@@Tesseren I suppose easier does not always make it quicker, as the thought process takes time, but it solvable rather than walk away make tea and try again
@@Tesseren Given the other Phisto puzzles I've seen Simon solve, any rating system for Sudoku ought to include "P /5" difficulty rating, just for 99% of Phistomephel's constructions. If this one is comparatively easy, then maybe this can be one of the few 5/5 difficulty/"Not P difficulty" puzzles...
Ok….I’m just going to come out and say it. I’ve been watching this channel for the better part of two years. Seen hundreds of videos. Someone please tell Simon that the “purple” color he keeps putting out there is actually pink.
It's pink for me too. It might be interesting to run a straw poll to see what proportion of people see it like that - wonder if the Discord platform supports polls?
#f1b0f6 is light pink, but it's solidly within the magenta space. If Simon's monitor is a bit dark, it'll look like something someone might call purple.
I’m watching this video late so just saw this comment; in a much more recent video (maybe 1-2 months ago now, so ~8 months after this was posted) he finally discovered he was colourblind and couldn’t distinguish the pink and people. That said, he still calls it “purple” to this day…
Yayyyyy so happy for a Phistomefel movie for my hospital stay! By way of update, I'm doing better now. Thanks to everyone for their support. Thank you Simon and Mark for the quality content!
Hi Simon, my name’s Isaac and I just turned 22. Finding this channel has been a blessing because of how much it’s encouraged me to use my brain and see puzzle-solving as a fun past-time to sharpen my mind. I want to thank you and hope that this next year will bring the same. A birthday shoutout would be pretty cool too hahah
So great solve by Simon, only when he wrote 9 in r9c9 and he deduced 9 in red region had to be in column 8, he missed r8c9 had to be the yellow 5 and r5c7 had to be gray As with many puzzles in this channel, it is amazing to stare at the initial grid and then at the final grid, and marvel at the fact that all digits in the grid, as well as all those regions exact shapes and the precise path of the loop can be uniquely deduced from those initial clues
I know, ive looked at that cell for probably 10 minutes waiting for Simon to colour it, and when he did finally do it he used harder logic to deduce it (which seems to be a habit of his)... But hey, I couldn't approach this monstrous puzzle by myself even if I had a full day of bifurcation at my disposal, so hats off to Simon!
1:08:40 ... I turned this into a 'standard' jigsaw sudoku in about 45 minutes, then bogged down as I completed the solve. Still, I'm more than content with solving a Phistomefel puzzle in such a time. Another phenomenal puzzle!
At the beginning of the video there was a moment where I felt a bit weary of this kind of ‘minimal clues, peculiar rules’ puzzle, but that got quickly dissolved seeing how fun this one is! Especially the ‘staircase’ effect when building the regions was neat.
Given that he didn't know where they would be or what regions they would end up being near, how would that have made it easier? Keeping in mind that the channel tries to use color combos that are relatively friendly to color-blind individuals.
I spent about half an hour very painstakingly looking at the puzzle until I realised I had not read the rules correctly. Lol. Then I started again, and on that turn about 100 minutes to solve. So amazing, its hard, but not impossible and the pacing never had you either bored or pulling your hair out.
I wish I had tried this puzzle before watching, as it seemed quite approachable (if tedious). Normally I treat 90 minute puzzles as something to watch. Also, I learned today that it was possible to stare at a 1 for 30 minutes straight :)
100 minutes on the solve for me - what a puzzle! I loved how the puzzle had about 4 different phases and the geometry was so fascinating to suss out. Thanks for the entertaining content.
It amazes me how easily Simon noticed the nine on the 21-red region had to go on the 8th column, but didn't notice the 9 is the 9th cell in red, therefore r8c9 is yellow which resolves the regions.
I feel cheated! You said you'd loop-the-loop when you finished it, and I was really looking forward to seeing it. Imaginary just won't cut it. Imagine playing Truth or Dare, and saying "I'm imagining walking down the street with my undies on my head" - you'd be lynched. I'll accept a video of you doing a somersault on the trampoline, especially if you have to fight a trampoline war to get access. This was probably the hardest of Phistomefel's puzzles I've done, not so much for the logic, but just the graft of spotting the next weak spot. I found the chaos part was quite straightforward, but the irregular sudoku was so irregular that most of the usual tricks didn't apply. I found myself repeatedly asking where X goes in row/column/region Y, but spotting which X and which Y were worthy of the question was the problem.
I think the 1 in the top right corner could be had earlier, though not sure how useful it would have been: r1&3c8 are a "red/blue pair," and red needs to take its 9 in one of them, and the 1 pencil mark in r1c8&9 must itself be red (blue already having its 1), which means r1c8 is either red and therefore 9, pushing the 1 to r1c9, or it's blue, pushing the 1 to r1c9 again.
Cracked it in 54:06 and I've never been more proud. I think this is the first time I've ever solved a Phistomefel in less time than it took Simon in a video. Amazing puzzle.
Love these chaos construction puzzles. Also the fillomino type puzzles. Really cool seeing the paths solved. Also get more colors! There's so many colors and it would be all the more fun using more colors.
