It will forever amaze me how you can sit their for 50 minutes and only place two digits and still have a consistent set of logic that we can follow. Definitely some real talent to explain the logic out while working.
I knew at a single glance that this puzzle was well above my pay grade, but this is exactly why I love this channel so much...To share in the struggle with Simon, get a better handle on the incredibly deep logic involved in a puzzle like this, and to celebrate his breakthroughs along with him. And can I say that TotallyNormalCat must be a mad genius or a time traveler (or possibly both)?! What a puzzle!
I have taken to dig into sudokus I find very pleasing for two to three weeks and re-solve them until I start "seeing" the logic Simon and Mark are seeing after max 30 minutes. I enjoy that greatly and I learn a lot. The moment I "see" a bit of logic that I didn't even understand a week or two ago fills me with as much joy as Simon the solution of the whole thing.
@@susanne5803 Watching these videos has made me better at Sudoko and I want to do my own channel or at least a miniseries on my channel and I wanted to take inspiration from cracking the cryptic i could call the miniseries “solving the sudoko”
I wouldn't be able to solve this puzzle if my life depended on it. This is the type of puzzle I don't even try to figure out the logic and simply enjoy having Simon explain it to me as he figures it out.
I can do the logic of these, but I have trouble spotting the weak spots (so I'll have a place to think through some logic). With this one, I had to do what little I could, then wait for Simon to mention a weakness. I'd pause before he explained any of the logic or the conclusion, and go until I got stuck again. I keep hoping I'll get better at knowing what to look for to find a weak spot to consider the logic.
@@CheeseBodyBeing Instead of making a logical deduction, bifurcation is when you basically plug in a possibility and follow it through for a while in the hopes it breaks and you can eliminate that possibility
I once did that early in a puzzle Got all the way to 6 digits left and found out it broke the puzzle and I didn’t actually remember when I started it That was when I was 11 that was 11 years ago then I made a vow to myself to always figure out the answer by logic and never guess
Absolutely jaw-dropping. Those first few digits were astonishing; to watch the possibilities collapse as Simon bent the puzzle into focus. The starting position seems utterly ludicrous for the rule set and information. Hats off to you Simon for solving that in well under a week!
"to watch the possibilities collapse" -- And now you point out the absolute genius of the puzzle setting and naming to go along with it. Simon slowly "collapsed" the possibilities of the "wave function" until he'd determined the values of the "particles". A more perfect Sudoku parallel of particle physics could not be made.
The title "wave particles" is well chosen. It really feels they are in a superposition at the beginning, until you do the measurement, and the wave function collapses.
Indeed, this was a crazy one. That it took Simon 53 minutes to get his first three digits, and then just 12 minutes to get the rest of the grid, goes to show just how tough it must have been to discover this in setting it.
The scary part is that Ahaupt and Phistomefel are probably watching this and licking their chops at the idea of creating their version of this psychotic puzzle.
Me, watching 50 minutes of an explanation to something and even though I technically followed it, I'm still not 100% sure I even understand it; "I am clearly an idiot!" Me, spotting a 3 pointing at a pencil mark a minute before Simon does; "I am clearly a God."
The reaction at 50:15 is even better. Mark had a big fist bump in a video last year sometime, somebody should compile these moments when they have big emotional outbursts.
@@stephenbeck7222 Well, that earlier reaction was the true breakthrough, and Simon's reaction looked more like relieve than joy. From our side we get spoiled a bit, because we only get to see the successful solves, not the ones in the poison cabinet, where after an hour of hard work things were going nowhere. (This reminds me of the difficulty of teaching science students how mathematical proofs work - textbooks and journals only contain proper proofs, not the botched up ones with fallacies you need to avoid.)
I've been following this channel since before the James Charles and Kurt Hugo Schneider shoutouts and this might have been the best Sudoku (solves) I've ever seen!!! What a puzzle this was!
It blows my mind watching the way your mind works. I would never in a million years be able to find the break in to that puzzle. But then to watch you use the weird roundabout 1 logic to find the 3 and the 9 in box 7 when simple sudoku gave you the 9, then the 3, then the 1 and 5.... well, either way, you bring a smile to my face at the end of every day. So glad I found this channel. Keep up the good work!
I genuinely appreciate how every time I am starting to get annoyed by s setters convoluted train of thought, Simon is just absolutely amazed and grateful that the puzzle exists in the first place.
