Wow, thanks so much for this (very unexpected) feature! This puzzle was originally published in my newsletter, Artisanal Sudoku, so check that out if you want more sudokus like this one (can't post a link here, but it's not hard to find). I publish five new puzzles every Monday morning, and I try to keep them fairly approachable-Fanfare is toward the difficult end of the spectrum. As for the title, I don't know... the arrows in the middle rows sort of look celebratory, like streamers or raised hands? Maybe you have to squint to see it. Also, shout out to my sister, who's been the biggest supporter of my puzzles and whose oldest daughter got married this weekend. Congrats!
You're very mean, you put in way too many opportunities for Simon to do sudoku in your sudoku puzzle. In typical stubborn fashion, he refused to indulge you!
I received this week’s puzzles today and they were gorgeous, as they always are. Thank you James. For anyone reading, I highly recommend subscribing to James’ ‘Artisanal Sudoku’ newsletter.
I feel that Simon's refusal to do sudoku in sudoku puzzles for as long as possible made this puzzle a lot more difficult than it might have been. As well as the 7 in row 9 and the 4 in row 6, he missed some very pretty logic in rows 5 and 6 where the 3 in r5c6 pushed the 3 on the 8 arrows to row 6. In turn, that pushed the 5 up to row 5. This then bounced back and forth between the 7 and 8 arrows to get which way up they went. That would have tightened up some of the later positions, giving fewer cases to look at.
@@Tony_Regime Me too. Was sat watching begging him to do sudoku and just look at the numbers he already had. I think he looks for the complex logic solutions far more than basic sudoku.
I watched the intro, did the puzzle (not using maths - silly me) and felt wholly justified internally ranting at Simon to do more sudoku for the rest of the video. Sorry needed to share 😅
There was a much simpler way to deduce the arrows in middle row as well! The way I looked at it was the circles with 3 arrows will need 3 different ways to add up to it. Which means it could only be 789. And eventually, I also ended up with the back and forth logic you mentioned to get the remaining digits which was beautiful! I think because he looks at such complex puzzles, its easy to miss basic logic so I do sympathise with him there.
My names Luke silvious from Tennessee, USA and as of this past week I have been diagnosed with stage 2 B cell NHL. I’ve Started chemo this week and it is miserable. I appreciate all your hard work and dedication you put into this channel. It has kept me entertained and sane when nothing else seems to helps. So thank you mark and all for a such calming yet intelligent channel to spend time solving puzzles.
Wishing you all the very best for a successful treatment. I'm having palliative care chemo which hasn't been very effective except in knocking me out so I take enormous comfort watching these at night when I can't sleep, and especially the crossword on Fridays which is my chemo day. Good luck Luke.
Oh Simon. Never change. So entertaining to see you solve the sudoku without using the 4 in r6c7 or the 79 pair in row 6 or the 2 in r6c3 or many more digits in box 5. It would have made the solve a lot quicker but not that entertaining. Your path through the solve gave you beautiful logic. 😍
He had to build suspense. When will he use the 79 pair. Then he resolves the 79, so now he will use the 7. Especially when he says, it must be sudoku. But then he Simonizes the end of the puzzle and never uses it. I can’t figure out how he can say “this is a 79 pair” and not use it in the obvious place. Instead he goes to another area of grid and starts working on something else. (Interesting there is a company called Simoniz that makes “GlassCoat” that is a protective coating for cars. So we can say Simon Simoniz’s the digits and protects them from being eliminated by pairs or digits using Sudoku. I know that was lane. Time for bed!!)
Once again a perfect example of Simon not doing Sudoku for 37 minutes straight... he could have had a lot of deductions earlier and easier had he done it...
14:58 Is a great example of him going round the houses. He started off his logical analysis almost immediately saying where 9s couldn’t go on arrows in row 6. If he’d applied exactly the same reasoning to row 5 he could have immediately placed the 9 and thus the 8 in nonet 4 some ten minutes before he instead deduced it in a considerably more complex way!
It's a happy reminder that we all have blind spots and make typos. Plus there is something cathartic in yelling/laughing at the tellybox. Thank you simon
He frequently does a reset of the puzzle (including time) during the rule explaining. I thought that was a deliberate move for an accurate time, but maybe not.
Hmm , I have seen Mark do the reset almost every time , but I can't really remember seeing Simon ever do it. I thought he didn't really care about the exact time of his solves.
Simon must be on holiday. This is obviously one he recorded earlier which is why he's commenting on the time again. It's interesting that his prerecorded streams have so many more instances of ignoring sudoku than even his usual. He must record them when he is tired.
i love these videos so much but watching you highlight the blue cells in the middle and talk about how you’re missing something with the four right next to them was killing me 😭😭😭
I think that leaving chunks of the grid coloured in (especially with such strong colours as Simon's favourite green (which, nice as it may be, is *not* fluorescent!)) long after the colours have served their useful purpose is a big contributing factor to Simon's number-blindness - just as given digits are harder to see because they aren't blue, digits in coloured in cells are harder to see.
I feel like many of us can solve a Sudoku like this faster and easier than Simon did because of noticing things he didnt but only because he and Mark have taught so many of us how to look for those things in the first place through the videos we watch on the channel. I know this is true for me. I dont even remember when I started watching this channel but I know its been a while and when I started it would take me hours to do normal Sudoku and that was with an awful lot of unnecessary pencil marks and some trial and error. Now I was able to finish this puzzle with a floating 126 triple in columns 8 or 9 and realizing that if it was in 9 it made a cell in box 9 unfillable. Today at Lunch I actually started to explain how I could place the 9 and 8 in box 4 almost instantly to a Coworker and halfway through his eyes glazed over and I lost him. I thought it was rather simple and it surprised me. Simon and Mark, If you're ever wondering if your videos are helping people learn how to solve Sudoku I want you to know it has improved me by leaps and bounds without me even realizing It. Thank you very much for all you do. I hope you continue to both teach and entertain this wonderful community. Much love and happy days to anyone who is reading this!