Fantastic, it was pure pleasure and satisfaction to watch how the different rules and constraints are meshed/intertwined into each other. Thanks Phistomefel and Simon :)
25 minutes to create the regions (not normally a strong point of mine) and most of the loop but then 33 minutes to solve the sudoku element. Phistomefel comes through again with a cracking puzzle with the addition of giving me a spring in my step for completing a sub 1 hour solve.
Sven needs to look into his checker function; it's broken. He's made it work on other types of puzzles, but it's getting basic Sudoku wrong now because of it. The more new code you add, the more likely you break earlier things that were working; I do it all the time. I had two numbers transposed, so I had two numbers that repeated in two columns and it said it was correct anyway.
It may just be a data issue and the puzzle was entered as 'not a sudoku' or something - as other sudoku puzzles are all working fine still (those with regions anyway, haven't got a link to hand for a chaos construction)
The check function seems to turn itself off when no regions are given. It simply checks nothing in this puzzle, but works fine in others (for regular rules). Though I do remember time where the software did check for irregular regions (predefined, of course), and still checked for row/column repetitions in the absence of boxes/regions.
It never ceases to amaze me how different things are obvious to different people. For instance, the moment Simon pencilled the 9s in c8, it forced r9c9 to be yellow (and therefore r5c7 to be grey). It took Simon another 6m30 to realise r9c9 is yellow, but found it via a completely different conclusion! o.O
I do find it helpful to strictly distinguish digits and numbers. Digits: the symbols 0 through 9. (Corresponding to the digits on your hands.) Numbers: any numerical value, like pi, -3/5, 21, i and so on. So all digits are numbers but not all numbers are digits and some numbers are made up of multiple digits. When the contents of cells are single digits I think it's helpful to call them digits.
I cannot believe that I was actally able to finish this all by myself just now. 138 Minutes... I will run around feeling very intelligent for the next few days that's for sure :D
I don't know why I found this so intuitive, but this has to have been the easiest Phistomefel I've seen in quite some while. Pretty darn happy with a 53:00 flat.
1h27m40s. Got to finish it under the length of the video for the first time on a Phistomefel puzzle. Found the logics one by one pretty easily but yeah, took the time to be sure I didn't do any mistakes. Brilliant!
I also love Simon's comments when he realises that when doing a SUDOKU puzzle that he actually has to use SUDOKU sometimes lol - he gets so carried away doing the variant side that he forgets it's still a SUDOKU variant and NEEDS to use SUDOKU to solve the puzzle :p
I know Simon likes to thoroughly disprove things that seem a bit obvious but the time spent considering whether or not the two 1s could be in the same cage was next level ridiculousness lol
I had never heard of Tunnel of Love by Dire Straits which he mentioned at 43:35, so I literally switched over on TH-cam and looked it up and listened to the whole thing (just shy of 8 minutes). Glad I did. Great tune.
You hit a mind roadblock that you only started to work out at 1h 7 minutes. You already knew there was a red cell in column 8 which contained the number 9. Therefore c9r9 could never be red as you had already used all the red digits. So it was simply yellow... You took a rather more complex approach to try to work it out for ages ! Meanwhile your mind is seeing things everywhere that I haven't seen. It's marvellous how we all see such different things.
I've barely started, and I've broken it utterly. If I go back and start over, I hit the same thing. 6 can be 6, 1 5, 2 4, or 1 2 3, but I can't do any of those. Eventually got it, when I realized the xx region could get there.
1:08:41 I'm sure someone will have mentioned this but if at 1:02:20 Simon had asked "where does the 2 go in column 3?" the only possible answer is green, which then places the 2 in grey, all just by sudoku and not repeating within a region.
By the way Simon, one small thing I noticed is that while you have the pencil tool enabled, if you want to change a square from X to O to blank, you have to have your cursor completely still. If you’re moving it at all the click won’t do anything. :)
Another terrific puzzle and solve. I don't know why Simon persists in celebrating when he clicks the check button and it say "looks good to me" though. The check function will literally confirm anything as correct. Duplicate digits in rows, even incomplete rows. It makes no difference. Everything "looks good to me". It's a completely pointless check.
For those wondering, this isn't brutally difficult, just complicated. It's like three puzzles in one: the region-building, the loop, and the irregular Sudoku.
1:01:00 - Simon neglecting his own logic again with the last cell in the red region. When pencilmarking the red 9 in the upper cells in column 8, he can then automatically colour the last uncoloured cell in the bottom right yellow since no other region can take that cell, and that makes r5c7 grey.
Great video, lovely puzzle, an excellent start to the solve and we know it's going to be a bit dogged when Simon has to resort to sudoku. Brilliant channel, excellent content and rightfully very popular I'm afraid you left 2s too early, column 3 was placeable before the hour mark With the great man you know that every step on the solution path is carefully calculated Same with 9s in row 2
Hey Simon, hey everyone! Need help explaining some logic I didn't understand. The red-21 region, at timestamp 1:07:23 you put the 5 in the box with the 21 clue in it and I believe that logic to be flawed. You have them labelled as a quintuple but only marked for of the boxes. The other box that could have been 23457 is the box marked 9 under the 21 clue, if the loop falls that way. The 5 in the yellow region I believe to be correct in this case tho because the 9 pencilmarked in the 8th column belongs to the last red, eliminating the opportunity for red to stretch down into row 8. I hope this made sense and someone (or yourself) can clear it up for me (:
before you started looking at the 43 you should have assigned a color to each small number on the grid - Simon does have a hard time working out the rules lol
You did the column 9 logic in your head long before you processed it! You said that there must be a red 9 in column 8 at about 1:00:58 and that could have unpicked everything, because it was the inverse of the trick you eventually did at 1:07:25 forcing the yellow cell into column 9. That frustrated me slightly, but I also spent a long time thinking you were missing something with the 23 sum in grey that ended up being complete rubbish. So swings and roundabouts!