I know you probably didn't mean this seriously, but I'll answer anyway: it's a big no. If we put logic in puzzles that we think is the coolest in the world, we want to share it! "Damn, I was hoping he wound find that one!" is much more likely. Qodec here btw.
This needs to be one of your 1 million + views videos as well. Simply beautiful to watch you struggle with and finally solve this incredible puzzle! I could never do this myself but I was genuinely thrilled for you at the 50 minute mark's epiphany! awesome video!
I am absolutely floored that ANYONE managed to solve this puzzle. And then Simon knocked it out in an hour. While explaining things throughout. One of the all-time great solves. I do not feel bad that I got nowhere with this.
In fact, just these three arrows alone are forcing 1, two 2s and two 3s or two 4s into purple+green. And the five in the grid makes it them all the remaining digits. Just a stunning setup.
Amazing puzzle! I love the amount of pure reasoning that I had to do in order to make the breakthroughs. I think this puzzle is the one that has made me the most ecstatic being able to solve it! 😅🥲
"We can start to think about the world in its correct position because we are ordering the universe into its proper constituency." I said the exact same line today when I was teaching my high school physics class. That's a very weird feeling to hear someone say that right back at me.
1st digit: 33:31 2nd digit: 51:30 last digit: 1:04:42 This one took a lot of brainstorming to start, but after finding just two digits, the rest of the puzzle came together so nicely.
This was exciting to watch. Simon forgot slightly his earlier work and I was so anxious to see whether he would remember or suffer. Amazing to watch. His excitement is contagious. The puzzle is stunning.
Bravo Sir! Excellent solve and excellent setting. Hard to believe so much information can be eked out of so little information. Hats off to you and Totally Normal Cat. So out of my league, it's scary.
See also how often criminals are always dangerous and clever - until you see them when caught. e.g. the Twitter Bitcoin hack in 2020 "It's definitely State Actors" - was two teenagers
27:37 Another piece of setting genius from TotallyNormalCat. 99% of the time was spent trying to visualise all the options for the three central column circles until finally reaching a conclusion and the board just about filled itself, with a huge sigh of relief.
Simon and Mark, thank you for having shared all your skills and techniques over the past year! Those have enabled me to solve this one - though not in one hour - on my own, following almost exactly the logic displayed in this video. On to the next one :)
Well done Simon. Nothing but praise from me today. This one beat me. I was on the right lines, and had worked out the syzygy had to be 9, 8, and 6 or 7, and that the 9 couldn't be in box 8, but without the impetus of having to finish it for a video, I yielded to the pain and decided to watch you suffer instead. Well done also to Totally ABnormal Cat for devising this work of exquisite torture. Such an elegant construction, and so little information, for it to have a unique solution that can be solved logically is just incredible. To conceive the idea and be able to bring it to fruition is just mind boggling. There's nothing normal about that cat.
Wooow. I came off the podcast and heard Simon waxing lyrical about how good Mark is at crossword puzzles. But this demonstrates just how amazing Simon is at Sudoku. Mark might be faster on a straight up Sudoku, but anything with a break in like this, Simon is an absolute master. I say break in - there isn't really a break in, so much as having to preplot the logic for 90% of the puzzle. Nothing reallly concrete on the grid for over 50 minutes, in a 65 minute video! Very very well done. That's about a million difficulty levels beyond where I am able to play. I take my hat off to you, Sir. TotalyNormalCat: You're an absolute monster. And a genius. Amazing work.
Wow, bloody wow, that's all I can say. So much logic to deduce just to place that lone 1, as the first digit, then the logic to place the 3 central arrow sums, and then to ultimately solve the puzzle, it's absolutely stunning and mindboggling, how hard it is just to break in, goodness gracious, TotallyNormalCat is not a Normal Cat at all, he's Abnormally good at setting a puzzle, from which as soon as you've done the break in, is easy, but just doing the break in is so ridiculously hard, that it's almost on the verge of ridiculousness. Truly stunning, I have a whole list of superlatives I could use, but I'd soon run out as they wouldn't be able to amuse my need to project my state of mind, in a well enough manner. All I can say despite it feeling almost like an insult as to how bland it is, is Well done and Good Job, TotallyNormalCat, you truly deserve all the praise for that.