Why is it that any time I see something easy and trivial (like oh look, the 9 in row 5 here), Simon finds a far more circuitous and complicated way to show what I'm shouting at the screen about? It's uncanny. :)
I was honestly questioning my sanity. Like, that 5 felt like it should be the first digit because it gives you so much information and I was confused as to why it took him so long
Also an alternative bit of logic - once you restrict 9 to the top row in box 8 (because it can't go on an arrow), you immediately get an 8-9 pair in row 5 (since none of the arrow cells in rows 5/6 can contain an 8 or a 9, so both 8 and 9 sit in the bottom row of box 5) which is resolved by the black dot. From there, you can complete the puzzle without doing any arithmetic at all!! Thanks again for the wonderful solve!
I always look forward to the point in a solve where Simon explains something, works hard to get to that point, then promptly forgets what he had just explained a couple minutes earlier. "If there's a 4 in here then it would go in that square, can I force 7 in the blue....." does so then totally forgets the reason he did that. Love it.
Every day, seemingly mundane statements from Simon actually add that funny or colorful touch to an otherwise already entertaining puzzle solve, like "...but it's actually quite a bit about sudoku" (15:17). Simon, I just love your ways of saying things, especially because it just flows naturally as you speak or think out loud.
Very fun puzzle. Interesting thing is usually Simon and I take very similar solve paths - which he usually finds much quicker than me - but this time I used a very different method. I think the key is to focus on 8s and 9s right from the start. You can place 9 in box 4 immediately simply by marking it must be in the top rows of boxes 6 and 8, meaning r5c3 is the only place for it in box 4. That lets you place 8 in box 4 as well, and then since the two r7 circles can't be 9 you can place 8 in box 6 as well, which gets you the 4. The next step for me was to realize that the three arrows in box 4 must all be different digits, even the one outside the box, since they are pairs of digits producing a common sum. So it can't be 6 or 7 in the box 7 circle, because that would make the other circle 8 and pair another 4 with the 4 you found; since there are only two ways of making either number without 4, that won't work. That gets you another 8, which gets you your first 7. That forces 8 and 7 down into the arrow cells in box 8 and gets you another 9. From there you can get a lot of other digits quickly. Very surprising to me since usually I am MORE mathematically inclined than Simon, and slower to use geometry. I think my method is legitimately faster, but I won't take much comfort in that since it's probably the first time in 3 years I can say that. Thanks to Simon as always for a great video!
I think yours is a less tricky break in. I had to watch the video to get that far but once he missed the 9 in r5, I broke off & finished because I actually did rely on sudoku.
Finding a "cleaner" way to break in than Simon once in a blue moon is indeed very surprising and satisfyin. I was very happy to find i could start with the crucial two circles and narrow them down to a 78 pair without set arithmetic or chasing much else around the grid: these digits need to go on an arrow in box 8 (can't be 9), need to have at least 3 different ways of being a sum of two digits (6 or higher), and we can't use the arrows sneaking into box 5 to double-up on a digit (4+4=8 because the 4s would look onto the arrows from the other circle eliminating one of the three ways of adding up to 6 or 7, and in the case of 3+3 because one of the arrows on the other side would need to be 4+4=8 ruining a necessary 2+4=6 arrow) - neither can be 6. It's essentially the same as you've pointed out, just feels like a more useful trick because it's more global not relying on getting a digit from other clues first - and that comes back to how Simon can blank on a deduction when focusing on something specific, not knowing difficulty (or knowing its easy but looking for most interesting logic) and intuiting there's something to be extracted from a certain combination of clues - it's just amazing how often he's finding the best way to approach it straight away and funny how much we're surprised when he goes about the long way!
28:59 for me.This was pretty fun. I got the initial break in logic very fast. I'm a bit proud of that. I've been trying to be more optimal about which things I check first and it felt like it paid off here.
A smooth 19:41 for this one. James Sinclair is one of my favorite setters, and I highly recommend subscribing to his weekly newsletter. It usually includes two very approachable puzzles and a third one that's a lot more tough. (I'm not a paid subscriber so I only get the first three puzzles). His puzzles are this wonderful blend of sudoku logic with variant setting, and there's generally a clear and pleasing solve path to them. And not too tough, either!
The lengths Simon goes to NOT do any Sudoku nearly makes me angry. I almost want to teach him how to Sudoku. But then I remember that he just doesn't do Sudoku because he has so many more ways to find a logical path through the puzzle and I only find the one. And then I get angry again. This time at myself. It is a vicious cycle.
I love how Simon's brain works... at 34:00 I got to the same conclusion a different way. in column 8, r2,3 and 4 were three digits from 2359, so the 7 arrow in that column couldn't be a 25 since we'd need 4 digits to go into 5 cells. The resulting 16 pair put the 2 in R9c8.
Simon if you read this go back and look at 3 in box 4 after you put the 3 in box 5 (and 3 in row 4 box 6). The logic of how the arrows work is beautiful
I solved this without using the maths, you can prove it's a 7-8 pair in the circles in r7c2 and r7c8 because you can't repeat the digits on any of the 2 cell arrows without breaking the one of the sum totals (6-7 doesn't work as the double 3 prevents 3+4 from appearing on the 7, 6-8 doesn't work because you can't do 3+5 and must use 4+4 which breaks the 2+4 for the 6) Cool to see different ways of breaking into the same puzzle, great solve, Simon!
