Thank you so much for taking a chance on my puzzle! I'm so glad you stuck with it, as hopeless as it seemed at times. (And huge thanks to SenatorGronk for the recommendation! Truly, I'm honored.) -Darth Paradox
They posted a couple of unsolved puzzles and they were pretty interesting. Wish they'd do that more often, maybe have a once a year or a Friday the 13th type thing.
It would be good to have such a channel. Not to see Mark and Simon fail but to give some recognition to those setters who put their hard work out there for free and only want to be featured as payment. It takes setters sometimes days or weeks to create their puzzles. It would be a shame they don't get featured just because their puzzle was a little too hard to be solved that day.
Rules: 05:26 Let's Get Cracking: 07:59 Simon's time: 2h2m44s Puzzle Solved: 2:10:43 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Bobbins: 2x (1:17:18, 1:17:18) Phistomefel: 2x (15:03, 1:18:33) Three In the Corner: 1x (2:09:06) Maverick: 1x (12:54) The Secret: 1x (2:12:31) You Rotten Thing: 1x (1:17:18) Nori Nori: 1x (1:35:01) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Ah: 26x (16:45, 17:29, 19:01, 19:04, 22:55, 36:54, 52:02, 53:21, 59:12, 59:12, 1:00:52, 1:00:52, 1:11:37, 1:13:56, 1:15:41, 1:17:18, 1:24:34, 1:41:46, 1:43:25, 1:45:37, 1:46:58, 1:52:53, 1:53:34, 1:54:33, 1:56:42, 2:00:00, 2:06:07) Hang On: 11x (17:20, 59:12, 1:07:42, 1:13:56, 1:31:19, 1:43:25, 1:44:47, 1:45:37, 1:45:50, 1:52:31, 1:58:34) Sorry: 10x (47:01, 53:21, 59:44, 1:11:37, 1:30:15, 1:49:37, 1:56:27, 2:03:50, 2:06:14, 2:12:38) In Fact: 8x (22:21, 22:29, 40:16, 1:15:12, 1:18:37, 1:50:00, 2:08:19, 2:10:53) Incredible: 7x (44:42, 44:45, 2:06:25, 2:11:16, 2:11:19, 2:11:44, 2:11:44) By Sudoku: 7x (1:11:48, 1:16:59, 1:35:38, 1:44:23, 1:50:29, 1:53:37, 2:05:37) Obviously: 7x (14:11, 36:07, 37:08, 42:26, 1:16:14, 1:52:06, 2:02:58) Cake!: 7x (03:02, 03:03, 03:08, 03:08, 03:50, 04:49, 04:51) Beautiful: 6x (1:00:54, 1:07:58, 1:09:07, 1:14:00, 1:24:34, 1:24:34) I Have no Clue: 5x (15:59, 29:18, 56:39, 1:03:09, 1:54:18) Wow: 5x (32:21, 43:48, 50:45, 1:02:29, 1:20:48) Pencil Mark/mark: 5x (46:49, 1:15:39, 1:21:20, 1:35:56, 2:05:59) Brilliant: 3x (02:57, 1:45:16, 1:45:19) Come on Simon: 3x (1:04:17, 1:27:36, 1:46:26) I've Got It!: 3x (33:27, 59:15, 2:11:51) What on Earth: 2x (08:04, 1:59:52) Goodness: 2x (1:33:31, 2:06:09) Nonsense: 2x (1:15:28, 1:24:00) Stuck: 2x (1:30:25, 1:52:56) Lovely: 2x (1:19:34, 2:07:52) Extraordinary: 2x (00:59, 2:11:13) Bonkers: 2x (01:54, 01:57) Shouting: 2x (2:06:22, 2:06:30) Surely: 2x (21:24, 1:44:44) Progress: 2x (1:18:22, 1:18:55) What Does This Mean?: 2x (44:35, 2:04:11) Nature: 2x (09:42, 1:47:22) The Answer is: 1x (1:08:07) Clever: 1x (1:18:45) Break the Puzzle: 1x (21:24) Fascinating: 1x (1:17:56) Deadly Pattern: 1x (2:10:03) Gorgeous: 1x (1:41:46) Our old Friend Sudoku: 1x (2:09:05) Famous Last Words: 1x (2:09:50) Of All Things: 1x (2:08:28) Magnificent: 1x (2:12:06) Plonk: 1x (2:08:38) Juxtaposition: 1x (1:18:11) That's Huge: 1x (1:24:57) Have a Think: 1x (10:10) Middly Digit: 1x (49:20) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Twelve (6 mentions) Two (215 mentions) Red (136 mentions) Antithesis Battles: High (3) - Low (2) Even (8) - Odd (0) Lower (2) - Higher (0) Outside (2) - Inside (0) Row (35) - Column (33) FAQ: Q1: You missed something! A1: That could very well be the case! Human speech can be hard to understand for computers like me! Point out the ones that I missed and maybe I'll learn! Q2: Can you do this for another channel? A2: I've been thinking about that and wrote some code to make that possible. Let me know which channel you think would be a good fit!
There's an unmarked "Maverick" at 1:27:12. Aside from this I happened to notice, what a remarkable bot! I absolutely love it! I remember when it started popping up in the comments, I'm glad to see it's still around!
You have got to be kidding! TWO HOURS? And a SINGLE DIGIT to begin? Oh Simon, I have to work tomorrow, and it’s going to be Your fault. (Wagging finger and grinning)
You know, sometimes Simon gets to the first digit and says something like, "Goodness, we've been going for a half hour and we're only just now getting a digit, this is crazy." You know this is bonkers, because at half an hour Simon puts in hos first pencil mark and is just like, "I think I've figured out something about this puzle."
After all that effort, 2:02:00 in I was shouting - "Check the palindrome at the top to get the 34 pair!" Love ya Simon. Not much elicits such a passionate response in this ol' man.
I’m still going through but now actively shouting at the screen around 1:39:00 where he has yellow green grey in the 4th, 5th and 6th row of the 7th column. He already found the 6 within that double renban line, and knew there was definitely a yellow, so the three remaining have to be a triplet of 1, 2 and 5 within a single sudoku window, which would resolve the 2/3 grey cell in that same window and possibly create a waterfall! But what a breakthrough with that initial 6! I never would have spotted it. So excited to see this all just resolve itself now!
(Just got to that same part as you, guessing I wouldn’t have spotted it myself but now I’m joining your shouting once more! A lesson in not learning to check the comments prematurely)
I'd absolutely ADORE a "partial solves of cracking the cryptic" videos, by the way. Sounds like amazing content that would be extremely insightful into puzzles and logic. If this is the sort of stuff you solve, I'd love to see the ones you give up halfway through.
The fact that at 2:07:00, Simon found the position of the 5, without using the palindrome on the top left that has been staring at him for a good half hour at that point, blew my mind. This is a level of disrespectful genius I had never seen before.
One extra strategy that Simon could use that would speed of some of his solves is this: when he gets stuck, which he admitted to several times, is “Have I used all the rules?” And then go through all of them fairly quickly. This one had renban, diagonal and palindrome (EDIT: and sudoku, lol). He spent over an hour almost exclusively using the renban and never looked at the palindrome. 1:44:15 he took a 2 out of one side of the palindrome but did not on the other end. Reviewing all the rules would have helped. The rest was genius!!!!!
I will have to wipe my screen now after a good half an hour of shouting regarding that palindrome. Don't get me wrong, I would never have got that far and the intention is only to help when I finally found something on my level...
That's pure Simon. And part of the reason we're here. I love those special moments and I don't think I'm alone. I love the paradox of knowing I'd never have been able to get started and moaning about the palindrome.
I'd watch 2 hours long video of Simon solving this kind of beast, over any "blockbuster" movie these days. This is proper action, drama, fun and excitement. Thank you.
Without a doubt, this is the most complicated puzzle I've seen you complete, in terms of pencil marks and notation. Huge props to the writer of your Sudoku tool, pretty sure you used all of it's features in this example. it's proven itself to be incredibly flexible. Oh and good job on the solve 😉
As Simon speculated, you can use geometry to speed up the solve. There are 27 special digits (1s, 5s, and 9s) in the grid. 10 of them are on the length 8 line, another 4 on the length 16 line, and 3 are in the central box. That's a total of 17 special digits, which leaves the remaining 10 special digits on the Phistomefel Ring. You can use this at 1:09:30 in the solve. At this point 6 of the 10 special digits have been placed in the Phistomefel corner blocks, and 4 cells within the blocks have been shown not to contain a special digit, leaving 4 special digits to place in 6 cells. But R2C2 and R7C7 cannot both be red, because of the diagonal, and R2C1 and R7C2 cannot both be green because then there is nowhere to put another green on the length 16 line. Therefore R1C7 is green, R2C7 is yellow, exactly one of R2C2 and R7C2 is red, and exactly one of R2C1 and R7C7 is green.