If I would really have become an Englishman after almost 36 years here, I would say "Jolly good show!" and leave it at that. Being a blunt Dutchman I say it as it is: sensational setting and out-of-this-world solving!! Simon reordered the universe. That a human mind evolved for avoiding wolves and hunting antelopes can solve a puzzle like this *must* tell us something about the universe, Simon, you should try your hand at easier problems. I suggest the Riemann hypothesis, quantum gravity or the Collatz conjecture. The universe seems to talk to you in clearer language than most of your fellow carbon based life forms discern. And TotallyNormalCat is Wonko the Sane redivivus.
58:17 ... I did make one guess, but after solving I went back and was able to quickly rule out the other direction. But I did get the 'break-in' part, and *what a break-in!* Wonderful puzzle!
After watching hundreds of videos on this channel, that was the best solve I have ever seen! Simon - your logic was total genius and amazing deductions made. It should have been called “line of duty” because it was just as exciting!
You know its an insanely difficult puzzle when every Eureka moment is followed by another 5 minutes of seemingly no progress. Well done to TNC, Simon and everyone who managed to solve this beast
I kept checking the length against how many digits wondering how in the world Simon was going to finish before the end. This is truly one of the setter journeys where you get rewarded for finding the path they set you on!!
I love the symbolism in the name of the puzzle. In quantum mechanics everything is considered to be in a superposition of multiple states until it interacts with something, then the waveform collapses into a single value. The three particles (or planets as you called them) were acting as if in a superposition where each was a potential possibility, until they eventually collapsed into the pattern you discovered.
I watch these before bed to wind down, sometimes falling asleep bc Simon's voice hits some kind of snooze button in my head, but at 2 am I am so enthralled with whatever the hell TNC did with this puzzle, I'm hardly even tired xD
This was an AMAZING puzzle, TotallyNormalCat. I see the inspiration for the puzzle name. What a wonderful idea! The arrow acts as the particle, a measurable thing with one solid outcome. But the cells above and below the circle, act as the wave function being in a superposition of ambiguity.
Touring past videos, so very, very glad I came across this one. This is the kind of video that hooked me in to watching this channel regularly. To be sure, my son recommended this channel a couple of months after this video, but I did not fall in love with it just because he did. I fell in love with this channel because of videos like this one. What a beautiful, intricate, unbelievable puzzle - but more than that, what a stupendous solve, Simon. I am in awe of you and your brilliance through watching this video, and I am delighted anew at your delight at the most difficult things that you encounter in these puzzles that you set yourself to solve for us. Lucky us, to get to see this. I see that this video has been watched 84,000 times as I am writing this; it deserves to be one of the multi-million-views videos because of the puzzle itself, yes, but also because of just how amazing YOU are in this video. Simon, take a bow.
Around 28:30, when Simon ruled out using the 12 cage, my immediate thought was "well, you can use the 12 cage, because you know that the digit in that cage that isn't on the arrow has to be a 9, 8, or 7"... it's not much, but it's a definite pencil mark regardless of the actual position of the arrow sum digits.
Well, I solved it. Took me several attempts though. I like the simplicity and elegance of the setting. Very clean. When I finally realized how that 5 was restricting where I could put digits, it was such a relief.
Right around these pencilmarks (@55:23 or something, but on my own by sudoku at that point), I had 12345 loaded-up on those 8 arrows in boxes7, 8 and 9 (the constituents of the different 125 and 134 ends) just to see what came out of them (so I could distinguish which). On the left side there's a 4 in box7 and 4s in every column there hitting that arrow (so that side was the "125"). That's what I did though. Excellent job, Folks.
43:45 I'm not even trying to think about solving this, just enjoying the show, but it finally dawns on me the 12 cage can't have a 1 or 2 digit inside it. The arrows out of the center are all 123, 125, 134, and 234. Not enough to eliminate 2 possible middle numbers, but I wonder if it'll play an important role sometime soon. Soon came at 53:30 or so. :)
This puzzle almost drove me insane. I couldn't visualize the 24 possibilities (including the two variants of the 8) of the combinations sufficiently, so in the end more trial and error than pure logic led me to the solution. A really exhausting but very great puzzle.