86:20 for me (1h 26m 20s). I'm honestly surprised I finished this puzzle in general, even more so that it was faster than the video length (granted Simon also didn't start the solve until like 5 mins in anyway). What a crazy, but interesting puzzle!
... also deduct from Simon's time all the instruction he gives... like explaining why he sees that the loop can't turn, or letting us know about the secret. 😉👍 Still... you solved in a GREAT time! I tried to start the puzzle, and... nope. 🤷🏼♀️ So seriously, congrats! 😁👍
Yes, of course Simon's times are always going to be longer simply from explaining his logic, but what I think is interesting is (like many puzzles featured here) there are different ways to solve it (for instance, early on I used the 6 clue a lot more than Simon did, and used some completely different logic to determine the 1/2/29 boxes)
At 1:00:00, it is possible to place 2 in column 3 (in this column, only green region can have a 2), then in column 4 you can place the 2 in gray But as usual, Simon get it the hard way 10 minutes later 😅
Great solve! I'm a little confused about Simon's logic at 1:07:40. Right after he gets the 5 in r8c9, he immediately puts one in r2c8, but I can't see why the red 5 couldn't also have been in r3c8?
32:11 for me. One of the simpler Phistomefel puzzles I've seen. Then again, I tend to do really well on path finding puzzles. Some really cool logic at the start though.
Finished watching the video and I think it's just a matter of knowing what to look for in path and region puzzles. One tool Simon never seemed to use is reachability. This applied to both r4c1 and r9c8. Very few regions can reach those squares and it's a simple matter to figure out which one is correct. Simon eventually got r4c1, but never for r9c8. He just solved everything else first. It was also obvious at the start that the top region would need a 1 and 2 that weren't in row 1. Simon seemed to understand this quickly enough when required, but for me, this was instant. At the sudoku part, this was my slowest by far. But still here, there are a few things that helped. There was an x-wing on 1s that Simon missed. The whole puzzle basically collapsed after that along with figuring out the contradiction on 9's at the top of column 8. For that one, you don't need an x-wing on 9's. A bad placement in column 8 will lead to no 9's in the 43 region. Also, there were a lot of cases where a digit could only go in one place in a column, but you need to have already gotten the x-wing on 1s in the middle. I watched the entire video. I quite enjoyed it. I was very surprised at the noted difficulty level at the start of the video. Still not sure what to make of it.
Oh dear, Simon. You spend half the puzzle wondering where the 1 goes in r1, narrow it down to c8 or c9, but then forget all about it after you place the 1678 quadruple in yellow in c8.
Amazing solving of an amazing puzzle! These puzzles bring magic to my weekends 😀 I mostly do not try the puzzles myself (unless the videos are shorter than 20 minutes or so), but I try to understand the logic for each step, and see if it I understand the logic behind Simons and Marks deductions. I therefore have a question to those of you who actually manages to solve these extremely difficult puzzles: At 1:00:05, when cocluding that the yellow 9 had to be in R9C9, why couldn’t the yellow area stretch to R5C7 and the 9 be placed there? I tried to do so, and could not find a reason for it to be wrong (but then I did not find any more steps forward either..)
49:12 when he's talking about how there can't be a 1 in that red region... I completely missed the logic of why? r4-7c9 could all be 1, could they not?
The whole question of can I connect the 1 clues at the start made me face palm multiple times. The rules provide that the loop enters each region once, and that the clues are the sum for the loops travel through the region to which that cell belongs. There are 9 clues and 9 regions. Using 2 clues for the same region would mean that 1 region is clueless. How would the correct loop path be determined in a region with no clue? Answer: it cannot. Ergo each clue is a separate and distinct region. Then the whole counting the cells around 25:00 in drove me nuts. Yes 27 cells; we can all see 3 rows of 9 = 27. The rules provide that regions are 9 cells. Now we can see that the 6 clue is in the space, the 31 and 21 could reach the space, but the 31 and 21 clues each would add to the cells to be allocated by a minimum of 1 for the cell where their clue is. 29 cells can not be consumed by 3 regions. The position of 29 clue with how you marked it for consideration precludes any more that 2 other regions invading the bottom. Job's done.
I don't follow. "A small clue in the top left corner of a cell indicates the sum of the digits in all cells visited by the loop in that cell's region" does not imply that each region must have a clue. And I don't think you can, but even if you could deduce that without a clue you can never determine the path, that is still a "uniqueness argument" which is not cricket.