27.55 for me, I loved the box 8 logic and the virtual 126 triple. I'm glad I attempted it even though I tend to avoid 'math-y' ones. I feel like Simon took the long way around for the break-in. I just asked, which digits have 3 ways of summing with 2 digits, which limited it to 789, then the 9 in box 8 made the pair. Simon just wanted to show off his math skills.
36:23 for me. This is the first puzzle I attempted “before” Simon, and I’m glad I did. In reality, I was just a little frustrated that I was seeing the 8 and 9 in box 4, and their implications in box 7 before he did. 😅 To be fair, I stole some of his logic in the beginning, but the path I took after was different from Simon’s. I’m particularly proud of how I aligned a 1/2 pencil mark in r9c1 with r9c8c9 and the 1/2 pair in box 6, noting that it’s position (with the digits I already found) squeezed a 1/2 into r3c7. It had to be a 2, and the bottom left corner had to be a 1 to align the 2’s in c8c9, and the rest fell apart easily. Nothing groundbreaking, but it’s probably the biggest “eureka!” moment I’ve had in sudoku. EDIT: After reviewing my solve, I realized my unique path came from the opposite of Simon’s issue: too much sudoku. I forgot to use the arrow sums in the middle of the grid halfway through, and brute forced the puzzle instead. Whoops
My logic for the circles in r7c2 and r7c8 are that neither can be nine, if one of them is six, the only way to make 6 three different ways is with two threes and you cannot complete the other box because there's nowhere to put 3,4 or 3,5. on the other side. Therefore the two circles contain seven and eight.
I considered that it could be a 6,8 combo, and then the arrows that point into box 5 could be 3,3 and 4,4. In the end that didn't work, but I did see a way to use the double 3 without breaking the other set of arrows.
I had an intermediate version: if the cells on the arrows in row 6 are 1-6, then the other cells are 789, but then if the cells on the arrows in row 5 are also 1-6, r5c5 sees every digit, 1-6 in the row and 789 in the box. So the arrows must add up to more than 42 and the circles must add up to more than 14.
@@stevieinselby at first look this is plausible but try it and you'll have nowhere to place the 3,4 or 3,5 pair on the other side because 3,3 in either arrow split across boxes forces a 3 into row 4 in box 4 or 6.
@@andyhoudini Oh sure, you can work through and find that it's impossible to make either of those arrows 3+3=6, but the way you phrased it made it sounds as though you had ruled it out _on the principle that you can't have 3+3=6 on an arrow_ rather than because you had followed it through and proved that in this particular instance it doesn't work.
I'm amazed at how differently I solved this one compared to Simon. I eliminated 6 from the circles by realizing that it needed a double 3 on one of the diagonal arrows, which ruled out all but one possibility on 7 or 8, which forced an 8 and for that 8 to have a double 4 on its diagonal arrow, which in turn bounced back and made 6 impossible. And then, with my 7/8 pair in place, the puzzle basically just unfolded one cell after another. I used the fact that the 7 and 8 arrows shared so many digits to entirely populate the middle box and all of the middle row arrows before even looking anywhere else. It was a very fun puzzle.
This was difficult, but I'm so proud of my 36:44 time! Watching the channel and incorporating techniques and insights really expanded my view of the game, and I'm so happy that it paid off doing this on my own before watching the video. Thanks Mark and Simon!
Simon definitely should learn from Mark how to make sure the clock works. And it has to be a thorough 4 to 5 hour long session with plenty of examples. It cannot be "just press the restart button, man!" kind of thing 'cause it won't work - after all, we're talking about Simon and his weird brain.
7:18 for me, a beautiful, buttery smooth flow from start to finish. It virtually solved itself. This was like watching someone stroking a cat the wrong way. It was a beautifully constructed puzzle, with a really nice flow of easy logic, almost all of which went whooshing by you. You continually to tried to force this puzzle, when all you had to do was use the information at hand. 9 in box 8 is in R7, in R4 in box 6, and so R5C3 with 8 above it, and R6 in box 5. The arrows in R7 cannot be greater than 8, so 8 in box 6 is in R5C7 with 4 below. They cannot be lower than 7, because each needs to have three ways to make up the number in two digits. 6 can be eliminated, because you'd need double 3, which would prevent the other arrows working. The 78 pair pushes 7 and 8 onto the arrows in box 8, and must be joined by 1 & 2. The 89 in C4 means the arrow in R1C3 must be 7 made up of 34, this makes the 7 in box 8 go in R8C4, next to 2, 1, then 8. It also resolves which of the 78 arrows is which. The 4 in R6 must have 3 on the tip. This means the 3 on the 8 arrows is in R6, with 5 in R5. So 5 on the 7 arrow is in R6 with 2 in R5, which means 2 on the 8 is in R6, with 6 in R5. Keep going in this fashion until all the arrows are populated. After this, you're left with 567 in R5C1/2/4, 4 in R5C5 with 5 above it, 12 in R5C8/9, 123 in R6C1/2/3, 8 in R6C4, 79 in R6C5/6, and 456 in R6C7/8/9. We can fix R5C4=6 and R6C3=2. In C4, we have 523 to place in box 2, the 5 must go in the circle, with 2 on the arrow, leaving 1 and 2 on the arrow in box 1, with 3 below the 2. This resolves the 17/35 arrows below. R2C6 can only be 4, with 14 on the arrow in box 3, making it a 9 arrow, resolving the 79 in box 5. The 14 on the arrow in box 3 must have the 4 on the dot with an 8 in the corner. The rest is just simple sudoku, other than the logic you did spot which placed the 2 in R9 under the 16 arrow. @ 33:03 "now, I've missed some sudoku" - understatement of the year. I know that this was a live solve, and we can't expect a perfect solve every time, but for someone with your experience to miss so much easy logic takes real determination.