How quickly Simon forgot the 8 had to have a 2 and a Difficult Digit as its moons and the 9 a 1 as its moon is heartbreaking lol. He ended up pencil marking them using other digits instead of doing that immediately after placing the 8 and 9 planets!
This is not bifurcation. I don't think there is a way to explain the logic better than to put in the digits arbitrarily on the vertical axis without using vertical logic. This is brilliant.
It will forever amaze me how you can sit their for 50 minutes and only place two digits and still have a consistent set of logic that we can follow. Definitely some real talent to explain the logic out while working.
You are the only channel to have titles on your videos that are clickbait AND understatement at the same time.
true fact
This is so true 😂
Incredible
Standing ovation for both Simon and TotallyNormalCat
"Do have a go ..." No thanks, Simon, although I'm sure it would be the most enjoyable 9425 hours I ever spent on a puzzle.
I knew at a single glance that this puzzle was well above my pay grade, but this is exactly why I love this channel so much...To share in the struggle with Simon, get a better handle on the incredibly deep logic involved in a puzzle like this, and to celebrate his breakthroughs along with him. And can I say that TotallyNormalCat must be a mad genius or a time traveler (or possibly both)?! What a puzzle!
I have taken to dig into sudokus I find very pleasing for two to three weeks and re-solve them until I start "seeing" the logic Simon and Mark are seeing after max 30 minutes. I enjoy that greatly and I learn a lot.
The moment I "see" a bit of logic that I didn't even understand a week or two ago fills me with as much joy as Simon the solution of the whole thing.
@@susanne5803 Watching these videos has made me better at Sudoko and I want to do my own channel or at least a miniseries on my channel and I wanted to take inspiration from cracking the cryptic i could call the miniseries “solving the sudoko”
I wouldn't be able to solve this puzzle if my life depended on it. This is the type of puzzle I don't even try to figure out the logic and simply enjoy having Simon explain it to me as he figures it out.
I can do the logic of these, but I have trouble spotting the weak spots (so I'll have a place to think through some logic). With this one, I had to do what little I could, then wait for Simon to mention a weakness. I'd pause before he explained any of the logic or the conclusion, and go until I got stuck again. I keep hoping I'll get better at knowing what to look for to find a weak spot to consider the logic.
I’d love to see a reaction video of the setter watching Simon and Mark solving their puzzles.
Yes! I am so on board for this
Someone recorded their reaction to Simon doing their puzzle and put it on the discord a month before this video came out
@@pandagirl7144 n se
Easy heuristic. If the video is >45 minutes, I don't even attempt it. Time to settle in with coffee!
Samiest same that ever samed. *raises coffee*
If the video is >45 mins I often struggle to keep up even just watching it
I have a hard limit of 35 minutes with Simon and 25-30 minutes with Mark (Simon takes longer to explain things).
LOL whenever he says "You can try it at the link in the description" and I see the video length I just have this moment of "NAH YOU'RE GOOD BRUH."
My limit is more like 20 minutes for Simon and 30 minutes for Mark.
I'm pretty sure 50 minutes for two digits is a new record. Congratulations, TotallyNormalCat! And good job Simon for plugging through the logic.
“I’m not bifurcating; I‘m thinking” needs to go on a t-shirt
What’s bifurcation?
@@CheeseBodyBeing Instead of making a logical deduction, bifurcation is when you basically plug in a possibility and follow it through for a while in the hopes it breaks and you can eliminate that possibility
@@KeithGrant Thank you.
I once did that early in a puzzle Got all the way to 6 digits left and found out it broke the puzzle and I didn’t actually remember when I started it That was when I was 11 that was 11 years ago then I made a vow to myself to always figure out the answer by logic and never guess
Absolutely jaw-dropping. Those first few digits were astonishing; to watch the possibilities collapse as Simon bent the puzzle into focus.
The starting position seems utterly ludicrous for the rule set and information. Hats off to you Simon for solving that in well under a week!
"to watch the possibilities collapse" -- And now you point out the absolute genius of the puzzle setting and naming to go along with it. Simon slowly "collapsed" the possibilities of the "wave function" until he'd determined the values of the "particles". A more perfect Sudoku parallel of particle physics could not be made.
There is a digit given, TNC has been quite generous!
Probably the only reason to place the 5 there is to ensure the puzzle will only have 1 solution.
@@marchogrouch5795 indeed 😉
Not to mention a whole 5 cage totals.