This puzzle is an utter work of genius. The double renban rule sounds kind of inconspicuous, but the way it produced novel logic throughout the entire solve path was nothing short of mesmerizing. I was shouting about the 2 towards the end, but I still greatly enjoyed Simon's solve as well.
Maybe it's just me but I was confused by the rules for the longest time and I think they were unclear. I was under the impression that the sets of consecutive digits had to be in consecutive order (ascending or descending) along the double renban line (skipping any number of boxes allowed of course). All the examples given in the ruleset followed this. But upon closer reading of the rules, I realized they didn't have to be in order. Would've been nice for the examples to not mislead.
@@lexipowell7357 I was exactly the same and figured the palindrome around the 16 renban line would've forced 87987 with 7 on the palindrome early on. Puzzle became very confusing when I realised that was horribly wrong.
I am feeling quite smug. I was shouting "palindrome" for about half an hour towards the end. I doubt I would ever beat this puzzle though. I understood the logic but no chance I would get it on my own.
What an incredible puzzle. I think my only critique would be with the examples of valid sequences for the double renbans given in the rules. To me, it seemed implied that - overlapping or not - the sequences were always required to be in order. For example 1234 would be a valid half of a double renban, but 1243 would not. Obviously in the final solve this was not the case, which would've been a huge sticking point for me if I attempted to solve it. That said, I don't think I'd have had much chance of ever solving this anyhow, as the logic required is just incredible. I can't imagine how you even begin setting something like this. It's wonderful.
yes I agree I thought that when he put in the digits around 33:12, based upon the sequences having to be in order, those cells in fact could not be 2s or 8s
Placeholders help in this one. It's still extremely hard, but I think it makes it easier to visualise the logic, a little less confusing than the colouring. Red is either high or low, and all the renbans means the order matters a lot. So just make red A. A = 1 or 9, B = 2 or 8, C = 3 or 7, D = 4 or 6, E = 5. Now the perimeter renbans must have 2 x ABCD, 2 x BCDE, 3 x FGHI, 1 x EFGH. So @52:00-@56:00, grey must be the three digits between yellow & green, they are an EI pair, so grey is an FGH triple. And pencilmarking the quads means simon's yellow group, r9c2-5, must be FGHI, so r1c1 is I, r9c9 = E = 5, and you can pencil the entire perimeter with quads/triples. And eventually the given 4 will disambiguate everything else. edit - for me, my pencil marking meant that at the point Simon reached in the video @1:20:00 or so, I could force red into r2c2, and more importantly, I had a D in r7c7, and D is 4 or 6, so I could change all my letters into numbers, and have the given 4 do a lot of work for me.
As much as Simon deserves a big applause for solving this puzzle (I gave up after like 15min), the last 30-40min I was screaming at obvious things like I never did before. So many things he just didn’t see that were a straight forward path to the finish😅 but it’s probably understandable as his brain must’ve been overheated from all the logic he did for the first 1.5h~
I am average at best at sudoku, and I always start these videos thinking 'I'm definitely not going to watch the whole thing'. Yet you inevitably draw me in with your crystal clear explanations and communicative joy, amazing job! About not seeing the thermometer clue at the end don't worry one bit, wondering when you're going to find it just adds to the suspense :) Seeing you finding other ways to find digit does make me wonder about a special mechanic though: do you know of any puzzles where the clues might be revealed as you go? Like a thermometer that would only appear if X box is filled in?
It’s the first time I get the break-in before Simon speaking at 2x. The idea is simple, you have to slice the four sets of the outer rows and column in 4-sized chunks for the renban. First deduction: you can never overlap cuts, otherwise you would use more digits when you overlap but less when you don’t. So you have only four choices: 1-4, 2-5, 5-8 and 6-9. Second deduction: splitting the four sets like that you leave out either 1, 5 or 9 you weren’t able to fit in the two sets. You are left with four from 1, 5, 9 that are in the four sets but not in your cuts. These are the ones you have to double count, and the only way to double count them in the sets are to put them in the corners. Therefore, the corners must be the 1, 5 and 9 that are left from the cuts. If you had put anything else, eg a 3, you would have removed a 3 that leaves a 1 and a 2 without a group.
That's nice. My argument was that every 4 digit sequence needs one of 1, 5 or 9, giving eight in the perimeter. If they weren't in the corners we would have twelve, so the corners must be 1, 5 and 9 to get down to eight. I used the same logic as you to get more insight as to what the sequences can be.
I have in fact been gently yelling at you Simon about that 2 at the end as it makes me feel so smart when I can spot something before you do for once! I am always blown away by how you manage to solve those extremely difficult puzzles while explaining the logic in a way that us beginners can follow. I love these videos so much
1:40:46 for me (almost under the 100 minute mark), I was so focused on the palindromes at the start of the puzzle that it took me a while to get the break-in, and then at the end I thought I was left with a deadly pattern on 2s and 4s in columns 2 and 3 and laughed at myself when I saw that it was resolved by one of the palindromes that I spent so much time staring at at the start of the puzzle.
If you're having a hard time breaking up the first deduction about the 1,5,9 in the corners, this is how I've wrapped my head around it. It might or might not be spoilers and I'm not definitively sure of this but it makes sense to me: (Do not read further if you don't like spoilers and want to figure out your own logic about this :D) Starting with the double renbans on the outer layer (columns 1 and 9, and rows 1 and 9). We can never put more than two of the digits 1,5,9 on the double renbans with length 8. Reasoning is simple, 1234 and 9876 could be one type but it would exclude 5 and once you put a 5 on one of the renbans, you'd have to remove either the 1 or the 9. So, the entire double renbans have the digits 1,5,9 twice on them each, which means they have 8 of those digits on them. This will make up a set of 32 digits that includes 8 digits that are from 1,5,9. Let's call this set, set 1. The second set we want to examine is just the usual rows and columns these renbans take up. If you take the first and the last rows, you get 2 sets of the digits 1-9. If you add the first and last columns to these, you get 4 sets of the digits 1-9. Each row or column has one set of the digits 1,5,9. Now we have 36 digits with 4 sets of the digits 1,5,9. This means we have 36 digits, 12 of which are from 1,5,9. Let's call this set, set 2. Now if you remove set 1 from set 2, you are left with 4 digits that have to be selected from 1,5,9. This is the reason the corners have to be from 1,5,9 since they're the only digits that are counted twice in set 2 and only once in set 1.
Love your content and yes, absolutely start a second channel with partially solved puzzles! We would love to see that and make us mere mortals feel better lol!
Watching this it seems like it’s not just typical awareness of strategies and patterns that makes a good sudoku solver- it’s like he’s got more RAM in his brain to store logic and keep track of anything. Never in a million years could I have held on to everything it took to get him to the first digit, let alone the rest of the solve. Insane stuff.
Simon, after hours of excruciating, mind-boggling deductions: I'm so sorry, you've probably seen [X] for so long Literally everyone else except the only other person who solved the puzzle: ... yeah, we'll let that slide ;-) Absolutely impressive solve. And Simon as humble as ever. What a fun one to watch.
1:18:14 if only Simon remembered what he said in the very beginning of the puzzle about the “inner ring 8 cell line”, it can never have two yellows or two reds because it would have 5 digits in c8 from a set of 4 digits. It’s much easier to see it that way😅
What if these sudoku puzzles are actually tests created by aliens to see how intelligent Earthlings are, and after watching Simon solve this puzzle, they decide not to invade because they conclude humans would wipe the floor with them? Thank you, Simon, for saving the Earth!
Created tech to send data across the emptiness between stars and galaxies; Prepared to send an invading force an unfathomable distance in order to take over an entire planet, currently occupied by highly aggressive, territorial, weaponized primates; Scared off by a single human taking multiple hours and having significant trouble solving a Sudoku puzzle of above average difficulty 😅 Sounds like a good B-movie, thanks for the laugh :)
I've stepped away from Sudoku for a couple of months (life happens), and I come back to a 2-hour beast. Judging by the name I'm not sure I'm up to nested Renbans, maybe I should catch up on a few GAS videos as a nice gentle warmup first.
Just observing Simon persist and tackle a challenging puzzle is a great life lesson in itself for young and old. A key to success in whatever endeavour one partakes in.
It's this kind of genius that keeps me wanting to watch you solve puzzles Simon. I can yell at you on a nightly basis for finding the hard way to deduce a cell is number A and not number B while a B sits right next to it but then you make this break-in look as if it should be everyone's first thought. What a solve on an AMAZING puzzle.