Interesting puzzle but sadly not with a unique solution it seems. I got quite a few digits in different places and it still all works. In the end I was even left with two seperate X-Wings
1:10:40 for me. got a little stuck, but right before looking for simon progress i got the way how to do it, and then i just pushed and pushed to the end. phistomefel be really liking to make irregular region maker sudokus also a tiny spider just showed up into my screen
"...before it exits orange, because otherwise there will be a re-entry into orange, and this is not space in astrophysics..." whoops, wrong classroom, sorry
Has anyone ever mentioned that the cursor used when explaining the rules with the example puzzle, is not really visible at all? I never seem to be able to find it, and it is difficult to follow the example that way.
Wow, 54:12, I'm always somewhere between a little and a lot slower than Simon, very curious what got him stuck for so long on what struck me as fairly average difficulty for this channel?
I literally have 90 minutes left at work and I just got the alert for this video.... obviously, nothing else is getting done today :)
1:29:54 “This is getting interesting now isn’t it” -Simon
Merely 90 minutes in and the puzzle has just now got his interest 😂
13:48 " now the loop stays in orange, until the end of orange"
Those are some beautiful words you can only hear in a Cracking The Cryptic video.
It *almost* sounds like a transit instruction.
If it makes you feel any better Simon, LMD now lists this at 5/5 difficulty. 😉
I actually felt it was a good deal easier than the other recent Phistomephel puzzles featured on the channel.
@@Tesseren I suppose easier does not always make it quicker, as the thought process takes time, but it solvable rather than walk away make tea and try again
@@Tesseren Given the other Phisto puzzles I've seen Simon solve, any rating system for Sudoku ought to include "P /5" difficulty rating, just for 99% of Phistomephel's constructions.
If this one is comparatively easy, then maybe this can be one of the few 5/5 difficulty/"Not P difficulty" puzzles...
Ok….I’m just going to come out and say it. I’ve been watching this channel for the better part of two years. Seen hundreds of videos. Someone please tell Simon that the “purple” color he keeps putting out there is actually pink.
It's pink for me too. It might be interesting to run a straw poll to see what proportion of people see it like that - wonder if the Discord platform supports polls?
#f1b0f6 is light pink, but it's solidly within the magenta space. If Simon's monitor is a bit dark, it'll look like something someone might call purple.
I always see it as pink too, thought I was the weird one so thanks for clarifying 😅
Haha, I constantly say pink as well
I’m watching this video late so just saw this comment; in a much more recent video (maybe 1-2 months ago now, so ~8 months after this was posted) he finally discovered he was colourblind and couldn’t distinguish the pink and people. That said, he still calls it “purple” to this day…
Yayyyyy so happy for a Phistomefel movie for my hospital stay! By way of update, I'm doing better now. Thanks to everyone for their support.
Thank you Simon and Mark for the quality content!
Good to hear!!!
Get better soon
Great to hear selina getting better!!
I am very glad to read that you are doing better now and that Simon's solve of my puzzle made your hospital day a bit sweeter. :) Best wishes!
Glad to hear you're doing better and that the movie has provided some entertainment!
Hi Simon, my name’s Isaac and I just turned 22. Finding this channel has been a blessing because of how much it’s encouraged me to use my brain and see puzzle-solving as a fun past-time to sharpen my mind. I want to thank you and hope that this next year will bring the same. A birthday shoutout would be pretty cool too hahah
Happy belated bday isaac...hope it was a good one
Hey Isaac! Happy birthday!!
happy birthday!
My name is Isak and I turned 22 last january, fun coincidence
Happy birthday Isaac!
When he said "It can't turn right, left or south", I immediately remembered all the instances where "this is two, so this is orange"
Rules: 01:22
Let's Get Cracking: 04:04
Simon's time: 1h26m33s
Puzzle Solved: 1:30:37
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Phistomefel: 9x (00:18, 00:30, 00:32, 01:06, 04:42, 04:46, 07:08, 54:16, 1:31:16)
The Secret: 3x (04:35, 04:35, 10:47)
Bobbins: 2x (43:51, 50:16)
You Rotten Thing: 2x (1:21:31, 1:21:31)
Goodliffing: 1x (1:13:25)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Ah: 26x (07:03, 07:05, 09:01, 15:32, 19:15, 20:09, 24:26, 29:09, 29:45, 36:24, 37:38, 40:28, 42:16, 47:33, 53:36, 1:01:31, 1:07:08, 1:08:11, 1:08:40, 1:14:23, 1:15:25, 1:15:26, 1:17:43, 1:27:21, 1:27:23, 1:29:11)
In Fact: 12x (00:24, 05:24, 07:08, 11:19, 15:42, 23:08, 31:25, 44:57, 45:58, 1:12:16, 1:21:07)
Wow: 9x (1:02:50, 1:03:54, 1:04:13, 1:21:39, 1:21:43, 1:21:43, 1:29:20, 1:29:40, 1:30:39)
Pencil Mark/mark: 7x (1:12:05, 1:14:16, 1:22:22, 1:22:22, 1:23:22, 1:24:00, 1:28:31)
Sorry: 6x (05:37, 17:37, 19:17, 20:57, 44:20, 1:23:51)
Hang On: 6x (06:25, 11:34, 22:41, 58:15, 1:02:09, 1:19:28)
Clever: 5x (52:51, 54:13, 1:00:16, 1:00:18, 1:04:30)