11:20 I'm a bit stuck now. Thanks for the math. Here's are two questions: where must 9 go in row 4? Then where must 9 go in row 5? 13:20 It's a lot later now, and I've finished the puzzle. Thanks for the 72 heads-up in block 8. I already had 81, and I'd also removed 9 as possible in one of the circles, so the other two had to both be 9. I used the 45 math -- I'd ruled out 6 in a different way from row 7's circles. 22:50 I used brute force on the arrows leading to the 8 -- similar to Simon's arrows leading to 7 -- something Mark would appreciate. I could whittle down the occupants of the cells. 33:00 "Where are you, Sudoku nonsense?" You can unravel a chunk of green.
Simon and Mark, Thank you both for a great channel. I started watching a while back and was pleased when I completed a puzzle in less than twice your time. Today was a red letter day; I beat your time!!!!. (until you noticed your time was in fact better than clocked) Thanks again for introducing me to these puzzle.
I so much enjoy Simon’s logic, which has improved my own solving in so many ways! However, sometines the logic becomes too complex and the ” actual sodoku” gets lost in the process! (Yes, I am aware that Simons mentions this quite frequently but still 😀)
18:39 for me. I love puzzles like this where sudoku skills balance out the bigger logical leaps required. Once I get over the hurdle of where to start then being quick at sudoku speeds up my time immensely
This one was truly awesome. I still can't quite do them without .. "guidance" from Simon, but often I am able to see what he talking about before he says it. Maybe I'm just not being patient with myself enough. Either way, I enjoy watching and playing along!
25:26 For me, this puzzle looked quite intimidating initially, however changing my approach and homing on certain digits seemed to have cracked that nut open, but not without showing off some wonderful logic around the middle box
Wow. 34:08 for me, and that is a surprise. I usually need 2-3 times the video length, if I can make it at all. I never thought of the secret, but I had the most wonderful ping-pong interactions between the left and right set of arrows, which made me smile quite a bit (and then worry that I must have made a mistake as everything went too smooth)
Great puzzle, lots of fun 38:32. With 9 limited to row 4 in box 6 due to arrows and kropkis, the 9 in r5c3 jumped off the page and was my first digit. The 9 in r7 box 8 limited the circles in r7 to 7/8, although I see I took some false liberties in not including a 6 as a possibly.
Absolutely LOVED that extra bit of logic needed right at the end. I was so ready for the rest to be very straightforward, but it was such a clever finish, really made me smile when I found it!
31:18 That was some interesting and unexpected logic. Took me a while to disambiguate all the pairs I had found. That was a super interesting arrow sudoku, definitely worthy of its fanfare!
This puzzle is such a delight. It (and the whole video, really) reminds me of the type of puzzles we saw on the channel a few years ago before setters went mad with power. You could sell me a whole book of puzzles just like this.
I have to admit, I was stuck for a while at that last part, not seeing that an arrow was ready to shoot itself from the sky if it was filled in incorrectly. Done in 25:54 and really pleased with that spot that stumped me. I solved it by producing two 9s in c8.
Under 30 min tonight, very nice and much needed break from getting stuck on even simpler things because my brain is mush lately. The simpler way of seeing the start is that there are only two ways of making 6 but there are 3 arrow in the box.
23:17 Started with circles within the centre Got that they are 789, cause it’s at least 123456 in the middle box rows for circles Than 9s were in the top row of box 8, so those circles were 78 8/9 are i the bottom row of box 5 So 8/9 are in the only 2 places in boxes 4 and 6, which determined placement of 8 on a dot 4 is on the arrow, so the other digit on that arrow is only 3, because otherwise there will not be the 3rd arrow for 7 in box 4 (it needs 4/3 as 3rd option) Basically the whole breakthrough After that i got a few doubles and tripples while placing digits 7, 8, 9s are restricted for box 8 So it came down to the fact it’s 9 in the circle in box 8 and in the circle of box 9 at the bottom row
12:42! For whatever reason, almost all of James Sinclair’s puzzles have been a breeze for me. I’ll be honest though, I do have the pencil mark conflict checker on, since it turns on by default and, though I sometimes turn it off, I’m sure that does help speed up the time
my solve went quite a bit differently than simons, basically no math on rows 5 and 6, and pretty much filled boxes 4-6 without looking at other boxes except box 8 slightly. first thing i noted is that the circles in r7c28 have to be at least 7. this is because they need 3 distinct pairs, otherwise you'd need to repeat a digit in the box above. like simon, you can say they aren't 9s or they would put a 9 on a 2 cell arrow in box 8, so they're a 78 pair. like simon (at 14:27), i concluded 8 and 9 have to be off the arrows in boxes 4 and 6, so r5c37 are an 89 pair, but 9 can't go on the black dot. this gives us an 98 on the white dot and an 84 on the black dot, giving us a 3 or 4 in r5c6. Like we mentioned before, the arrows need 3 distinct pairs to fill them, in particular, the 7 needs a 34 pair somewhere, but if the 8 has a double 4 arrow, we'd block any chance for 7 to get a 4, so 8 has a these pairs on the arrows: 17,26,35. with that, we know the composition of all 6 arrows, and can fill the blue with a 4789 quad making the center square a 4 by sudoku. the 3 in row 5 tells us the 8 gets it's 3 from the bottom row, and so it's 5 from the top, which bounces to the 7 sorting out the 52 pair, which bounces back to the 8 sorting the 26 pair, then back to the 7 for the 16 pair and back to the 8 for the 17 pair. so in total, we have 567 in row 5 for the 8 arrows, and 123 in row 6 for the 8, a 12 in row 5 and 56 in row 6 for the 7. with a bit of sudoku, you can then limit all squares in boxes 4-6 to 1-3 options. without really ever looking elsewhere. the rest of the solve is similar but slightly aided by less options. I did find it funny that the last thing simon did was sort out the central boxes, while it's what i started with.