I solved it in 97:20, I'm so proud :D ! What a puzzle! For the placeholder vs bifurcation, I am in the placeholder team. Or, in fact, I see it more like a dual problem, like in many math problems. I create a new problem, with the given digits changed to pencil marks (46), and one of my pencil marks changed to a given digit. Then, once I have the solution to my dual problem (for which there is provably one and only one solution if and only if there is one and only one solution to the original problem), I can deduce the solution to the original problem without any additional logic. As a matter of fact, I chose the wrong one for this puzzle and it didn't take me much more additional time (like 1 min') than if I took the right one from the start. However, when you avoid doing it, you generally have nice color solves which look way more elegant and enjoyable to watch than my dual solves :D ! So in the end, for my own pleasure, I would say: continue complexifying your life :D ! Great solve, incredible puzzle, thank you for sharing!!!
I'm 1:20 into this video and I'm absolutely captivated by your attempt at this puzzle, and I'm not even an average sudoku player. Aaannnd I just finished it. BRAVO! Absolutely flabbergasted by your accomplishment!!! What a wonderful roller coaster ride it was. I can't believe I was captivated by a 2 hour sudoku solve.
I finished in 17 hours and 27 minutes AND no bifurcation. I was disappointed not to be able to use the early and brilliant deduction that only four even numbers could be in the Phistomefel Ring.
I have to admit on some longer videos I don't pay attention to every single deduction - but on this one I was absolutely mesmerized the whole way through. I was so excited when I saw that he could put the 1 in R6C3 long before he did, but thats just because I wasn't able to do all of the other fantastic deductions that he did. Thank you so much for the way you walk through your thinking on all of these puzzles - it is a joy to watch you - even when you struggle.
I fear we will run out of superlatives to describe you Simon. Absolutely amazing, incredible, beguiling, stunning, mesmerising to start for the puzzle, the solve, your patience and perseverance. Thank you.
I loved it! The solve flowed beautifully and I appreciated the process of slowly coming to grips with this crazy setup and things falling into place. I couldn't have solved this myself given any amount of time, I'm pretty sure. I mostly like shorter puzzles on the channel because it means I have a chance to do them myself, but I enjoy the occasional feature film :) Thanks!
Simon, I've written this comment before. The reason that the software sometimes knows the solution is correct is because the setter has: 1) generated a playable CtC link with their grid, 2) placed in all the correct digits, and 3) generated a brand new link of the grid where the software has now been taught the correct digit placement. It's a simple process, but no less incredible. Thank you, Sven. You're the real MVP.
At 20:02 now… wondering where this logic is going. A couple of minutes ago I thought he was going down the first little bit of logic I thought of: If there's no 1 in the corner, four of the sequences must be 1234, which uses all the available 4s. So the other 4 sequences must be 5678 or 6789, using all the available 678s. So the only possible disposition of the corner cells would be 5959, which is ruled out by the diagonal; proving that there's at least one 1 in a corner; and the same logic mirrored to show there must be a 9. I only stared at this for 6 minutes before deciding to watch Simon, because I don't have time to finish today. But is there something wrong with my logic that I haven't seen? It looked like Simon was almost at the same point but discarded it for some reason.
I think for the longest Renban at start, there can be strategies to rule out numbers on multiple fields derived from the strategy of a game called nonogram. On long straights of the number 1-7, 2-8, 3-9 are only possible. Therefore, the fields outside of the renban on the row and column can only be 1,2,8,9. Furthermore with considering the start and endings and the consecutive numbering, diagonal rule and ruleset of normal sudoku. More deductions are possible.
I am quite surprised. Simon is doing a puzzle only one person has solved on LMD. Yet Mark and the testers think "Empty Grid 2" will be too difficult for him. 🤔
Mark is a master in solving puzzles, and a real master at fast-solving, but for the hardest ones I think he can miss a bit of resilience, unlike Simon...
@@francoisduez601 Empty Grid 2 is not a puzzle to be bifurcated. It has a logical solve and is not prone to the if this is this then this is that type of solving. Mark has a tendency to go that route when he starts to get stuck. I do think Simon will have trouble with it because he has trouble with Disjointed Set type of puzzles. Simon will probably also have a little trouble with the Prime Box constraint. It does have an element that he might like where you have to find two 3x3 boxes. After seeing what Simon did today Empty Grid 2 should not pose that much of a problem but will probably take him at least an hour to solve.
I'm extremely poor at Maths, infact I'm fairly surely I have Dyscalculia. But for some very strange reason I am absolutely riveted by these videos! Watching your brain work out these very complex puzzles is very satisfying and I even end up finding answers through your explanation! What a brilliant idea these videos are
Simon - Apologize for nothing! This was an absolute wonder to watch. I was lost for most of it. But just watching the logic come together was awe inducing. bravo!
40:01 I think you may not say it's bifurcation to this idea: Let's say the repeated number is out of 234. That means all the combinations would be 234 in the top left double renban. Therefore, you can see that the green digit needs to be in the column, instead of the row. As the logic works regardless of it being 234 or 678, it's safe to not consider that bifurcation, so long as you revert that supposition.
I would love to see a second channel for unsolved puzzles! 1. It means that yoh dont fully waste your time not completing a solve and, more importantly... 2. We get to see you and Mark struggle which would be highly entertaining!
This was so amazing. Simon, I am not surprised that you were tired by the time you put your first digit in - and you kept going. (Frankly, I am surprised that you don't need a biobreak at some point in these longer videos, let alone a stand-up-and-do-some-jumping-jacks break, or even a brief nap!) One of the reasons I love this channel is that when you attempt these super difficult puzzles, you attack them rigorously and thoroughly - you do not take shortcuts. (Yes, sometimes you take "long cuts" but I am totally OK with that - I don't mind in the slightest.) I enjoy videos where you clearly enjoy the puzzle and find the process of solving interesting. I love it when you get excited about things. I loved this video.
I think that 6 came into use at the perfect moment. I'm not a very big fan of sudokus that essentially have two "opposite" solutions that are disambiguated by something at the very end. Here all the nice logic of the opening was possible to do without "crazy" labeling (or using some stand in letter or number), then you got that dismbiguated and could continue (to watch for my part). Very nice puzzle and solve btw 🙂
What I love about this puzzles is that often after find 1st digit all sudoku is figured out and 10 minutes later is solved. But not in this case. 1st number after hour and after almost 1 more hour there was still some mistery to solve.
I’ve started watching these videos to fall asleep, they’re so fun and soothing to watch! But I usually fall asleep before the puzzle is solved, so I have to return in the morning to see how it turned out! 😭😭 thank you for posting these fun videos!
So about an hour into the video, I was really starting to see what was going on, so I decided I would have a go at it... After several restarts (I think I was mostly just messing up sudoku by colors)... I went to bed, restarted again and finally solved it. 386:15 was my full time... Very cool puzzle, loved the mini sets, especially since they mostly stuck together through the whole puzzle.
A truly mesmerizingly beautiful puzzle! Did it myself over the course of 10 hours during my workday. getting to that first 5 was sooo satisfying and rewarding. Astonishing work there
I clearly don't understand the double Renban rules for the purple lines, because this looks nothing like I imagined on the purple lines if it's correct. How can you form two overlapping sets of consecutive digits that includes 9-6-2 in a row. Neither of the numbers are consecutive to each other? I'm generally confused regarding that rule. Specially since the examples given in the rules fits how I assumed it would look like. EDIt: I missed one specific part of the rule when reading and trying the puzzle for myself. The fact that the digits can be in any order along the line slipped past me, simply because that wouldn't make them consecutive anymore. Then the examples are only with consecutive numbers in correct order. Most confusing rule ever tbh.
Thanks for explaining that! I watched the entire thing, dying to know how the renban lines would look upon completion and I was raging by the end because they werent consecutive! Very unclear rule.
I interpreted the instructions wrong, because I was unfamiliar with renban. But it made for a really fun puzzle to try. try the same puzzle but change the rule to this: i thought the 2 sets of consecutive numbers could be inter-arranged with each other in any way, but that they had to still remain in sequence. meaning, consecutively ordered over the journey moving from left to right or right to left (ie 234234, 232434, 223434, 423234 all work because the order can always be found consecutively for each individual sequence, only the spacing changes). the instructions also gave examples which matched these parameters. 172839 worked because 123 are in order and 789 are in order, but inter-jumbled. with this approach it completely changes the idea of the puzzle and the 8 pair renban line becomes more central... the rest of rules, including the palindrome and diagonal, remains the same.
1:54:57 More important to think about on the line is that you can't have a 1 on it since 2 is ruled off it entirely by sudoku, this places the 1 in box 4 which works around the grid no small amount...