Simon: "This one is called wave particles."
Simon 2,5 minutes later: "We call them planets."
Me: Noooooooooo
Electrons 😆😆😆
The title "wave particles" is well chosen. It really feels they are in a superposition at the beginning, until you do the measurement, and the wave function collapses.
@@renedekker9806 precies!
I prefer planets and orbits.
@@renedekker9806 Bang on as to the choice of name for the puzzle. Very fitting in a satisfying way. =]
Coming up with difficult logic must be normal amongst cats
I think this puzzle demands a setter's video to go along with it.
Yes, please!
Indeed, this was a crazy one. That it took Simon 53 minutes to get his first three digits, and then just 12 minutes to get the rest of the grid, goes to show just how tough it must have been to discover this in setting it.
The scary part is that Ahaupt and Phistomefel are probably watching this and licking their chops at the idea of creating their version of this psychotic puzzle.
Oh please no 😳😳😳😳😳
Oh please yes ^^
Totally Normal Hauptphist will be Simon's ruination. A 3 hour video with a break and light luncheon provided.
Phistomefel did actually create their own And specifically asked cracking the cryptic not to do a video on it
Me, watching 50 minutes of an explanation to something and even though I technically followed it, I'm still not 100% sure I even understand it; "I am clearly an idiot!"
Me, spotting a 3 pointing at a pencil mark a minute before Simon does; "I am clearly a God."
This channel became my comfort channel
You are one of a huge crows.
Yep. I agree.
Simon’s reaction at 54:19 is perhaps the truest expression of joy I have ever seen
That must be one of the happiest moments in Simon's life
I was persuing the comments when that finger click pulled my attention back jolly quick!
The reaction at 50:15 is even better. Mark had a big fist bump in a video last year sometime, somebody should compile these moments when they have big emotional outbursts.
@@stephenbeck7222 Well, that earlier reaction was the true breakthrough, and Simon's reaction looked more like relieve than joy. From our side we get spoiled a bit, because we only get to see the successful solves, not the ones in the poison cabinet, where after an hour of hard work things were going nowhere. (This reminds me of the difficulty of teaching science students how mathematical proofs work - textbooks and journals only contain proper proofs, not the botched up ones with fallacies you need to avoid.)
@@andreynogueira7419 As Simon would say, this is as much fun as you can have with your clothes on ;)
I've been following this channel since before the James Charles and Kurt Hugo Schneider shoutouts and this might have been the best Sudoku (solves) I've ever seen!!! What a puzzle this was!
It blows my mind watching the way your mind works. I would never in a million years be able to find the break in to that puzzle. But then to watch you use the weird roundabout 1 logic to find the 3 and the 9 in box 7 when simple sudoku gave you the 9, then the 3, then the 1 and 5.... well, either way, you bring a smile to my face at the end of every day. So glad I found this channel. Keep up the good work!
This video needs a million thumbs up for that solve
Mark would have have proud of you, Simon!
Mark is. Mark
I genuinely appreciate how every time I am starting to get annoyed by s setters convoluted train of thought, Simon is just absolutely amazed and grateful that the puzzle exists in the first place.
These puzzles' setting always amaze me so much, and Simon's ideas to solve it additionally put a smile on my face however long it takes :)
I wonder if these setters ever think: "Damn, thought I had him with that one!" lol
We don't get to see the puzzles they can't solve so I guess the answer is yes!
@@remybeauchamp i think the unsolved is a myth.
@@remybeauchamp I can't conceive of a puzzle that Simon couldn't solve.
I know you probably didn't mean this seriously, but I'll answer anyway: it's a big no. If we put logic in puzzles that we think is the coolest in the world, we want to share it! "Damn, I was hoping he wound find that one!" is much more likely. Qodec here btw.
This needs to be one of your 1 million + views videos as well. Simply beautiful to watch you struggle with and finally solve this incredible puzzle! I could never do this myself but I was genuinely thrilled for you at the 50 minute mark's epiphany! awesome video!
It is so comforting to watch videos from close to two years ago and see that Simon has not changed a bit :)
The podcats was very entertaining, it was interesting to get to know more about CTC outside of regular videos. Hopefully there's more to come.
I am absolutely floored that ANYONE managed to solve this puzzle. And then Simon knocked it out in an hour. While explaining things throughout.
