breaks the symmetry. Every single thing is symmetric except for 6 squares. Those 6 squares must break the symmetry. Everything has to be pairs until a digit in those 6 is determined.
Something additional to remember about 3x3 magic squares using 1 through 9 is that they are all rotations or reflections of the same square, to wit:
8 1 6
3 5 7
4 9 2
I don't know if that would have saved you any time, but it might have.
Another great solve! Thank you.
“I don’t like to think about sudoku so early in sudoku puzzles.” This is the best Simon quote 😂
You will probably have a lot of birthdays coming in the next few days as well….we are 9 months after Valentine s Day…that s why🤫🤣
That was a really good puzzle! I didn’t need any help with this one but there were some really great moments in solving this.
Have we seen a puzzle that only had a little bit of fog like this before? Clever way of holding back on a given digit until the break-in has been worked out 😄
New Discworld-related fact unlocked. Thanks Br1312te and Simon.
I knew someone other than me would be a fan. I knew about the magic Sator Square, but immediately thought of Ankh-Morpork's version.
I got it in 22:59. Another one for me on the scoreboard. That's 3 for me and 99+ for Simon. I'm catching up! But seriously, I've only gotten good at these from watching Simon and Mark.
Simon focusing on the 6 on the leftmost orange line and not being able to disambiguate the 1 and 2, despite 2 not being four away from 5 on that line was painful but I can’t judge, I probably wouldn’t have got that far in the puzzle 😂, great video as always.
The words of the "Sator" square are in Latin. One of the words, "Arepo", appears to be a name, as it's not a known Latin word. Translated into English, the sentence says, "Arepo the sewer turns his wheels with care."
I disagree. The verbs are serere and tenere respectively. "Sator" is someone who is sowing or scattering, not sewing. "Tenet" means holds, not turns.
Just adorn these type of videos!! Fabulous job all around and exceptional use of multiple variants!!
My silly memory trick for remembering the parity of the outer cells is to count the perimeter sides of those cells. One side on the perimeter? 1 is odd, so that's 1379. Two sides? 2 is even, so that's 2468.
Some times I think of Simon as Sherlock Holmes, following a trail of footsteps that lead into a room, but instead of following them in order he looks at one odd footprint and then leaves to find the cobbler who re-soled the shoe.
It's usually easiest to take steps in order, detective.
This puzzle actually took me less time than today’s Mark’s puzzle (despite the video being 2x longer than marks). I think honestly the best way to approach it is to use to colors for high and low and look for pairs (19, 28, 37 and 46) and just do sudoku with these. Simon always tries to avoid doing sudoku in sudoku puzzles therefore sometimes gets stuck in simple puzzles like that one 😅
You know you're a true cracking the cryptic fan when you alsp choose green and purple for the coloring. Coincidentally even ended up with the same high/low matching colors. I did choose yellow for 5s though (I usually do), so i was a bit blue (heh) Simon chose yellow and then went to blue.
I'm a black for 5 kinda guy myself.
Very elegant puzzle indeed. The four options became two by very nice logic and then, at the end, one. Beautiful!
Loved it when Simon gave a colour to 5
5 is always pink in my sudoku
@@TimlagorLight green in my one. 🙂
I agree that fog of war puzzles can have some expansion in the use of the fog tool in the hands of a brilliant constructor such as Br1312te here. I enjoyed this puzzle and loved watching you enjoy it, Simon. Thank you!
31:44 for me - I was struggling to find the start for 20 minutes, so I peeked at Simon's answer, and he went for the three length lines in the squares. Once I got those in, I solved it in 10 minutes.
Cool puzzle, I colored the whole thing in before placing the last 5 just because I could.
25:51 it's rare that I beat Simon at all, let alone by such a margin. It is an absolutely beautiful puzzle.