I really enjoyed this puzzle. Particular a dawning moment as regards where 4 went in box 5 that got the logic flowing for me. ETA: Of course, you found a much nicer way to do it that ignored that entirely, as almost expected. I enjoyed that moment anyway(!)
"You can see how It's incredibly tight, isn't the Logic". Nope, I can see someone trying not to do Sudoku in a Sudoku puzzle, and incredibly failing at seeing it when he does try.😆 It was a bit frustrating watching, was expecting for a chain of sweet steps and praise for how things nicely bonce back and forth. Though screaming >no don't stop, go that damn step further damn you
16:32 Simon proves that if the blue digits in box 5 contain a four then it must go in r5c5. 20:08 Simon proves that the blue digits in box 5 contain a four. 23:59 Simon finally places the four in r5c5. It’s honestly so charming to see your brain zooming ahead twenty steps and forgetting to do the basic sudoku in your sudoku puzzles.
That was a great puzzle. I think Simon should be made to do all the puzzles that rely mainly on sudoku to really get going. He's so funny "out of nowhere...." Even i spotted the 9 in box 4 on the white dot from the off. And that 4 in box 5. Loved it!
Excellent puzzle. -- After a couple of false early developments, I found that I had to be rigorously logical to find the correct solve. -- This would be a good choice for book 3 ;-) Well done to all involved.
Simon never changes, steadfastly missing sudoko to make the puzzle easier to solve. There were at least three times he missed blocks of easy sudoko and found a more obscure and difficult way to logically find a way forward. Especially at the end when he found the 2-6 pair in r9c8 and r9c9
What impresses the most is how Simon dodge easy mistakes. I started the puzzle on my own, then watched the video. At first it felt like Simon was slow, then I realized a couple mistakes of mine. I had the right conclusions but in a flawed way. For example, I quickly pencil marked the 78 pair in row 7, but using the fact you can't get to 6 in 3 different ways with the sum of two cells, unless you repeat a 3. But that was allowed on the middleish arrows. If you do, it still doesn't work obviously (you starve the other arrow), but I didn't go this far. I did see one digit was outside the box, but thought I was still good since the other half of that pair saw all the other digits.
Very elegant puzzle - had a great flow to it. Classic case of Simon doing too much maths and not enough Sudoku. Getting 9 in R5C3 should have taken 20 seconds at most. Whenever a row/column or especialy a box is full of arrow cells, the immediate questions are e.g. where does 9 go. I'm sure also Simon misses "Sudoku nonsense" because he still has box 4-5-6 coloured (remove this!) and the dark green obscures the 35 pencil mark in R5C1 which was resolved several minutes before.
I got stuck in box 8 and had to sleep on it for a while. I basically pulled a Simon: I was just missing basic sudoku that created a 78 pair in the box. This was a really fun puzzle though, I enjoyed discovering all the interactions between the arrows in box 4 and 6.
In box 5,the 9 is in row 6. So out of the three purple spots in row 5, one is in the same box (can't be) one is on a black dot (also can't be) and the only possible is in box 4. Could be seen much earlier, but you cycled back to it.
I love watching Simon get lost in beautiful logic and missing the most basic pencil marks. We need to get him a timer that goes off once every 3 minutes just labeled "do Sudoku".
Almost got this one by myself, I did not see the 126 triple with the arrow and the 2 cells on the bottom of box 9. but as soon as I saw that, I was off to the races. Finished with a time of 53:00 exactly, and I'm pretty happy with that.
Oh, btw, the 9s are in row4 of box6 , which throws the "9" on the other side of the wht dot in box4 (which places the 8 in there). EDIT: even before @6:30
Nice and easy! I got done in 32 minutes. Then I watched Simon's video... and realized I'd forgotten to consider the possibility that one of the green arrows slicing into the center box could have been 8=4+4. Oh well, it wasn't and I got lucky. :}
30:58 for me, but I am ashamed to say that I made a logical error in my solve, forgetting about the possibility of repeats on the diagonal arrows in the tridents. As a result, I didn't rule out 6+8 as rigorously as Simon did. I also really enjoyed the logic at the end with the 1256 forcing a 2 in box 9 row 9 though!
Wow, thanks so much for this (very unexpected) feature! This puzzle was originally published in my newsletter, Artisanal Sudoku, so check that out if you want more sudokus like this one (can't post a link here, but it's not hard to find). I publish five new puzzles every Monday morning, and I try to keep them fairly approachable-Fanfare is toward the difficult end of the spectrum. As for the title, I don't know... the arrows in the middle rows sort of look celebratory, like streamers or raised hands? Maybe you have to squint to see it.
Also, shout out to my sister, who's been the biggest supporter of my puzzles and whose oldest daughter got married this weekend. Congrats!
I see the celebratory arrows (arms)!😄
Congratulations to your sister. May there be many more editions of Artisanal Sudoku!
This puzzle had a really nice flow to it thanks for setting!
You're very mean, you put in way too many opportunities for Simon to do sudoku in your sudoku puzzle. In typical stubborn fashion, he refused to indulge you!