(This is part of why I think it'd be really helpful to take a moment to stop once a color is known and not only replace all the certain cells with digits but also the possibles with pencil marks - I suspect this would have scanned more readily if those yellow flashes were instead 1 pencil marks...)
I've started watching CtC to fall asleep to as it's both interesting and relaxing, however this posed a bit of a problem today... I finished a night shift, got in bed about 10am, fell asleep within a couple of minutes of the start of the solve, got woken up an hour later and after dealing with a few things rewound to start watching again. It's now 4pm, I've just finished watching that incredible solve and I've not been back to sleep!
I was very proud of myself because I was playing along and figured out a lot of stuff then would play your video to see what you got and about 70% of the time I agreed with you, which is an accomplishment for me!
1:21:32 the thing is, R3C3 shouldn't be red. If it were, it would deny both R2C2 and R8C8 off being reds, so it would require an extra red in the middle ring.
This is the kind of puzzle where the line between bifurcation and thinking/planning ahead become blurred to me. I can't even imagine trying to solve this without the former, given that I have almost no experience with variant sudoku. Simon is a wizard. I'd like to borrow his brain for an hour or two.
Amazing job Simon, I really enjoyed the first 30 minutes of the solve because any sudoku that opens with set theory is a big winner in my book. I do have to tell you that the palindrome logic to sort of the grey digits in row 1 was available for a while as you feared. It was actually super useful to me when it came to sorting out grey digits and the 5 in box 7.
It's always special to see you work your way through some of the most difficult logic on the planet only to miss something seemingly obvious. (Palindrome preventing r1c3 from being 2) I wouldn't have made it anywhere near far enough to get that myself, so suffice to say, you are a total genius.
Just an absolute extraordinary 130 minutes of edge of your seat excitement!! Fabulous solve , reasoning , explanations , deductions Simon to this brute !
Loved watching the master at work....I would never be able to do anything like this but I love finding little bits inside the expertise that I do find. For a long time I was trying to time-telepathically tell Simon about the 1 in box 4 and how it could only go in one place once the 2 was placed in R5C1. With the 1 then in R6C3, the 9 goes in R5C3. With the then placement of 6 on the double renban that meant 5 was in R4C3 and that sets up a whole chain of 3, 4, 5 placements all over.
Wow! Congrats Simon! Great solve, working through all that hard logic - and a wonderful puzzle! I am very impressed, this is probably the most diffcult puzzle I have seen on this channel.
I could have been dancing a cancan, Or chatting with some Isle of Man man, But I simply can't lose When the pastime I choose Is watching you solve Renrenbanban.
Watched to the end, as a novice solver this one was wild to me. there were several leaps of logic I didn't follow but there were plenty I did. Thank you and there's no way I'd even attempt a puzzle like this
Just wondering if the rule of 'equal size sets of "consecutive" numbers' is being followed in this solution e.g is 24351243 used in the top left Double Renban line valid? since the numbers 2435, as far as I can see, are not consecutive. Please explain, Thanks
Whenever I'm yelling at Simon watching these.. it's to tell him to go back to doing sudoku.. dizzying deductions but doesn't see the simple thing staring him in the face. Great job
What a brain. Again, I will say it, when I see something, and in 2hours of a puzzle, I found maybe 3 things before you. Just THREE. Mindboggling. I was more yelling at the 6 in box 6 with the A and B looking at it, was just basic sudoku and not the 2 you were apologizing for (I missed it too). But I take the wins. This is easily one of your best solves.
You should make a channel called Cracked Cryptics for puzzles that defeat you. Because I would be amazed to see those puzzles. As far as Im concerned you are brilliant to even undertake something like this, let alone be able to solve it. Simply brilliant.
2:02:28 Haven't watched to the end yet, so maybe you'll see it in a bit, but I just noticed that because of the palindrome rule, you can remove the two from the third square from the top left, because it has to be a mirror of the fourth square down from the top left. Which means that the second square from the top left must be 2.
So much fascinating logic in this one! I have a feeling we will be hearing the name Darth Paradox again! After my solve (during which my kiddos checked in occasionally as they played) I put Simon's solve on the big screen and grabbed a bag of chips. I yelled the next moves at Simon and my kids would try to spot what I was saying before Simon found it. It was a whole day of entertainment.
48:30 I must have missed it. How did we know there is a green digit somewhere on the line? Edit: right, each line needs two of the gatekeeper digits and that line can't have a red digit on it.
I don't know how I got here but I am absolutely fascinated by how you worked out that puzzle! I can't believe I just sat and watched this for 2 hours and was absolutely absorbed in it the entire time. This is so cool. I used to do regular sudoku puzzles, but this makes me want to seek out some harder ones with interesting rules like this (but not this difficult, my logic skills are not there lol)
Even some of the most complicated sudokus you do on the channel I can follow along with what you're saying and even make a handful of my own deductions along the way, but this one I can't even follow. That to me is a testament to just how good at problem solving Simon is with a little time lol
Two things slayed me. First, when Simon figured out the 6 in R7C7 (which opened up the puzzle), he left the line without doing the 125 to finish it. Argh! :) Second, when Simon was applying As and Bs to the 78s, I desperately wanted him to do sudoku on the 78Bs to fill it in for box 8 (at R8C5). This would have helped him in a number of ways later. It's a small thing, but it snagged in my brain and wouldn't dislodge. I was hooked, I guess you could say, and it hurt! :)
From my initial understanding of the double renban, 172635 would be allowed, but 153726 would not. Based on the examples given, I had assumed that while the sequences may interlace and go in either direction, they still had to be in order. The rules say otherwise, but the fact that in all the examples the sequences are in order led me to think this was a case of ambiguous wording.
Silly Simon. You know we like the long ones. They always showcase that mix of clever thinking and occasion trips into despair that we adore. "I don't know what to do", followed by "here's an idea" is quintessential Simon.
I definitely couldn't have solved this, great job! I do wonder how much shorter the video would have been if you had noticed the top left palindrome. It was very impressive seeing you doing hard logic trying to place digits that would've been given by knowing the 2 placement in box 1 sooner. In that way it makes the video more impressive than if you'd gotten it.
I don't know why youtube started recommending me these videos but this was enthralling. Well done. Couldn't stop watching, now I need to brush my teeth and go to bed.
Thank you so much for taking a chance on my puzzle! I'm so glad you stuck with it, as hopeless as it seemed at times. (And huge thanks to SenatorGronk for the recommendation! Truly, I'm honored.)
-Darth Paradox
It's a magnificent puzzle
This was just phenomenal from you!
Thank you for your puzzle!
I had much fun solving it
Amazing!
Hey Chris -- Senator Gronk here. So yeah -- I really, really liked this one and am so glad it finally got the exposure it deserves. Cheers!
You know it’s a good puzzle when Simon turns it into a coloring book
You also know it's good when the first digit isn't placed until the one-hour mark.
Please make a 2nd CTC Channel and put all unsolved puzzles there. I think it would be very insightful.
Could be cool to watch it 'in the background'
They posted a couple of unsolved puzzles and they were pretty interesting. Wish they'd do that more often, maybe have a once a year or a Friday the 13th type thing.
Confounding the Cryptic
I would love to see Simon defeated by a puzzle
It would be good to have such a channel. Not to see Mark and Simon fail but to give some recognition to those setters who put their hard work out there for free and only want to be featured as payment. It takes setters sometimes days or weeks to create their puzzles. It would be a shame they don't get featured just because their puzzle was a little too hard to be solved that day.