Beautiful: 5x (30:01, 30:20, 30:22, 35:30, 1:15:28)
Good Grief: 4x (35:30, 1:08:41, 1:17:32, 1:26:05)
Goodness: 4x (1:02:04, 1:06:10, 1:24:58, 1:30:38)
The Answer is: 4x (32:30, 52:59, 1:02:35, 1:05:23)
By Sudoku: 4x (1:12:03, 1:16:59, 1:21:52, 1:27:54)
Obviously: 3x (02:36, 22:52, 50:28)
Surely: 2x (45:39, 45:41)
We Can Do Better Than That: 2x (1:02:35, 1:18:56)
What Does This Mean?: 2x (18:03, 1:09:27)
What on Earth: 1x (18:51)
Axiomatically: 1x (51:48)
Recalcitrant: 1x (1:21:45)
I Have no Clue: 1x (21:45)
Stuck: 1x (57:32)
Lovely: 1x (28:40)
Break the Puzzle: 1x (09:46)
Fascinating: 1x (03:30)
Incredible: 1x (43:41)
Ridiculous: 1x (48:19)
Take a Bow: 1x (1:31:20)
Puzzling: 1x (05:40)
I've Got It!: 1x (10:33)
Propitious: 1x (08:24)
Corollary: 1x (31:04)
Progress: 1x (1:16:06)
That's Huge: 1x (07:05)
Have a Think: 1x (25:33)
Nature: 1x (1:00:20)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Twenty Three (11 mentions)
One (137 mentions)
Blue (107 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
Even (11) - Odd (0)
FAQ:
Q1: You missed something!
A1: That could very well be the case! Human speech can be hard to understand for computers like me! Point out the ones that I missed and maybe I'll learn!
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!
Did you drop "something", about 1.28 we had a "That's a Something" which might be a better phrase.
Under two hours. I guess Phistomefel caved to the demand for easy mode.
So great solve by Simon, only when he wrote 9 in r9c9 and he deduced 9 in red region had to be in column 8, he missed r8c9 had to be the yellow 5 and r5c7 had to be gray
As with many puzzles in this channel, it is amazing to stare at the initial grid and then at the final grid, and marvel at the fact that all digits in the grid, as well as all those regions exact shapes and the precise path of the loop can be uniquely deduced from those initial clues
I know, ive looked at that cell for probably 10 minutes waiting for Simon to colour it, and when he did finally do it he used harder logic to deduce it (which seems to be a habit of his)...
But hey, I couldn't approach this monstrous puzzle by myself even if I had a full day of bifurcation at my disposal, so hats off to Simon!
Same here i noticed that too, it really would have made the puzzle easier if he managed to get that
I was screaming at the screen. The squirrelling lately is getting unwatchable.
I noticed that as well
(Broadly speaking) digits are to numbers as letters are to words.
I wished today's puzzle was a movie, and not only is it a movie but a chaos construction and by Phistomefel, great day end :-)
I’m just amazed how that after spending an hour to build the the irregular sudoku, the sudoku is so challenging. Well done
Seriously? A movie today? Going to grab my 🍿🍿🍿🍿
1:08:40 ... I turned this into a 'standard' jigsaw sudoku in about 45 minutes, then bogged down as I completed the solve. Still, I'm more than content with solving a Phistomefel puzzle in such a time.
Another phenomenal puzzle!
Also he could've finished the loop at this point because of the 9 not being able to be on it but being in the missing red cell
At the beginning of the video there was a moment where I felt a bit weary of this kind of ‘minimal clues, peculiar rules’ puzzle, but that got quickly dissolved seeing how fun this one is! Especially the ‘staircase’ effect when building the regions was neat.
I think it would've helped Simon a LOT if he'd just assigned a different color to each of the 9 different region clues at the start.
Given that he didn't know where they would be or what regions they would end up being near, how would that have made it easier? Keeping in mind that the channel tries to use color combos that are relatively friendly to color-blind individuals.
I spent about half an hour very painstakingly looking at the puzzle until I realised I had not read the rules correctly. Lol. Then I started again, and on that turn about 100 minutes to solve. So amazing, its hard, but not impossible and the pacing never had you either bored or pulling your hair out.
I wish I had tried this puzzle before watching, as it seemed quite approachable (if tedious). Normally I treat 90 minute puzzles as something to watch.
Also, I learned today that it was possible to stare at a 1 for 30 minutes straight :)
100 minutes on the solve for me - what a puzzle! I loved how the puzzle had about 4 different phases and the geometry was so fascinating to suss out. Thanks for the entertaining content.
Another beauty from Phistomefel. However sticky they get you always know there is a precisely logical way through it, you just have to find it ...
It amazes me how easily Simon noticed the nine on the 21-red region had to go on the 8th column, but didn't notice the 9 is the 9th cell in red, therefore r8c9 is yellow which resolves the regions.
I feel cheated! You said you'd loop-the-loop when you finished it, and I was really looking forward to seeing it. Imaginary just won't cut it. Imagine playing Truth or Dare, and saying "I'm imagining walking down the street with my undies on my head" - you'd be lynched. I'll accept a video of you doing a somersault on the trampoline, especially if you have to fight a trampoline war to get access.