I received this week’s puzzles today and they were gorgeous, as they always are. Thank you James. For anyone reading, I highly recommend subscribing to James’ ‘Artisanal Sudoku’ newsletter.
I feel that Simon's refusal to do sudoku in sudoku puzzles for as long as possible made this puzzle a lot more difficult than it might have been. As well as the 7 in row 9 and the 4 in row 6, he missed some very pretty logic in rows 5 and 6 where the 3 in r5c6 pushed the 3 on the 8 arrows to row 6. In turn, that pushed the 5 up to row 5. This then bounced back and forth between the 7 and 8 arrows to get which way up they went. That would have tightened up some of the later positions, giving fewer cases to look at.
that was driving me mad
@@Tony_Regime Me too. Was sat watching begging him to do sudoku and just look at the numbers he already had. I think he looks for the complex logic solutions far more than basic sudoku.
I watched the intro, did the puzzle (not using maths - silly me) and felt wholly justified internally ranting at Simon to do more sudoku for the rest of the video. Sorry needed to share 😅
There was a much simpler way to deduce the arrows in middle row as well! The way I looked at it was the circles with 3 arrows will need 3 different ways to add up to it. Which means it could only be 789. And eventually, I also ended up with the back and forth logic you mentioned to get the remaining digits which was beautiful! I think because he looks at such complex puzzles, its easy to miss basic logic so I do sympathise with him there.
He always overcomplicates things. Maddening.
My names Luke silvious from Tennessee, USA and as of this past week I have been diagnosed with stage 2 B cell NHL. I’ve Started chemo this week and it is miserable. I appreciate all your hard work and dedication you put into this channel. It has kept me entertained and sane when nothing else seems to helps. So thank you mark and all for a such calming yet intelligent channel to spend time solving puzzles.
So glad you found Simon & Mark. Keep looking for whatever lifts your spirits! ❤️🙏🏻
Get well soon Luke, we all believe in you!
Wishing you all the very best for a successful treatment. I'm having palliative care chemo which hasn't been very effective except in knocking me out so I take enormous comfort watching these at night when I can't sleep, and especially the crossword on Fridays which is my chemo day. Good luck Luke.
@@orosma868 wishing you the best also! ❤️🙏🏻
I'll pray for you!
Oh Simon. Never change. So entertaining to see you solve the sudoku without using the 4 in r6c7 or the 79 pair in row 6 or the 2 in r6c3 or many more digits in box 5. It would have made the solve a lot quicker but not that entertaining. Your path through the solve gave you beautiful logic. 😍
He had to build suspense. When will he use the 79 pair. Then he resolves the 79, so now he will use the 7. Especially when he says, it must be sudoku. But then he Simonizes the end of the puzzle and never uses it.
I can’t figure out how he can say “this is a 79 pair” and not use it in the obvious place. Instead he goes to another area of grid and starts working on something else.
(Interesting there is a company called Simoniz that makes “GlassCoat” that is a protective coating for cars. So we can say Simon Simoniz’s the digits and protects them from being eliminated by pairs or digits using Sudoku. I know that was lane. Time for bed!!)
"Where can 9 go in row 5" would have been a good question.
Once again a perfect example of Simon not doing Sudoku for 37 minutes straight... he could have had a lot of deductions earlier and easier had he done it...
14:58 Is a great example of him going round the houses. He started off his logical analysis almost immediately saying where 9s couldn’t go on arrows in row 6. If he’d applied exactly the same reasoning to row 5 he could have immediately placed the 9 and thus the 8 in nonet 4 some ten minutes before he instead deduced it in a considerably more complex way!
20:30
yeah but that would take all the fun out of watching him solve.
The 4 on box 5 had me screaming at my phone.
It's a happy reminder that we all have blind spots and make typos. Plus there is something cathartic in yelling/laughing at the tellybox. Thank you simon
So after 6 years of CTC videos every single day, Simon has just discovered that the clock starts when you open the puzzle 😂
Feature request for Sven: activate the clock on hearing the words "let's get cracking"
He frequently does a reset of the puzzle (including time) during the rule explaining. I thought that was a deliberate move for an accurate time, but maybe not.
Hmm , I have seen Mark do the reset almost every time , but I can't really remember seeing Simon ever do it. I thought he didn't really care about the exact time of his solves.
Simon must be on holiday. This is obviously one he recorded earlier which is why he's commenting on the time again. It's interesting that his prerecorded streams have so many more instances of ignoring sudoku than even his usual. He must record them when he is tired.
@@janerobson2297 yes , his sudoku filter was almost at maximum strength in this one 😂
i love these videos so much but watching you highlight the blue cells in the middle and talk about how you’re missing something with the four right next to them was killing me 😭😭😭
😂
I think that leaving chunks of the grid coloured in (especially with such strong colours as Simon's favourite green (which, nice as it may be, is *not* fluorescent!)) long after the colours have served their useful purpose is a big contributing factor to Simon's number-blindness - just as given digits are harder to see because they aren't blue, digits in coloured in cells are harder to see.
I feel like many of us can solve a Sudoku like this faster and easier than Simon did because of noticing things he didnt but only because he and Mark have taught so many of us how to look for those things in the first place through the videos we watch on the channel. I know this is true for me. I dont even remember when I started watching this channel but I know its been a while and when I started it would take me hours to do normal Sudoku and that was with an awful lot of unnecessary pencil marks and some trial and error. Now I was able to finish this puzzle with a floating 126 triple in columns 8 or 9 and realizing that if it was in 9 it made a cell in box 9 unfillable. Today at Lunch I actually started to explain how I could place the 9 and 8 in box 4 almost instantly to a Coworker and halfway through his eyes glazed over and I lost him. I thought it was rather simple and it surprised me. Simon and Mark, If you're ever wondering if your videos are helping people learn how to solve Sudoku I want you to know it has improved me by leaps and bounds without me even realizing It. Thank you very much for all you do. I hope you continue to both teach and entertain this wonderful community. Much love and happy days to anyone who is reading this!
what u missing is u can't put 25 pair in column 8, it will cause 5 cells with 2359, so u must put 16 pair in column 8, which make R9C8=2
Why is it that any time I see something easy and trivial (like oh look, the 9 in row 5 here), Simon finds a far more circuitous and complicated way to show what I'm shouting at the screen about?