Rules: 05:26
Let's Get Cracking: 07:59
Simon's time: 2h2m44s
Puzzle Solved: 2:10:43
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Bobbins: 2x (1:17:18, 1:17:18)
Phistomefel: 2x (15:03, 1:18:33)
Three In the Corner: 1x (2:09:06)
Maverick: 1x (12:54)
The Secret: 1x (2:12:31)
You Rotten Thing: 1x (1:17:18)
Nori Nori: 1x (1:35:01)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Ah: 26x (16:45, 17:29, 19:01, 19:04, 22:55, 36:54, 52:02, 53:21, 59:12, 59:12, 1:00:52, 1:00:52, 1:11:37, 1:13:56, 1:15:41, 1:17:18, 1:24:34, 1:41:46, 1:43:25, 1:45:37, 1:46:58, 1:52:53, 1:53:34, 1:54:33, 1:56:42, 2:00:00, 2:06:07)
Hang On: 11x (17:20, 59:12, 1:07:42, 1:13:56, 1:31:19, 1:43:25, 1:44:47, 1:45:37, 1:45:50, 1:52:31, 1:58:34)
Sorry: 10x (47:01, 53:21, 59:44, 1:11:37, 1:30:15, 1:49:37, 1:56:27, 2:03:50, 2:06:14, 2:12:38)
In Fact: 8x (22:21, 22:29, 40:16, 1:15:12, 1:18:37, 1:50:00, 2:08:19, 2:10:53)
Incredible: 7x (44:42, 44:45, 2:06:25, 2:11:16, 2:11:19, 2:11:44, 2:11:44)
By Sudoku: 7x (1:11:48, 1:16:59, 1:35:38, 1:44:23, 1:50:29, 1:53:37, 2:05:37)
Obviously: 7x (14:11, 36:07, 37:08, 42:26, 1:16:14, 1:52:06, 2:02:58)
Cake!: 7x (03:02, 03:03, 03:08, 03:08, 03:50, 04:49, 04:51)
Beautiful: 6x (1:00:54, 1:07:58, 1:09:07, 1:14:00, 1:24:34, 1:24:34)
I Have no Clue: 5x (15:59, 29:18, 56:39, 1:03:09, 1:54:18)
Wow: 5x (32:21, 43:48, 50:45, 1:02:29, 1:20:48)
Pencil Mark/mark: 5x (46:49, 1:15:39, 1:21:20, 1:35:56, 2:05:59)
Brilliant: 3x (02:57, 1:45:16, 1:45:19)
Come on Simon: 3x (1:04:17, 1:27:36, 1:46:26)
I've Got It!: 3x (33:27, 59:15, 2:11:51)
What on Earth: 2x (08:04, 1:59:52)
Goodness: 2x (1:33:31, 2:06:09)
Nonsense: 2x (1:15:28, 1:24:00)
Stuck: 2x (1:30:25, 1:52:56)
Lovely: 2x (1:19:34, 2:07:52)
Extraordinary: 2x (00:59, 2:11:13)
Bonkers: 2x (01:54, 01:57)
Shouting: 2x (2:06:22, 2:06:30)
Surely: 2x (21:24, 1:44:44)
Progress: 2x (1:18:22, 1:18:55)
What Does This Mean?: 2x (44:35, 2:04:11)
Nature: 2x (09:42, 1:47:22)
The Answer is: 1x (1:08:07)
Clever: 1x (1:18:45)
Break the Puzzle: 1x (21:24)
Fascinating: 1x (1:17:56)
Deadly Pattern: 1x (2:10:03)
Gorgeous: 1x (1:41:46)
Our old Friend Sudoku: 1x (2:09:05)
Famous Last Words: 1x (2:09:50)
Of All Things: 1x (2:08:28)
Magnificent: 1x (2:12:06)
Plonk: 1x (2:08:38)
Juxtaposition: 1x (1:18:11)
That's Huge: 1x (1:24:57)
Have a Think: 1x (10:10)
Middly Digit: 1x (49:20)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Twelve (6 mentions)
Two (215 mentions)
Red (136 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
High (3) - Low (2)
Even (8) - Odd (0)
Lower (2) - Higher (0)
Outside (2) - Inside (0)
Row (35) - Column (33)
FAQ:
Q1: You missed something!
A1: That could very well be the case! Human speech can be hard to understand for computers like me! Point out the ones that I missed and maybe I'll learn!
Q2: Can you do this for another channel?
A2: I've been thinking about that and wrote some code to make that possible. Let me know which channel you think would be a good fit!
Is the time to do this proportional to the solve/vid length ?!
@@highpath4776 yeah. The entire video has to process through the bot. A video this long takes a long time to process through a bot
There's an unmarked "Maverick" at 1:27:12. Aside from this I happened to notice, what a remarkable bot! I absolutely love it! I remember when it started popping up in the comments, I'm glad to see it's still around!
Ah yes, red is my favorite number (am I misunderstandimg something, or is it supposed list "red" as a number?)
@@Arcanist665 it says "number (>9), digit and color"
You have got to be kidding! TWO HOURS? And a SINGLE DIGIT to begin? Oh Simon, I have to work tomorrow, and it’s going to be Your fault. (Wagging finger and grinning)
I only had 3 hours of sleep last night (no special reason why), it is very hard to concentrate enough to appreciate this solve.
@@olivier2553😮
Thanks for this solve, for the channel in general, and thumbs up for the ´new´ chapters!
The fact you can solve this puzzle, Simon, is sheer genius, no question whatsoever on that point. Simon, stand up and take a bow.
You know, sometimes Simon gets to the first digit and says something like, "Goodness, we've been going for a half hour and we're only just now getting a digit, this is crazy." You know this is bonkers, because at half an hour Simon puts in hos first pencil mark and is just like, "I think I've figured out something about this puzle."
First digit at 1:01:00.
After all that effort, 2:02:00 in I was shouting - "Check the palindrome at the top to get the 34 pair!" Love ya Simon. Not much elicits such a passionate response in this ol' man.
There was a solid, like, 20 minutes where spotting that palindrome would have saved him so much grief
I’m still going through but now actively shouting at the screen around 1:39:00 where he has yellow green grey in the 4th, 5th and 6th row of the 7th column. He already found the 6 within that double renban line, and knew there was definitely a yellow, so the three remaining have to be a triplet of 1, 2 and 5 within a single sudoku window, which would resolve the 2/3 grey cell in that same window and possibly create a waterfall! But what a breakthrough with that initial 6! I never would have spotted it. So excited to see this all just resolve itself now!
Never mind, he spotted it like a second later lol!
(Just got to that same part as you, guessing I wouldn’t have spotted it myself but now I’m joining your shouting once more! A lesson in not learning to check the comments prematurely)
Yes, i found that palindrom as well
I'd absolutely ADORE a "partial solves of cracking the cryptic" videos, by the way. Sounds like amazing content that would be extremely insightful into puzzles and logic. If this is the sort of stuff you solve, I'd love to see the ones you give up halfway through.
True lol
The fact that at 2:07:00, Simon found the position of the 5, without using the palindrome on the top left that has been staring at him for a good half hour at that point, blew my mind.
This is a level of disrespectful genius I had never seen before.
I have been talking to my screen about the palindrome for at least 20 minutes now. Just like Simon to figure out the hard way to do it.
Only for Simon to then say "that might've been on the palindrome. Doesn't matter, I didn't see it." That's a full life lesson right there.
One extra strategy that Simon could use that would speed of some of his solves is this: when he gets stuck, which he admitted to several times, is “Have I used all the rules?” And then go through all of them fairly quickly. This one had renban, diagonal and palindrome (EDIT: and sudoku, lol). He spent over an hour almost exclusively using the renban and never looked at the palindrome. 1:44:15 he took a 2 out of one side of the palindrome but did not on the other end. Reviewing all the rules would have helped.
The rest was genius!!!!!
I will have to wipe my screen now after a good half an hour of shouting regarding that palindrome. Don't get me wrong, I would never have got that far and the intention is only to help when I finally found something on my level...
That's pure Simon. And part of the reason we're here. I love those special moments and I don't think I'm alone. I love the paradox of knowing I'd never have been able to get started and moaning about the palindrome.
I'd watch 2 hours long video of Simon solving this kind of beast, over any "blockbuster" movie these days. This is proper action, drama, fun and excitement. Thank you.
Without a doubt, this is the most complicated puzzle I've seen you complete, in terms of pencil marks and notation. Huge props to the writer of your Sudoku tool, pretty sure you used all of it's features in this example. it's proven itself to be incredibly flexible. Oh and good job on the solve 😉
Hell yeah, Sven sure knew what he was doing when making this
As Simon speculated, you can use geometry to speed up the solve. There are 27 special digits (1s, 5s, and 9s) in the grid. 10 of them are on the length 8 line, another 4 on the length 16 line, and 3 are in the central box. That's a total of 17 special digits, which leaves the remaining 10 special digits on the Phistomefel Ring. You can use this at 1:09:30 in the solve. At this point 6 of the 10 special digits have been placed in the Phistomefel corner blocks, and 4 cells within the blocks have been shown not to contain a special digit, leaving 4 special digits to place in 6 cells. But R2C2 and R7C7 cannot both be red, because of the diagonal, and R2C1 and R7C2 cannot both be green because then there is nowhere to put another green on the length 16 line. Therefore R1C7 is green, R2C7 is yellow, exactly one of R2C2 and R7C2 is red, and exactly one of R2C1 and R7C7 is green.
Nice logic! But in the last line I figure you mean R1C8 is green, R2C8 is yellow. Cheers:)
@@jsdp Yes. My mistake.
Cracking The Bloopers would be a fun channel to see a montage of Simon and Mark getting stuck on puzzles
Blooping The Cryptic
This puzzle is an utter work of genius. The double renban rule sounds kind of inconspicuous, but the way it produced novel logic throughout the entire solve path was nothing short of mesmerizing.