I got really stuck after I placed the 5 in the middle box, like really stuck, but you got me past that, re-oriented my approach, and the solve was super smooth after that. So thanks for the help, Simon! 😉
Right around the 49 minute mark in the video, right when you got the double pencil marks in the top magic square, I saw a cool way to determine the 5 in box 4
If the 5 is not on the dutch whisper, R5C2 has to be purple, but all 4 purple digits are already looking at that cell so it must be a 5
Also a similar thing with the 5 in box 8 (around the 51 minute mark), if the 5 is on the line, the next digit must be a 19, but since there’s a green 19 in the box, R9 C5 must be the purple 19, which means R9C4 must be green, and it already sees all 4 green digits so the 5 can’t be on the line and you can color the box 8 line
I solved this in 30:49 and am pretty proud of myself. I did a lot of coloring and used ABCD for 19 28 37 46, made finding available values quite easy, at least for my brain.
We should colour this according to "highlowity".
This made me giggle
I really liked the setup for R5C2, which sees all the purple options, so it must be a 5.
P.S. Simon Eventually got it by sudoku, but it was available _way_ earlier.
I've learned so many sudoku tricks from this master, only to find out that the master forgets to use his own tricks :)
I solved it in 32:21, which is way shorter than I thought it would take as I normally take equal to the length of the entire CTC video.
For me, having firm color associations for each number helped me break this puzzle. [for me 1-yellow, 2-blue, 3-red, 4-green, 5-orange, 6-purple, 7-lt grey, 8-black, 9-dark grey.]
Guessing the constructor intended something else entirely with it, but I'll still throw out a Hell Yeah for the 1312.
what a brilliant puzzle. I managed it in around 80 minutes having almost decided to give up.
I know Simon is not known for pencil marking cells, but if you do, you can logically color pretty much the entire puzzle before you enter the 5's and the rest of the digits.
42:38. Loved it. Beautiful logic!
First time I ever 'beat' Simon. And then watched the video screaming - 'nooo - over there - yes you can - its just there'
22:19 for me. Went pretty smooth. Decided to guess low and high (in pencil marks only of course). Made it much easier to track numbers. Of course i guessed wrong and had to renumber everything :D
speaking of magic squares I have a suggestion for the fog puzzle that is a completely blank grid 100% fog with multiple magic squares. the rules mention that box 4 is a magic square. All magic squares are green. Instead give a random square in box 4. Any will do. Then you don't have to mention that box 4 is a magic square in the rules.
26m09s loved it. Really really loved those 5s, 1s, and 9s.
That was a painful watch! So much so that after 1 minute i just ended up doing the puzzle on my phone myself though i was not planning to today as i had other things going on!
I think I prefer when Mark removes colors when they are no longer useful.
100%. Simon distracts himself with over-coloring, and makes it more difficult to follow for me.
I love the phrase "People much more erudite than me..."
33m40s one of rare times where I am not only finally capable of completing the featured sudoku, but beat Simons time (despite that he liberally spends his time explaining things in great precise detail.
I hope I didn't cheat by accident... I found myself not needing to use the 3 long line in the touching corners of boxes 2,3,6 but i suspect it may have been from doing as much high/low color filling as i could across the whole grid.
26:30 ... and I look forward to that behemoth you hinted at
Nice puzzle! (The one I just solved, I mean.)
I didn't clock the 5 in box 7 for. along time, so I covered most of the grid in 19, 28, 37, 46 pairs. Then the revealed 4 sorted everything. Maybe took longer, but much more beautiful.
Such a clever puzzle! Looked daunting at first, but the logic flows pretty well. 54:51 for me
This is the first time I blew away Simon's time. 16:09 for me. I can't believe this was a hard puzzle for Simon.
I began with the obvious two 5's at the center of magic squares. 4 and 6 cannot be the center of a Dutch Whisper when its neighbors are both odd. That gives easy 2-8 pairs in the corners of both magic circles. If you color the squares next to them as both high or both low (use blue or orange or such). Then it basically becomes a parity puzzle with complications. Obviously the two lines connecting both magic squares needed a 5 somewhere along it. These get placed easily. This eventually puts a 5 in the bottom left and everything unravels from there.
That's where I went with it. R2C2 has to be a 28 creating the other one and off you go. The 4 eventually tells you which is high and which is low.
Very nice design , completely letterable/colourable pairwise solve. didn't need the given till the end .