It's uncanny. :)
Same!
I was honestly questioning my sanity. Like, that 5 felt like it should be the first digit because it gives you so much information and I was confused as to why it took him so long
Also an alternative bit of logic - once you restrict 9 to the top row in box 8 (because it can't go on an arrow), you immediately get an 8-9 pair in row 5 (since none of the arrow cells in rows 5/6 can contain an 8 or a 9, so both 8 and 9 sit in the bottom row of box 5) which is resolved by the black dot. From there, you can complete the puzzle without doing any arithmetic at all!! Thanks again for the wonderful solve!
This is the kind of puzzle that was impossible for me a year ago but now I was able to solve it thanks to the strategies Mark & Simon taught me.
I always look forward to the point in a solve where Simon explains something, works hard to get to that point, then promptly forgets what he had just explained a couple minutes earlier. "If there's a 4 in here then it would go in that square, can I force 7 in the blue....." does so then totally forgets the reason he did that. Love it.
Every day, seemingly mundane statements from Simon actually add that funny or colorful touch to an otherwise already entertaining puzzle solve, like "...but it's actually quite a bit about sudoku" (15:17). Simon, I just love your ways of saying things, especially because it just flows naturally as you speak or think out loud.
Very fun puzzle. Interesting thing is usually Simon and I take very similar solve paths - which he usually finds much quicker than me - but this time I used a very different method. I think the key is to focus on 8s and 9s right from the start. You can place 9 in box 4 immediately simply by marking it must be in the top rows of boxes 6 and 8, meaning r5c3 is the only place for it in box 4. That lets you place 8 in box 4 as well, and then since the two r7 circles can't be 9 you can place 8 in box 6 as well, which gets you the 4.
The next step for me was to realize that the three arrows in box 4 must all be different digits, even the one outside the box, since they are pairs of digits producing a common sum. So it can't be 6 or 7 in the box 7 circle, because that would make the other circle 8 and pair another 4 with the 4 you found; since there are only two ways of making either number without 4, that won't work. That gets you another 8, which gets you your first 7. That forces 8 and 7 down into the arrow cells in box 8 and gets you another 9.
From there you can get a lot of other digits quickly.
Very surprising to me since usually I am MORE mathematically inclined than Simon, and slower to use geometry. I think my method is legitimately faster, but I won't take much comfort in that since it's probably the first time in 3 years I can say that.
Thanks to Simon as always for a great video!
I think yours is a less tricky break in. I had to watch the video to get that far but once he missed the 9 in r5, I broke off & finished because I actually did rely on sudoku.
Finding a "cleaner" way to break in than Simon once in a blue moon is indeed very surprising and satisfyin. I was very happy to find i could start with the crucial two circles and narrow them down to a 78 pair without set arithmetic or chasing much else around the grid: these digits need to go on an arrow in box 8 (can't be 9), need to have at least 3 different ways of being a sum of two digits (6 or higher), and we can't use the arrows sneaking into box 5 to double-up on a digit (4+4=8 because the 4s would look onto the arrows from the other circle eliminating one of the three ways of adding up to 6 or 7, and in the case of 3+3 because one of the arrows on the other side would need to be 4+4=8 ruining a necessary 2+4=6 arrow) - neither can be 6. It's essentially the same as you've pointed out, just feels like a more useful trick because it's more global not relying on getting a digit from other clues first - and that comes back to how Simon can blank on a deduction when focusing on something specific, not knowing difficulty (or knowing its easy but looking for most interesting logic) and intuiting there's something to be extracted from a certain combination of clues - it's just amazing how often he's finding the best way to approach it straight away and funny how much we're surprised when he goes about the long way!
28:59 for me.This was pretty fun. I got the initial break in logic very fast. I'm a bit proud of that. I've been trying to be more optimal about which things I check first and it felt like it paid off here.
Amazing solve Simon! I got the breakthrough with different logic seeing that 9 in r6b5 forces a 9 in r5c3.
A smooth 19:41 for this one. James Sinclair is one of my favorite setters, and I highly recommend subscribing to his weekly newsletter. It usually includes two very approachable puzzles and a third one that's a lot more tough. (I'm not a paid subscriber so I only get the first three puzzles).
His puzzles are this wonderful blend of sudoku logic with variant setting, and there's generally a clear and pleasing solve path to them. And not too tough, either!
The lengths Simon goes to NOT do any Sudoku nearly makes me angry. I almost want to teach him how to Sudoku. But then I remember that he just doesn't do Sudoku because he has so many more ways to find a logical path through the puzzle and I only find the one. And then I get angry again. This time at myself. It is a vicious cycle.
I mean, you can't expect Simon to do Sudoku in a Sudoku puzzle, can you? That would just be plain unreasonable!
I love how Simon's brain works... at 34:00 I got to the same conclusion a different way. in column 8, r2,3 and 4 were three digits from 2359, so the 7 arrow in that column couldn't be a 25 since we'd need 4 digits to go into 5 cells. The resulting 16 pair put the 2 in R9c8.