One of the all-time great solves. I do not feel bad that I got nowhere with this.
In fact, just these three arrows alone are forcing 1, two 2s and two 3s or two 4s into purple+green. And the five in the grid makes it them all the remaining digits. Just a stunning setup.
Just love it an hour break-in and 5 min completion. I think it’s the best break-in of all times
Amazing puzzle! I love the amount of pure reasoning that I had to do in order to make the breakthroughs. I think this puzzle is the one that has made me the most ecstatic being able to solve it! 😅🥲
41:10 "A major breakthrough: Eliminated one of 4 possible digits in first cell!"
The "Yes" at the end really showed true satisfaction with the solve. Good work
"We can start to think about the world in its correct position because we are ordering the universe into its proper constituency." I said the exact same line today when I was teaching my high school physics class. That's a very weird feeling to hear someone say that right back at me.
50:15 That is the look of pure joy! The sweetest little dance
Perfect timing to help me go through the night, thanks Simon!
1st digit: 33:31
2nd digit: 51:30
last digit: 1:04:42
This one took a lot of brainstorming to start, but after finding just two digits, the rest of the puzzle came together so nicely.
This was exciting to watch. Simon forgot slightly his earlier work and I was so anxious to see whether he would remember or suffer. Amazing to watch. His excitement is contagious. The puzzle is stunning.
It's always interesting when he does that, does all that work to determine 2-4 pair along with the 8 but didn't fill it in after placing the 8!
Bravo Sir! Excellent solve and excellent setting. Hard to believe so much information can be eked out of so little information. Hats off to you and Totally Normal Cat. So out of my league, it's scary.
I love how the setters go from cosmology to quantum mechanics for the inspiration
I helped name this puzzle 😁😁😁
I love when Simon is calling people who solved the puzzle "brilliant" and then solving the puzzle himself.
See also how often criminals are always dangerous and clever - until you see them when caught. e.g. the Twitter Bitcoin hack in 2020 "It's definitely State Actors" - was two teenagers
Wow, amazing solve. Thank you Simon and TotallyNormalCat.
Rules 2:08
Let‘s get cracking 2:55
Nem todo herói usa capa
26:45
27:37
Another piece of setting genius from TotallyNormalCat.
99% of the time was spent trying to visualise all the options for the three central column circles until finally reaching a conclusion and the board just about filled itself, with a huge sigh of relief.
Simon and Mark, thank you for having shared all your skills and techniques over the past year! Those have enabled me to solve this one - though not in one hour - on my own, following almost exactly the logic displayed in this video.
On to the next one :)
Well done Simon. Nothing but praise from me today.
This one beat me. I was on the right lines, and had worked out the syzygy had to be 9, 8, and 6 or 7, and that the 9 couldn't be in box 8, but without the impetus of having to finish it for a video, I yielded to the pain and decided to watch you suffer instead.
Well done also to Totally ABnormal Cat for devising this work of exquisite torture. Such an elegant construction, and so little information, for it to have a unique solution that can be solved logically is just incredible. To conceive the idea and be able to bring it to fruition is just mind boggling. There's nothing normal about that cat.
Normally don’t watch any puzzle over an hour. BUT the logic involved in the solution was brilliant. Well done Simon.
At 54 minutes I found myself saying "Unbelievable" out loud. Truly remarkable!
Wooow. I came off the podcast and heard Simon waxing lyrical about how good Mark is at crossword puzzles. But this demonstrates just how amazing Simon is at Sudoku. Mark might be faster on a straight up Sudoku, but anything with a break in like this, Simon is an absolute master. I say break in - there isn't really a break in, so much as having to preplot the logic for 90% of the puzzle. Nothing reallly concrete on the grid for over 50 minutes, in a 65 minute video! Very very well done. That's about a million difficulty levels beyond where I am able to play. I take my hat off to you, Sir.
TotalyNormalCat: You're an absolute monster. And a genius. Amazing work.
What are you complaining about? He gave you a 5 to start.
That's just the difficulty rating... :D
@@christophstahl8169 It's a 5, not an 8
@@truckerob70 difficulties of logic puzzles are out of 5, not 8 or 10.