I was shouting about the 2 towards the end, but I still greatly enjoyed Simon's solve as well.
I was looking to see if any one else was shouting '2'!
Maybe it's just me but I was confused by the rules for the longest time and I think they were unclear. I was under the impression that the sets of consecutive digits had to be in consecutive order (ascending or descending) along the double renban line (skipping any number of boxes allowed of course). All the examples given in the ruleset followed this. But upon closer reading of the rules, I realized they didn't have to be in order. Would've been nice for the examples to not mislead.
@@lexipowell7357 I was exactly the same and figured the palindrome around the 16 renban line would've forced 87987 with 7 on the palindrome early on. Puzzle became very confusing when I realised that was horribly wrong.
I always enjoy the paradoxical pronouncement that "you won't ever see this video"
I am feeling quite smug. I was shouting "palindrome" for about half an hour towards the end. I doubt I would ever beat this puzzle though. I understood the logic but no chance I would get it on my own.
Mark and Simon do not always believe in their ability to solve Sudoku puzzles.
What an incredible puzzle. I think my only critique would be with the examples of valid sequences for the double renbans given in the rules. To me, it seemed implied that - overlapping or not - the sequences were always required to be in order. For example 1234 would be a valid half of a double renban, but 1243 would not. Obviously in the final solve this was not the case, which would've been a huge sticking point for me if I attempted to solve it.
That said, I don't think I'd have had much chance of ever solving this anyhow, as the logic required is just incredible. I can't imagine how you even begin setting something like this. It's wonderful.
Is that not what consecutive means? I was confused by that as well.
@@uncountablyinfinite3429 the rules explicitly state "any order"
yes I agree
I thought that when he put in the digits around 33:12, based upon the sequences having to be in order, those cells in fact could not be 2s or 8s
Placeholders help in this one. It's still extremely hard, but I think it makes it easier to visualise the logic, a little less confusing than the colouring. Red is either high or low, and all the renbans means the order matters a lot. So just make red A. A = 1 or 9, B = 2 or 8, C = 3 or 7, D = 4 or 6, E = 5. Now the perimeter renbans must have 2 x ABCD, 2 x BCDE, 3 x FGHI, 1 x EFGH. So @52:00-@56:00, grey must be the three digits between yellow & green, they are an EI pair, so grey is an FGH triple. And pencilmarking the quads means simon's yellow group, r9c2-5, must be FGHI, so r1c1 is I, r9c9 = E = 5, and you can pencil the entire perimeter with quads/triples. And eventually the given 4 will disambiguate everything else.
edit - for me, my pencil marking meant that at the point Simon reached in the video @1:20:00 or so, I could force red into r2c2, and more importantly, I had a D in r7c7, and D is 4 or 6, so I could change all my letters into numbers, and have the given 4 do a lot of work for me.
As much as Simon deserves a big applause for solving this puzzle (I gave up after like 15min), the last 30-40min I was screaming at obvious things like I never did before. So many things he just didn’t see that were a straight forward path to the finish😅 but it’s probably understandable as his brain must’ve been overheated from all the logic he did for the first 1.5h~
I am average at best at sudoku, and I always start these videos thinking 'I'm definitely not going to watch the whole thing'.
Yet you inevitably draw me in with your crystal clear explanations and communicative joy, amazing job!
About not seeing the thermometer clue at the end don't worry one bit, wondering when you're going to find it just adds to the suspense :)
Seeing you finding other ways to find digit does make me wonder about a special mechanic though: do you know of any puzzles where the clues might be revealed as you go?
Like a thermometer that would only appear if X box is filled in?
That’s what the “fog of war” sudoku rules do, you can find a few in this year’s solves.
It’s the first time I get the break-in before Simon speaking at 2x. The idea is simple, you have to slice the four sets of the outer rows and column in 4-sized chunks for the renban.
First deduction: you can never overlap cuts, otherwise you would use more digits when you overlap but less when you don’t. So you have only four choices: 1-4, 2-5, 5-8 and 6-9.
Second deduction: splitting the four sets like that you leave out either 1, 5 or 9 you weren’t able to fit in the two sets. You are left with four from 1, 5, 9 that are in the four sets but not in your cuts. These are the ones you have to double count, and the only way to double count them in the sets are to put them in the corners.
Therefore, the corners must be the 1, 5 and 9 that are left from the cuts. If you had put anything else, eg a 3, you would have removed a 3 that leaves a 1 and a 2 without a group.
That's nice.
My argument was that every 4 digit sequence needs one of 1, 5 or 9, giving eight in the perimeter. If they weren't in the corners we would have twelve, so the corners must be 1, 5 and 9 to get down to eight.
I used the same logic as you to get more insight as to what the sequences can be.
I have in fact been gently yelling at you Simon about that 2 at the end as it makes me feel so smart when I can spot something before you do for once! I am always blown away by how you manage to solve those extremely difficult puzzles while explaining the logic in a way that us beginners can follow. I love these videos so much
I love watching you do these seemingly impossible puzzles and seeing their little trickle of info turn into a massive river.
1:40:46 for me (almost under the 100 minute mark), I was so focused on the palindromes at the start of the puzzle that it took me a while to get the break-in, and then at the end I thought I was left with a deadly pattern on 2s and 4s in columns 2 and 3 and laughed at myself when I saw that it was resolved by one of the palindromes that I spent so much time staring at at the start of the puzzle.
The setter and the solver are beyond human in extraordinary intelligence and wisdom. Well done Darth Paradox and Simon
If you're having a hard time breaking up the first deduction about the 1,5,9 in the corners, this is how I've wrapped my head around it. It might or might not be spoilers and I'm not definitively sure of this but it makes sense to me:
(Do not read further if you don't like spoilers and want to figure out your own logic about this :D)
Starting with the double renbans on the outer layer (columns 1 and 9, and rows 1 and 9). We can never put more than two of the digits 1,5,9 on the double renbans with length 8. Reasoning is simple, 1234 and 9876 could be one type but it would exclude 5 and once you put a 5 on one of the renbans, you'd have to remove either the 1 or the 9. So, the entire double renbans have the digits 1,5,9 twice on them each, which means they have 8 of those digits on them. This will make up a set of 32 digits that includes 8 digits that are from 1,5,9. Let's call this set, set 1.
The second set we want to examine is just the usual rows and columns these renbans take up. If you take the first and the last rows, you get 2 sets of the digits 1-9. If you add the first and last columns to these, you get 4 sets of the digits 1-9. Each row or column has one set of the digits 1,5,9. Now we have 36 digits with 4 sets of the digits 1,5,9. This means we have 36 digits, 12 of which are from 1,5,9. Let's call this set, set 2.
Now if you remove set 1 from set 2, you are left with 4 digits that have to be selected from 1,5,9. This is the reason the corners have to be from 1,5,9 since they're the only digits that are counted twice in set 2 and only once in set 1.
Love your content and yes, absolutely start a second channel with partially solved puzzles! We would love to see that and make us mere mortals feel better lol!
Watching this it seems like it’s not just typical awareness of strategies and patterns that makes a good sudoku solver- it’s like he’s got more RAM in his brain to store logic and keep track of anything. Never in a million years could I have held on to everything it took to get him to the first digit, let alone the rest of the solve. Insane stuff.
Simon, after hours of excruciating, mind-boggling deductions: I'm so sorry, you've probably seen [X] for so long
Literally everyone else except the only other person who solved the puzzle: ... yeah, we'll let that slide ;-)
Absolutely impressive solve. And Simon as humble as ever. What a fun one to watch.
This was such a marathon! Well done, Simon! You muscled through, and, as ever, your persistance and logic are admirable.
1:18:14 if only Simon remembered what he said in the very beginning of the puzzle about the “inner ring 8 cell line”, it can never have two yellows or two reds because it would have 5 digits in c8 from a set of 4 digits. It’s much easier to see it that way😅
What if these sudoku puzzles are actually tests created by aliens to see how intelligent Earthlings are, and after watching Simon solve this puzzle, they decide not to invade because they conclude humans would wipe the floor with them? Thank you, Simon, for saving the Earth!
@Orenotter ❤ this comment!
😂😂😂
Maybe they plan to beam him up
@@windybeach2184 I hope not - we need him more than they do! 😁
Created tech to send data across the emptiness between stars and galaxies;
Prepared to send an invading force an unfathomable distance in order to take over an entire planet, currently occupied by highly aggressive, territorial, weaponized primates;
Scared off by a single human taking multiple hours and having significant trouble solving a Sudoku puzzle of above average difficulty 😅
Sounds like a good B-movie, thanks for the laugh :)
I've stepped away from Sudoku for a couple of months (life happens), and I come back to a 2-hour beast. Judging by the name I'm not sure I'm up to nested Renbans, maybe I should catch up on a few GAS videos as a nice gentle warmup first.