Ended up w 5 wrong cells(3 with 2 following due to coloring err but didn't affect the rest of the solve surprisingly).
Mad that I didn't see this turn into a D5/XV letter scheme after you DD the magic squares , woulda saved on some pen marking...
Solved in 16:12. Quite astonishing Simon took so long.
58:54 ... yes, 6 can go next to 1... but 5 can't!
I'm really hoping you'll add more hints for one of the puzzles on the new fog app. It's the only puzzle I couldn't solve. Most I didn't need hints. Only the last few puzzles needed them. But this was in the teens or abouts. The rule is that you need to count the odd and even digits and specify how many of each in the circles. I got most of box 3 for sure. A little bit around it..........and I got stuck and there is almost nothing in hints for that puzzle. Interestingly enough.......I didn't need the hints for the progress I did get.
In a room with 23 people theres a 50.73% chance that there is at least one shared birthday. in a room of 70, theres a 99.99% probability that there is a pair that share a birthday.
Noooooo!!! Wouldve loved to see the solve of the puzzle you teased at the beginning, but im not a patreon😢😢😢. Oh well
At 34:25... "Oh, I'm sorry. This is probably obvious to you all." YEP! Yep, it is! 😂
I tried but didn't finish this puzzle a few days ago. However, during the short time that I did sit down with it, I had a moment where I thought about the whisper line that passes through r6c4 and, somehow, concluded that it had to be a 5 which did turn out to be correct as it cleared the fog in r7c3. But then, like 5 minutes later, I found myself thinking, "Hang on a minute? Why did it actually *have* to be a 5?" and no matter what I did I couldn't figure what my reasoning had been or why I was so certain about it. Oh well.
I've never even been to America and even I can see that's clearly an Arby's commercial.
November 11 babies were likely conceived across valentines day :) when i worked in obstetrics imaging we used to have to plan for ebbs and flows around holidays etc.
I've been skipping the long videos more and more lately. I just don't have the time......but.....I do love wrogn puzzles. I want to see that one. I don't care if it takes 20 minutes for the rules (maybe mention if they are standard so I can skip that part or not)
30:29. First time i ever solved an hour-plus video in less than half the video length.
Makes me want to shout - ITS SYMETICAL SO EVERY TIME YOU FIND SOMETHING _ MIRROR IT!
Thank you Simon
I guess It's time for Simon to watch Nolan's Tenet:)
People born the first party of November were conceived around Valintine's Day
32:38 for me (with some coloring help from Simon), I saw the 5 in the center box as soon as he started coloring the ends of that line.
I still think the SATOR Square is just the ancient Roman equivalent of the Cool S.
Started to talk in Swedish to Simon when he did not look at the right spot :)
Solver number 1588 in 10:39
Wow, nice puzzle
This 5 in the corner really deserves a song!
Beautiful and very approachable puzzle. Solved in 39:02.
Anyone else wait to put the 5 in box 7? Once I saw that it was going there I knew it would disambiguate everything so I decided to spend the time coloring and limiting everything to high/low pairs. Put in the 5, saw the 4 and then filled everything in.
Valentine's Day is about 9 months ago. Coincidence on lots of birthdays? Maybe.
i did not know what a sator square is. Thanks for explaining.
About 5 seconds after placing the first three fives (boxes 1, 5, 9) it dawned on me... That's Phistomefels ring ... The corresponding 2 fives can only go in box 3 and 7... in Box 3, together with the polarities this places 5 and 1-9's immediately
It was easy if you know few tricks about magic squares to start with. 30:02 for me. But I frequently end up wasting too much time in coloring everything and using mouse instead of keyboard.
54:16
What a beautiful reveal.
Splendid!
21:59 pretty fun high/low coloring puzzle :)
22:40 for me. Might be the most I've ever beaten the video time by. I feel like I wasted about 5 minutes rediscovering the layout possibilities of perfect squares (I always forgot evens in the corners is the easy way to remember).
53:20 for me, loved this one!
00:46:52 for me. Loved the finish as I didn't put the fog '5' in until I had colored almost every square, so it was just fill in the numbers when the given digit was shown!!!!!! Kind comment.