This was probably the hardest of Phistomefel's puzzles I've done, not so much for the logic, but just the graft of spotting the next weak spot. I found the chaos part was quite straightforward, but the irregular sudoku was so irregular that most of the usual tricks didn't apply. I found myself repeatedly asking where X goes in row/column/region Y, but spotting which X and which Y were worthy of the question was the problem.
I think the 1 in the top right corner could be had earlier, though not sure how useful it would have been: r1&3c8 are a "red/blue pair," and red needs to take its 9 in one of them, and the 1 pencil mark in r1c8&9 must itself be red (blue already having its 1), which means r1c8 is either red and therefore 9, pushing the 1 to r1c9, or it's blue, pushing the 1 to r1c9 again.
Oh, alternately from around the same point it could just be placed due to the 1 needing to be on the line in yellow
Cracked it in 54:06 and I've never been more proud. I think this is the first time I've ever solved a Phistomefel in less time than it took Simon in a video. Amazing puzzle.
Fascinating puzzle. I always love the variations where you have to determine the regions
Love these chaos construction puzzles. Also the fillomino type puzzles. Really cool seeing the paths solved.
Also get more colors! There's so many colors and it would be all the more fun using more colors.
“Don’t let your snake enter and exit a region more than once.”
1:21:45 into the video, never heard the word "recalcitrant" in my life and I spit out my coffee, very CtC-esque lol
Yet again an amazing puzzle with an astounding solve to go along. Bravo! 👏
Took me 3 hours but I'm just happy to have solved something by Phistomefel!
Another movie? Perfect! Bring on the popcorn
I like this new loop concept. It's very unique and interesting.
Incredible puzzle as always. Thank you, Phistomefel and Simon!
Fantastic, it was pure pleasure and satisfaction to watch how the different rules and constraints are meshed/intertwined into each other. Thanks Phistomefel and Simon :)
Very nice puzzle! Looking forward to watching it! It's actually one of Phistomefel's more approachable puzzles, yet a lot of fun.😊
25 minutes to create the regions (not normally a strong point of mine) and most of the loop but then 33 minutes to solve the sudoku element.
Phistomefel comes through again with a cracking puzzle with the addition of giving me a spring in my step for completing a sub 1 hour solve.
Sven needs to look into his checker function; it's broken. He's made it work on other types of puzzles, but it's getting basic Sudoku wrong now because of it. The more new code you add, the more likely you break earlier things that were working; I do it all the time. I had two numbers transposed, so I had two numbers that repeated in two columns and it said it was correct anyway.
It may just be a data issue and the puzzle was entered as 'not a sudoku' or something - as other sudoku puzzles are all working fine still (those with regions anyway, haven't got a link to hand for a chaos construction)
The check function seems to turn itself off when no regions are given. It simply checks nothing in this puzzle, but works fine in others (for regular rules).
Though I do remember time where the software did check for irregular regions (predefined, of course), and still checked for row/column repetitions in the absence of boxes/regions.
It never ceases to amaze me how different things are obvious to different people. For instance, the moment Simon pencilled the 9s in c8, it forced r9c9 to be yellow (and therefore r5c7 to be grey). It took Simon another 6m30 to realise r9c9 is yellow, but found it via a completely different conclusion! o.O
I do find it helpful to strictly distinguish digits and numbers. Digits: the symbols 0 through 9. (Corresponding to the digits on your hands.) Numbers: any numerical value, like pi, -3/5, 21, i and so on. So all digits are numbers but not all numbers are digits and some numbers are made up of multiple digits. When the contents of cells are single digits I think it's helpful to call them digits.
Oohh no! 90 minutes?! This will take me 4 days to watch!
Another great solve by Simon of one of his own puzzles for we all know that Simon and Phistomefel are actually the same person!!!
That takes it. Phistomefel is the Inhuman Maximus the Mad.
Defining regions is my favourite type of puzzles)
51:25 : speaking of 1s : 1 in the grey area has got to be in r4 or r5, matching up to orange's 1s. That means that 1 in green is in r6c4.
Simon, I, and I'm sure many others, would love to see logic problems on the main channel (as opposed to just on Patreon), and not just Sudoku!
I cannot believe that I was actally able to finish this all by myself just now. 138 Minutes... I will run around feeling very intelligent for the next few days that's for sure :D
I don't know why I found this so intuitive, but this has to have been the easiest Phistomefel I've seen in quite some while. Pretty darn happy with a 53:00 flat.
1h27m40s. Got to finish it under the length of the video for the first time on a Phistomefel puzzle. Found the logics one by one pretty easily but yeah, took the time to be sure I didn't do any mistakes. Brilliant!
These videos make the long nights of grad school a little more fun :)
I also love Simon's comments when he realises that when doing a SUDOKU puzzle that he actually has to use SUDOKU sometimes lol - he gets so carried away doing the variant side that he forgets it's still a SUDOKU variant and NEEDS to use SUDOKU to solve the puzzle :p
I know Simon likes to thoroughly disprove things that seem a bit obvious but the time spent considering whether or not the two 1s could be in the same cage was next level ridiculousness lol
That’s incredible!! Well done Phistomefel and Simon!! Brutal but beautiful … brutiful?