Just observing Simon persist and tackle a challenging puzzle is a great life lesson in itself for young and old. A key to success in whatever endeavour one partakes in.
It's this kind of genius that keeps me wanting to watch you solve puzzles Simon. I can yell at you on a nightly basis for finding the hard way to deduce a cell is number A and not number B while a B sits right next to it but then you make this break-in look as if it should be everyone's first thought. What a solve on an AMAZING puzzle.
I solved it in 97:20, I'm so proud :D !
What a puzzle!
For the placeholder vs bifurcation, I am in the placeholder team.
Or, in fact, I see it more like a dual problem, like in many math problems.
I create a new problem, with the given digits changed to pencil marks (46), and one of my pencil marks changed to a given digit.
Then, once I have the solution to my dual problem (for which there is provably one and only one solution if and only if there is one and only one solution to the original problem), I can deduce the solution to the original problem without any additional logic.
As a matter of fact, I chose the wrong one for this puzzle and it didn't take me much more additional time (like 1 min') than if I took the right one from the start.
However, when you avoid doing it, you generally have nice color solves which look way more elegant and enjoyable to watch than my dual solves :D !
So in the end, for my own pleasure, I would say: continue complexifying your life :D !
Great solve, incredible puzzle, thank you for sharing!!!
I'm 1:20 into this video and I'm absolutely captivated by your attempt at this puzzle, and I'm not even an average sudoku player.
Aaannnd I just finished it. BRAVO! Absolutely flabbergasted by your accomplishment!!! What a wonderful roller coaster ride it was. I can't believe I was captivated by a 2 hour sudoku solve.
I finished in 17 hours and 27 minutes AND no bifurcation. I was disappointed not to be able to use the early and brilliant deduction that only four even numbers could be in the Phistomefel Ring.
I have to admit on some longer videos I don't pay attention to every single deduction - but on this one I was absolutely mesmerized the whole way through. I was so excited when I saw that he could put the 1 in R6C3 long before he did, but thats just because I wasn't able to do all of the other fantastic deductions that he did. Thank you so much for the way you walk through your thinking on all of these puzzles - it is a joy to watch you - even when you struggle.
I fear we will run out of superlatives to describe you Simon. Absolutely amazing, incredible, beguiling, stunning, mesmerising to start for the puzzle, the solve, your patience and perseverance. Thank you.
I think the gift of sudoku should be either for the 9th anniversary or the 45th!
My thought exactly!
I loved it! The solve flowed beautifully and I appreciated the process of slowly coming to grips with this crazy setup and things falling into place. I couldn't have solved this myself given any amount of time, I'm pretty sure. I mostly like shorter puzzles on the channel because it means I have a chance to do them myself, but I enjoy the occasional feature film :) Thanks!
Simon, I've written this comment before. The reason that the software sometimes knows the solution is correct is because the setter has:
1) generated a playable CtC link with their grid,
2) placed in all the correct digits, and
3) generated a brand new link of the grid where the software has now been taught the correct digit placement.
It's a simple process, but no less incredible. Thank you, Sven. You're the real MVP.
At 20:02 now… wondering where this logic is going.
A couple of minutes ago I thought he was going down the first little bit of logic I thought of: If there's no 1 in the corner, four of the sequences must be 1234, which uses all the available 4s. So the other 4 sequences must be 5678 or 6789, using all the available 678s. So the only possible disposition of the corner cells would be 5959, which is ruled out by the diagonal; proving that there's at least one 1 in a corner; and the same logic mirrored to show there must be a 9.
I only stared at this for 6 minutes before deciding to watch Simon, because I don't have time to finish today. But is there something wrong with my logic that I haven't seen? It looked like Simon was almost at the same point but discarded it for some reason.
I think for the longest Renban at start, there can be strategies to rule out numbers on multiple fields derived from the strategy of a game called nonogram. On long straights of the number 1-7, 2-8, 3-9 are only possible. Therefore, the fields outside of the renban on the row and column can only be 1,2,8,9. Furthermore with considering the start and endings and the consecutive numbering, diagonal rule and ruleset of normal sudoku. More deductions are possible.
I am quite surprised. Simon is doing a puzzle only one person has solved on LMD. Yet Mark and the testers think "Empty Grid 2" will be too difficult for him. 🤔
Mark is a master in solving puzzles, and a real master at fast-solving, but for the hardest ones I think he can miss a bit of resilience, unlike Simon...
@@francoisduez601 Empty Grid 2 is not a puzzle to be bifurcated. It has a logical solve and is not prone to the if this is this then this is that type of solving. Mark has a tendency to go that route when he starts to get stuck. I do think Simon will have trouble with it because he has trouble with Disjointed Set type of puzzles. Simon will probably also have a little trouble with the Prime Box constraint. It does have an element that he might like where you have to find two 3x3 boxes.
After seeing what Simon did today Empty Grid 2 should not pose that much of a problem but will probably take him at least an hour to solve.
Haven't seen "Empty Grid 2" yet, where can I find it?
I'm extremely poor at Maths, infact I'm fairly surely I have Dyscalculia. But for some very strange reason I am absolutely riveted by these videos! Watching your brain work out these very complex puzzles is very satisfying and I even end up finding answers through your explanation! What a brilliant idea these videos are
Simon - Apologize for nothing! This was an absolute wonder to watch. I was lost for most of it. But just watching the logic come together was awe inducing. bravo!
40:01 I think you may not say it's bifurcation to this idea: Let's say the repeated number is out of 234. That means all the combinations would be 234 in the top left double renban. Therefore, you can see that the green digit needs to be in the column, instead of the row.
As the logic works regardless of it being 234 or 678, it's safe to not consider that bifurcation, so long as you revert that supposition.
I’ve only found one guy on TH-cam that both frustrates and excites me. I watch a lot of TH-cam, I guarantee this is a real accomplishment.
I would love to see a second channel for unsolved puzzles!
1. It means that yoh dont fully waste your time not completing a solve and, more importantly...
2. We get to see you and Mark struggle which would be highly entertaining!
This was so amazing. Simon, I am not surprised that you were tired by the time you put your first digit in - and you kept going. (Frankly, I am surprised that you don't need a biobreak at some point in these longer videos, let alone a stand-up-and-do-some-jumping-jacks break, or even a brief nap!) One of the reasons I love this channel is that when you attempt these super difficult puzzles, you attack them rigorously and thoroughly - you do not take shortcuts. (Yes, sometimes you take "long cuts" but I am totally OK with that - I don't mind in the slightest.) I enjoy videos where you clearly enjoy the puzzle and find the process of solving interesting. I love it when you get excited about things. I loved this video.
I think that 6 came into use at the perfect moment. I'm not a very big fan of sudokus that essentially have two "opposite" solutions that are disambiguated by something at the very end. Here all the nice logic of the opening was possible to do without "crazy" labeling (or using some stand in letter or number), then you got that dismbiguated and could continue (to watch for my part). Very nice puzzle and solve btw 🙂
What I love about this puzzles is that often after find 1st digit all sudoku is figured out and 10 minutes later is solved. But not in this case. 1st number after hour and after almost 1 more hour there was still some mistery to solve.
I’ve started watching these videos to fall asleep, they’re so fun and soothing to watch! But I usually fall asleep before the puzzle is solved, so I have to return in the morning to see how it turned out! 😭😭 thank you for posting these fun videos!
So about an hour into the video, I was really starting to see what was going on, so I decided I would have a go at it... After several restarts (I think I was mostly just messing up sudoku by colors)... I went to bed, restarted again and finally solved it. 386:15 was my full time... Very cool puzzle, loved the mini sets, especially since they mostly stuck together through the whole puzzle.
A truly mesmerizingly beautiful puzzle!
Did it myself over the course of 10 hours during my workday. getting to that first 5 was sooo satisfying and rewarding.
Astonishing work there
I clearly don't understand the double Renban rules for the purple lines, because this looks nothing like I imagined on the purple lines if it's correct.
How can you form two overlapping sets of consecutive digits that includes 9-6-2 in a row. Neither of the numbers are consecutive to each other?
I'm generally confused regarding that rule. Specially since the examples given in the rules fits how I assumed it would look like.
EDIt:
I missed one specific part of the rule when reading and trying the puzzle for myself.
The fact that the digits can be in any order along the line slipped past me, simply because that wouldn't make them consecutive anymore.
Then the examples are only with consecutive numbers in correct order.