I think that was the meaning, 8 out of 5 😉
@@francoisduez601 It was
Wow, bloody wow, that's all I can say. So much logic to deduce just to place that lone 1, as the first digit, then the logic to place the 3 central arrow sums, and then to ultimately solve the puzzle, it's absolutely stunning and mindboggling, how hard it is just to break in, goodness gracious, TotallyNormalCat is not a Normal Cat at all, he's Abnormally good at setting a puzzle, from which as soon as you've done the break in, is easy, but just doing the break in is so ridiculously hard, that it's almost on the verge of ridiculousness. Truly stunning, I have a whole list of superlatives I could use, but I'd soon run out as they wouldn't be able to amuse my need to project my state of mind, in a well enough manner. All I can say despite it feeling almost like an insult as to how bland it is, is Well done and Good Job, TotallyNormalCat, you truly deserve all the praise for that.
If I would really have become an Englishman after almost 36 years here, I would say "Jolly good show!" and leave it at that. Being a blunt Dutchman I say it as it is: sensational setting and out-of-this-world solving!! Simon reordered the universe. That a human mind evolved for avoiding wolves and hunting antelopes can solve a puzzle like this *must* tell us something about the universe,
Simon, you should try your hand at easier problems. I suggest the Riemann hypothesis, quantum gravity or the Collatz conjecture. The universe seems to talk to you in clearer language than most of your fellow carbon based life forms discern. And TotallyNormalCat is Wonko the Sane redivivus.
That was way too difficult for me to even start but I was rooting for ya the entire time Simon!
Bravo! This was amazing. After so much time and struggle getting the first few digits, after the 8 was filled, the last ones flew by.
58:17 ... I did make one guess, but after solving I went back and was able to quickly rule out the other direction. But I did get the 'break-in' part, and *what a break-in!*
Wonderful puzzle!
Well this turned out to be one of the best puzzles of all time, didn't it
It takes me so much longer than Simon to solve these, and yet I can't stop coaching him while he's solving. 😂
Great solve, great puzzle. Most certainly needed to watch the video to get past the break in.
Thank you Simon and TotallyNormalCat
Simon, you are one of the greatest geniuses on the planet. Really, really enjoyed the solve.
Can we get TotallyNormalCat to do a video on this?
I just spent an hour watching a pure genius at work! Bravo Simon.
Enthralling and entertaining, love your reaction Simon at the end and certainly no bifurcation took place.
After watching hundreds of videos on this channel, that was the best solve I have ever seen! Simon - your logic was total genius and amazing deductions made. It should have been called “line of duty” because it was just as exciting!
If Sudoku's evolve much more beyond this I'm beginging to fear that we need a course at University in soduko before you can understand/solve stuff. 🤯
What a crazy puzzle. And an absolutely brilliant solve by Simon. Every second of this was oozing clever.
Incredible that the first 6 were placed only 2:40 before the end of a 1 hour solve !
You know its an insanely difficult puzzle when every Eureka moment is followed by another 5 minutes of seemingly no progress.
Well done to TNC, Simon and everyone who managed to solve this beast
Ourstanding! And I love how Simon says, "all of the logic we did earlier". Ah well, they also serve who only stand and wait. Glad to be of help.
Royal We it isn't because it is the Inclusive We, where those of us who can only watch and marvel are included in Simon's solve.
I kept checking the length against how many digits wondering how in the world Simon was going to finish before the end. This is truly one of the setter journeys where you get rewarded for finding the path they set you on!!
Who cares if it might be mechanically like bifurcation? As a viewer, the manual visualization was great to follow along with.
I love the symbolism in the name of the puzzle. In quantum mechanics everything is considered to be in a superposition of multiple states until it interacts with something, then the waveform collapses into a single value. The three particles (or planets as you called them) were acting as if in a superposition where each was a potential possibility, until they eventually collapsed into the pattern you discovered.
Just sublime! Brilliant puzzle, and brilliant solve. Thanks so much for providing such wonderful content!
Just watched this solve. Way beyond my capability. Phenomenal.
I watch these before bed to wind down, sometimes falling asleep bc Simon's voice hits some kind of snooze button in my head, but at 2 am I am so enthralled with whatever the hell TNC did with this puzzle, I'm hardly even tired xD
This was an AMAZING puzzle, TotallyNormalCat. I see the inspiration for the puzzle name. What a wonderful idea! The arrow acts as the particle, a measurable thing with one solid outcome. But the cells above and below the circle, act as the wave function being in a superposition of ambiguity.