I had never heard of Tunnel of Love by Dire Straits which he mentioned at 43:35, so I literally switched over on TH-cam and looked it up and listened to the whole thing (just shy of 8 minutes). Glad I did. Great tune.
Great puzzle, great video, and can I just say I absolutely loved the Tunnel of Love reference. 👌
You hit a mind roadblock that you only started to work out at 1h 7 minutes.
You already knew there was a red cell in column 8 which contained the number 9.
Therefore c9r9 could never be red as you had already used all the red digits.
So it was simply yellow... You took a rather more complex approach to try to work it out for ages !
Meanwhile your mind is seeing things everywhere that I haven't seen. It's marvellous how we all see such different things.
I've barely started, and I've broken it utterly. If I go back and start over, I hit the same thing. 6 can be 6, 1 5, 2 4, or 1 2 3, but I can't do any of those.
Eventually got it, when I realized the xx region could get there.
1:08:41 I'm sure someone will have mentioned this but if at 1:02:20 Simon had asked "where does the 2 go in column 3?" the only possible answer is green, which then places the 2 in grey, all just by sudoku and not repeating within a region.
This puzzle is a SAP (Supposedly Approachable Phistomefel)
By the way Simon, one small thing I noticed is that while you have the pencil tool enabled, if you want to change a square from X to O to blank, you have to have your cursor completely still. If you’re moving it at all the click won’t do anything. :)
Another terrific puzzle and solve.
I don't know why Simon persists in celebrating when he clicks the check button and it say "looks good to me" though. The check function will literally confirm anything as correct. Duplicate digits in rows, even incomplete rows. It makes no difference. Everything "looks good to me". It's a completely pointless check.
For those wondering, this isn't brutally difficult, just complicated. It's like three puzzles in one: the region-building, the loop, and the irregular Sudoku.
Heroic. Period.
i notice a lack of a it can not cross itself clause and immediately think that must be on purpose
1:01:00 - Simon neglecting his own logic again with the last cell in the red region. When pencilmarking the red 9 in the upper cells in column 8, he can then automatically colour the last uncoloured cell in the bottom right yellow since no other region can take that cell, and that makes r5c7 grey.
Simon, I love your puzzles, but I would love to see you get back to your roots and just do a regular sudoku instead of something with a rules variant.
I don't mind the occasional movie. It
usually means Simon is doing the really hard bits for me and I get to spot other things before he does
1:37:27, so only 6 minutes longer than the entirety of this video's length. Not too shabby for me on a Phistomefel puzzle.
Great video, lovely puzzle, an excellent start to the solve and we know it's going to be a bit dogged when Simon has to resort to sudoku.
Brilliant channel, excellent content and rightfully very popular
I'm afraid you left 2s too early, column 3 was placeable before the hour mark
With the great man you know that every step on the solution path is carefully calculated
Same with 9s in row 2
How on earth did the checker go "Looks good to me !"
Hey Simon, hey everyone! Need help explaining some logic I didn't understand. The red-21 region, at timestamp 1:07:23 you put the 5 in the box with the 21 clue in it and I believe that logic to be flawed. You have them labelled as a quintuple but only marked for of the boxes. The other box that could have been 23457 is the box marked 9 under the 21 clue, if the loop falls that way.
The 5 in the yellow region I believe to be correct in this case tho because the 9 pencilmarked in the 8th column belongs to the last red, eliminating the opportunity for red to stretch down into row 8. I hope this made sense and someone (or yourself) can clear it up for me (:
Phistomefel strikes again
Amazing solve! Another, perhabs quicker way of placing the green two would have been to ask: "Where does two in column three go?"
Beautiful video, beautiful solve!
before you started looking at the 43 you should have assigned a color to each small number on the grid - Simon does have a hard time working out the rules lol
I just realized a few minutes in, Brown? A new shade of Blue? Sweet!
Or is it my father in
Laws tv. You referred to brown as orange.
You did the column 9 logic in your head long before you processed it! You said that there must be a red 9 in column 8 at about 1:00:58 and that could have unpicked everything, because it was the inverse of the trick you eventually did at 1:07:25 forcing the yellow cell into column 9.
That frustrated me slightly, but I also spent a long time thinking you were missing something with the 23 sum in grey that ended up being complete rubbish. So swings and roundabouts!
86:20 for me (1h 26m 20s). I'm honestly surprised I finished this puzzle in general, even more so that it was faster than the video length (granted Simon also didn't start the solve until like 5 mins in anyway). What a crazy, but interesting puzzle!
... also deduct from Simon's time all the instruction he gives... like explaining why he sees that the loop can't turn, or letting us know about the secret. 😉👍
Still... you solved in a GREAT time!
I tried to start the puzzle, and... nope. 🤷🏼♀️
So seriously, congrats!
😁👍
Yes, of course Simon's times are always going to be longer simply from explaining his logic, but what I think is interesting is (like many puzzles featured here) there are different ways to solve it (for instance, early on I used the 6 clue a lot more than Simon did, and used some completely different logic to determine the 1/2/29 boxes)
What a solve, congrats Simon! And also, what a puzzle, loved that, congrats to the devil as always!
The check doesn't know whether we actually solved the puzzle :( :( :(
ctrl + A'd and put 3 in and it said that I solved it...