Most confusing rule ever tbh.
Thanks for explaining that! I watched the entire thing, dying to know how the renban lines would look upon completion and I was raging by the end because they werent consecutive! Very unclear rule.
This was absolutely lovely! Thank you so much for all you do!
I interpreted the instructions wrong, because I was unfamiliar with renban. But it made for a really fun puzzle to try. try the same puzzle but change the rule to this: i thought the 2 sets of consecutive numbers could be inter-arranged with each other in any way, but that they had to still remain in sequence. meaning, consecutively ordered over the journey moving from left to right or right to left (ie 234234, 232434, 223434, 423234 all work because the order can always be found consecutively for each individual sequence, only the spacing changes). the instructions also gave examples which matched these parameters. 172839 worked because 123 are in order and 789 are in order, but inter-jumbled. with this approach it completely changes the idea of the puzzle and the 8 pair renban line becomes more central... the rest of rules, including the palindrome and diagonal, remains the same.
My god, this was amazing to watch. I loved it. So much fun to watch you work this out bit by bit. Chef's Kiss.
1:54:57 More important to think about on the line is that you can't have a 1 on it since 2 is ruled off it entirely by sudoku, this places the 1 in box 4 which works around the grid no small amount...
(This is part of why I think it'd be really helpful to take a moment to stop once a color is known and not only replace all the certain cells with digits but also the possibles with pencil marks - I suspect this would have scanned more readily if those yellow flashes were instead 1 pencil marks...)
I've started watching CtC to fall asleep to as it's both interesting and relaxing, however this posed a bit of a problem today... I finished a night shift, got in bed about 10am, fell asleep within a couple of minutes of the start of the solve, got woken up an hour later and after dealing with a few things rewound to start watching again. It's now 4pm, I've just finished watching that incredible solve and I've not been back to sleep!
I was very proud of myself because I was playing along and figured out a lot of stuff then would play your video to see what you got and about 70% of the time I agreed with you, which is an accomplishment for me!
1:21:32 the thing is, R3C3 shouldn't be red. If it were, it would deny both R2C2 and R8C8 off being reds, so it would require an extra red in the middle ring.
Thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this, great solve! Way beyond my abilities but watching you explain all the logic behind every step is so rewarding
This is the kind of puzzle where the line between bifurcation and thinking/planning ahead become blurred to me. I can't even imagine trying to solve this without the former, given that I have almost no experience with variant sudoku. Simon is a wizard. I'd like to borrow his brain for an hour or two.
1:46:57 once you have colored the Phistomephel blocks you can color the ring, which gives a very helpful 3 in row 7.
Amazing job Simon, I really enjoyed the first 30 minutes of the solve because any sudoku that opens with set theory is a big winner in my book. I do have to tell you that the palindrome logic to sort of the grey digits in row 1 was available for a while as you feared. It was actually super useful to me when it came to sorting out grey digits and the 5 in box 7.
It's always special to see you work your way through some of the most difficult logic on the planet only to miss something seemingly obvious.
(Palindrome preventing r1c3 from being 2)
I wouldn't have made it anywhere near far enough to get that myself, so suffice to say, you are a total genius.
Just an absolute extraordinary 130 minutes of edge of your seat excitement!! Fabulous solve , reasoning , explanations , deductions Simon to this brute !
I never know why certain puzzles draw me in to watch for the whole 2 plus hours. This one did. Thank you.
Hour and a half into the puzzle "People probably get to this point and get stuck"
Me: "Who in the world can even get to this point!?"
Loved watching the master at work....I would never be able to do anything like this but I love finding little bits inside the expertise that I do find. For a long time I was trying to time-telepathically tell Simon about the 1 in box 4 and how it could only go in one place once the 2 was placed in R5C1. With the 1 then in R6C3, the 9 goes in R5C3. With the then placement of 6 on the double renban that meant 5 was in R4C3 and that sets up a whole chain of 3, 4, 5 placements all over.
Wow! Respect! Beats anything on Netflix by a huge margin!
Wow! Congrats Simon! Great solve, working through all that hard logic - and a wonderful puzzle! I am very impressed, this is probably the most diffcult puzzle I have seen on this channel.
I could have been dancing a cancan,
Or chatting with some Isle of Man man,
But I simply can't lose
When the pastime I choose
Is watching you solve Renrenbanban.
That's clever! (Call me a fanfan?)
Oh, WELL done. 👏
Watched to the end, as a novice solver this one was wild to me. there were several leaps of logic I didn't follow but there were plenty I did. Thank you and there's no way I'd even attempt a puzzle like this
Just wondering if the rule of 'equal size sets of "consecutive" numbers' is being followed in this solution e.g is 24351243 used in the top left Double Renban line valid? since the numbers 2435, as far as I can see, are not consecutive. Please explain, Thanks
Whenever I'm yelling at Simon watching these.. it's to tell him to go back to doing sudoku.. dizzying deductions but doesn't see the simple thing staring him in the face. Great job
What a brain. Again, I will say it, when I see something, and in 2hours of a puzzle, I found maybe 3 things before you. Just THREE. Mindboggling. I was more yelling at the 6 in box 6 with the A and B looking at it, was just basic sudoku and not the 2 you were apologizing for (I missed it too). But I take the wins. This is easily one of your best solves.
You should make a channel called Cracked Cryptics for puzzles that defeat you. Because I would be amazed to see those puzzles. As far as Im concerned you are brilliant to even undertake something like this, let alone be able to solve it. Simply brilliant.
A beautiful puzzle and a brilliant solve. One of my favourites in a while. Great work Darth Paradox and Simon!
2:02:28 Haven't watched to the end yet, so maybe you'll see it in a bit, but I just noticed that because of the palindrome rule, you can remove the two from the third square from the top left, because it has to be a mirror of the fourth square down from the top left. Which means that the second square from the top left must be 2.
An amazing solution, Simon - all credit to your resolve!
I for one, am a fan of the long video
So much fascinating logic in this one! I have a feeling we will be hearing the name Darth Paradox again! After my solve (during which my kiddos checked in occasionally as they played) I put Simon's solve on the big screen and grabbed a bag of chips. I yelled the next moves at Simon and my kids would try to spot what I was saying before Simon found it. It was a whole day of entertainment.
48:30 I must have missed it. How did we know there is a green digit somewhere on the line?
Edit: right, each line needs two of the gatekeeper digits and that line can't have a red digit on it.
I don't know how I got here but I am absolutely fascinated by how you worked out that puzzle! I can't believe I just sat and watched this for 2 hours and was absolutely absorbed in it the entire time. This is so cool. I used to do regular sudoku puzzles, but this makes me want to seek out some harder ones with interesting rules like this (but not this difficult, my logic skills are not there lol)
Even some of the most complicated sudokus you do on the channel I can follow along with what you're saying and even make a handful of my own deductions along the way, but this one I can't even follow.
That to me is a testament to just how good at problem solving Simon is with a little time lol
Two things slayed me. First, when Simon figured out the 6 in R7C7 (which opened up the puzzle), he left the line without doing the 125 to finish it. Argh! :)
Second, when Simon was applying As and Bs to the 78s, I desperately wanted him to do sudoku on the 78Bs to fill it in for box 8 (at R8C5). This would have helped him in a number of ways later. It's a small thing, but it snagged in my brain and wouldn't dislodge. I was hooked, I guess you could say, and it hurt! :)
Thank you for taking the time to solve this one for us, i really enjoyed watching it. I will be watching this one again.
From my initial understanding of the double renban, 172635 would be allowed, but 153726 would not.
Based on the examples given, I had assumed that while the sequences may interlace and go in either direction, they still had to be in order.
The rules say otherwise, but the fact that in all the examples the sequences are in order led me to think this was a case of ambiguous wording.
I am not sure what is more SICK... the sheer genius of Simon Anthony or me watching a 2h10m solve. BRAVO, Simon. That was ridiculous.
Silly Simon. You know we like the long ones. They always showcase that mix of clever thinking and occasion trips into despair that we adore. "I don't know what to do", followed by "here's an idea" is quintessential Simon.
That was one of the most enjoyable videos throughout this channel I've viewed.
I definitely couldn't have solved this, great job! I do wonder how much shorter the video would have been if you had noticed the top left palindrome. It was very impressive seeing you doing hard logic trying to place digits that would've been given by knowing the 2 placement in box 1 sooner. In that way it makes the video more impressive than if you'd gotten it.
I don't know why youtube started recommending me these videos but this was enthralling. Well done. Couldn't stop watching, now I need to brush my teeth and go to bed.
Love hearing the blackbird in the background…. He’s trying to help you… what a solve… beautiful..
OH... this was wonderful to watch. Thank you!