Touring past videos, so very, very glad I came across this one. This is the kind of video that hooked me in to watching this channel regularly. To be sure, my son recommended this channel a couple of months after this video, but I did not fall in love with it just because he did. I fell in love with this channel because of videos like this one. What a beautiful, intricate, unbelievable puzzle - but more than that, what a stupendous solve, Simon. I am in awe of you and your brilliance through watching this video, and I am delighted anew at your delight at the most difficult things that you encounter in these puzzles that you set yourself to solve for us. Lucky us, to get to see this. I see that this video has been watched 84,000 times as I am writing this; it deserves to be one of the multi-million-views videos because of the puzzle itself, yes, but also because of just how amazing YOU are in this video. Simon, take a bow.
Absolutely blown away! Great job Simon and Cat x👏👏💕
Around 28:30, when Simon ruled out using the 12 cage, my immediate thought was "well, you can use the 12 cage, because you know that the digit in that cage that isn't on the arrow has to be a 9, 8, or 7"... it's not much, but it's a definite pencil mark regardless of the actual position of the arrow sum digits.
And keeping in mind that the 9 must be 2, 3, 4 on both of its arrows, the only digit in the 12 cage that works is 4. (3 gives clashing 9s.)
Congrats to TotallyNormalCat for making Simon keep his secret for once! 👏
Even with killer cages!
I love the analytics around this.
Absolutely stunning. A total joy.
I'm kinda surprised and proud that I was able to solve it by myself.
Great puzzle!!! Thank you
Podcast was very enjoyable! would like Episode 2 to focus on the history of sudoku (or puzzles like it in general)
Competition stories like the one Mark told about the sudoku cheater would be perfect for the podcast.
@@stephenbeck7222 when did he tell that? I didnt hear such a thing in the podcast.
Well, I solved it. Took me several attempts though. I like the simplicity and elegance of the setting. Very clean. When I finally realized how that 5 was restricting where I could put digits, it was such a relief.
Ridiculously brilliant puzzle, well solved. And you weren’t bifurcating, you were writing down for exposition :-)
Right around these pencilmarks (@55:23 or something, but on my own by sudoku at that point), I had 12345 loaded-up on those 8 arrows in boxes7, 8 and 9 (the constituents of the different 125 and 134 ends) just to see what came out of them (so I could distinguish which).
On the left side there's a 4 in box7 and 4s in every column there hitting that arrow (so that side was the "125").
That's what I did though.
Excellent job, Folks.
This is a beautiful puzzle. Hats off to the setter and the solver.
So, if this was done by a totally normal cat, I don't want to know how difficult a puzzle a special cat can make...
Oh what a wonderful eureka moment at 50:16 I believe it was, absolutely wonderful
43:45 I'm not even trying to think about solving this, just enjoying the show, but it finally dawns on me the 12 cage can't have a 1 or 2 digit inside it. The arrows out of the center are all 123, 125, 134, and 234. Not enough to eliminate 2 possible middle numbers, but I wonder if it'll play an important role sometime soon.
Soon came at 53:30 or so. :)
Simon, the center top box is often called box 2.
This puzzle almost drove me insane. I couldn't visualize the 24 possibilities (including the two variants of the 8) of the combinations sufficiently, so in the end more trial and error than pure logic led me to the solution. A really exhausting but very great puzzle.
44:28 Simon rehearsing his role in "Hamlet"
LMAOO
Miss a clue off and there are over 100 solutions. The way these clues work together to produce a unique solution is astonishing.
How quickly Simon forgot the 8 had to have a 2 and a Difficult Digit as its moons and the 9 a 1 as its moon is heartbreaking lol. He ended up pencil marking them using other digits instead of doing that immediately after placing the 8 and 9 planets!
I saw taht and realized it made the puzzle take longer as he had to refigure that.
This is not bifurcation. I don't think there is a way to explain the logic better than to put in the digits arbitrarily on the vertical axis without using vertical logic. This is brilliant.
Police Officer: YOR UNDER ARREST for Indecent Bifurcation!
Simon: But officer, I was just trying to make a logical conclusion
What a beautiful journey I was taken on. So glad you were here to guide me cuz I’d definitely never get even the first digit in.
Masterful use of logic by the setter and solver.