But great video!!!
At 1:00:00, it is possible to place 2 in column 3 (in this column, only green region can have a 2), then in column 4 you can place the 2 in gray
But as usual, Simon get it the hard way 10 minutes later 😅
Great solve! I'm a little confused about Simon's logic at 1:07:40. Right after he gets the 5 in r8c9, he immediately puts one in r2c8, but I can't see why the red 5 couldn't also have been in r3c8?
Im boutta send this to someone who’s never watched a ctc vid and let their mind explode
32:11 for me. One of the simpler Phistomefel puzzles I've seen. Then again, I tend to do really well on path finding puzzles. Some really cool logic at the start though.
Finished watching the video and I think it's just a matter of knowing what to look for in path and region puzzles. One tool Simon never seemed to use is reachability. This applied to both r4c1 and r9c8. Very few regions can reach those squares and it's a simple matter to figure out which one is correct. Simon eventually got r4c1, but never for r9c8. He just solved everything else first. It was also obvious at the start that the top region would need a 1 and 2 that weren't in row 1. Simon seemed to understand this quickly enough when required, but for me, this was instant.
At the sudoku part, this was my slowest by far. But still here, there are a few things that helped. There was an x-wing on 1s that Simon missed. The whole puzzle basically collapsed after that along with figuring out the contradiction on 9's at the top of column 8. For that one, you don't need an x-wing on 9's. A bad placement in column 8 will lead to no 9's in the 43 region. Also, there were a lot of cases where a digit could only go in one place in a column, but you need to have already gotten the x-wing on 1s in the middle.
I watched the entire video. I quite enjoyed it. I was very surprised at the noted difficulty level at the start of the video. Still not sure what to make of it.
40:30 easier seems to be just counting the empty upper right cells. Forces the shape of red.
It baffles me that after all these time Phistomefel is not commenting on these videos.
Oh dear, Simon. You spend half the puzzle wondering where the 1 goes in r1, narrow it down to c8 or c9, but then forget all about it after you place the 1678 quadruple in yellow in c8.
Amazing solving of an amazing puzzle! These puzzles bring magic to my weekends 😀
I mostly do not try the puzzles myself (unless the videos are shorter than 20 minutes or so), but I try to understand the logic for each step, and see if it I understand the logic behind Simons and Marks deductions.
I therefore have a question to those of you who actually manages to solve these extremely difficult puzzles:
At 1:00:05, when cocluding that the yellow 9 had to be in R9C9, why couldn’t the yellow area stretch to R5C7 and the 9 be placed there? I tried to do so, and could not find a reason for it to be wrong (but then I did not find any more steps forward either..)
Simon, It's a good thing I quite like watching movies 😆
49:12 when he's talking about how there can't be a 1 in that red region... I completely missed the logic of why? r4-7c9 could all be 1, could they not?
The whole question of can I connect the 1 clues at the start made me face palm multiple times. The rules provide that the loop enters each region once, and that the clues are the sum for the loops travel through the region to which that cell belongs. There are 9 clues and 9 regions. Using 2 clues for the same region would mean that 1 region is clueless. How would the correct loop path be determined in a region with no clue? Answer: it cannot. Ergo each clue is a separate and distinct region.
Then the whole counting the cells around 25:00 in drove me nuts. Yes 27 cells; we can all see 3 rows of 9 = 27. The rules provide that regions are 9 cells. Now we can see that the 6 clue is in the space, the 31 and 21 could reach the space, but the 31 and 21 clues each would add to the cells to be allocated by a minimum of 1 for the cell where their clue is. 29 cells can not be consumed by 3 regions. The position of 29 clue with how you marked it for consideration precludes any more that 2 other regions invading the bottom. Job's done.
I don't follow. "A small clue in the top left corner of a cell indicates the sum of the digits in all cells visited by the loop in that cell's region" does not imply that each region must have a clue. And I don't think you can, but even if you could deduce that without a clue you can never determine the path, that is still a "uniqueness argument" which is not cricket.
@@willemm9356 perhaps it is an argument from uniqueness.
Interesting puzzle but sadly not with a unique solution it seems. I got quite a few digits in different places and it still all works. In the end I was even left with two seperate X-Wings
He found a very round about way to place the 2 in grey! Was screaming, where do the 2's go in columns 3 and 4!!?
1:10:40 for me. got a little stuck, but right before looking for simon progress i got the way how to do it, and then i just pushed and pushed to the end.
phistomefel be really liking to make irregular region maker sudokus
also a tiny spider just showed up into my screen
67:10 for me; the plain jigsaw itself is surprisingly nontrivial
"...before it exits orange, because otherwise there will be a re-entry into orange, and this is not space in astrophysics..."
whoops, wrong classroom, sorry
Has anyone ever mentioned that the cursor used when explaining the rules with the example puzzle, is not really visible at all? I never seem to be able to find it, and it is difficult to follow the example that way.
Wow, 54:12, I'm always somewhere between a little and a lot slower than Simon, very curious what got him stuck for so long on what struck me as fairly average difficulty for this channel?
I think, you could have gotten the 2's in grey and green much earlier by a combination of row and region logic... Am I wrong?
I meant column, not row.