I love the deep dive into sets at the beginning while ignoring the almost given digits in box 4.
lol....and again later in box 1. Place the 1 already!
A true masterclass in Simon finding the most complicated way of doing everything
Simon if you read this go back and look at 3 in box 4 after you put the 3 in box 5 (and 3 in row 4 box 6). The logic of how the arrows work is beautiful
I solved this without using the maths, you can prove it's a 7-8 pair in the circles in r7c2 and r7c8 because you can't repeat the digits on any of the 2 cell arrows without breaking the one of the sum totals (6-7 doesn't work as the double 3 prevents 3+4 from appearing on the 7, 6-8 doesn't work because you can't do 3+5 and must use 4+4 which breaks the 2+4 for the 6)
Cool to see different ways of breaking into the same puzzle, great solve, Simon!
27.55 for me, I loved the box 8 logic and the virtual 126 triple. I'm glad I attempted it even though I tend to avoid 'math-y' ones. I feel like Simon took the long way around for the break-in. I just asked, which digits have 3 ways of summing with 2 digits, which limited it to 789, then the 9 in box 8 made the pair. Simon just wanted to show off his math skills.
36:23 for me. This is the first puzzle I attempted “before” Simon, and I’m glad I did. In reality, I was just a little frustrated that I was seeing the 8 and 9 in box 4, and their implications in box 7 before he did. 😅 To be fair, I stole some of his logic in the beginning, but the path I took after was different from Simon’s.
I’m particularly proud of how I aligned a 1/2 pencil mark in r9c1 with r9c8c9 and the 1/2 pair in box 6, noting that it’s position (with the digits I already found) squeezed a 1/2 into r3c7. It had to be a 2, and the bottom left corner had to be a 1 to align the 2’s in c8c9, and the rest fell apart easily. Nothing groundbreaking, but it’s probably the biggest “eureka!” moment I’ve had in sudoku.
EDIT: After reviewing my solve, I realized my unique path came from the opposite of Simon’s issue: too much sudoku. I forgot to use the arrow sums in the middle of the grid halfway through, and brute forced the puzzle instead. Whoops
Super fun! 17:22 It took a few minutes of me staring helplessly before it finally clicked and I hit a nice stride. Thanks as always!
33:44 "One of these
Is a 1-6 pair
And I don't know which one
But I don't really care"
Beautiful 👏👏
I didn't find this one so easy, but the logic was even more marvelous than advertised.
Certain ones just click in my brain like humming a tune…and this was one of them! Thanks guys!
You need to scan more often after putting in numbers to knock out pencil marks faster.
My logic for the circles in r7c2 and r7c8 are that neither can be nine, if one of them is six, the only way to make 6 three different ways is with two threes and you cannot complete the other box because there's nowhere to put 3,4 or 3,5. on the other side. Therefore the two circles contain seven and eight.
I considered that it could be a 6,8 combo, and then the arrows that point into box 5 could be 3,3 and 4,4. In the end that didn't work, but I did see a way to use the double 3 without breaking the other set of arrows.
I had an intermediate version: if the cells on the arrows in row 6 are 1-6, then the other cells are 789, but then if the cells on the arrows in row 5 are also 1-6, r5c5 sees every digit, 1-6 in the row and 789 in the box. So the arrows must add up to more than 42 and the circles must add up to more than 14.
There's no intrinsic reason that either of the arrows that points into box 5 can't be 3-3, which would allow the circle to be 6.
@@stevieinselby at first look this is plausible but try it and you'll have nowhere to place the 3,4 or 3,5 pair on the other side because 3,3 in either arrow split across boxes forces a 3 into row 4 in box 4 or 6.
@@andyhoudini Oh sure, you can work through and find that it's impossible to make either of those arrows 3+3=6, but the way you phrased it made it sounds as though you had ruled it out _on the principle that you can't have 3+3=6 on an arrow_ rather than because you had followed it through and proved that in this particular instance it doesn't work.
I'm amazed at how differently I solved this one compared to Simon. I eliminated 6 from the circles by realizing that it needed a double 3 on one of the diagonal arrows, which ruled out all but one possibility on 7 or 8, which forced an 8 and for that 8 to have a double 4 on its diagonal arrow, which in turn bounced back and made 6 impossible.
And then, with my 7/8 pair in place, the puzzle basically just unfolded one cell after another. I used the fact that the 7 and 8 arrows shared so many digits to entirely populate the middle box and all of the middle row arrows before even looking anywhere else.
It was a very fun puzzle.
This was difficult, but I'm so proud of my 36:44 time! Watching the channel and incorporating techniques and insights really expanded my view of the game, and I'm so happy that it paid off doing this on my own before watching the video. Thanks Mark and Simon!
Simon definitely should learn from Mark how to make sure the clock works. And it has to be a thorough 4 to 5 hour long session with plenty of examples. It cannot be "just press the restart button, man!" kind of thing 'cause it won't work - after all, we're talking about Simon and his weird brain.
7:18 for me, a beautiful, buttery smooth flow from start to finish. It virtually solved itself.
This was like watching someone stroking a cat the wrong way. It was a beautifully constructed puzzle, with a really nice flow of easy logic, almost all of which went whooshing by you. You continually to tried to force this puzzle, when all you had to do was use the information at hand.
9 in box 8 is in R7, in R4 in box 6, and so R5C3 with 8 above it, and R6 in box 5. The arrows in R7 cannot be greater than 8, so 8 in box 6 is in R5C7 with 4 below. They cannot be lower than 7, because each needs to have three ways to make up the number in two digits. 6 can be eliminated, because you'd need double 3, which would prevent the other arrows working.
The 78 pair pushes 7 and 8 onto the arrows in box 8, and must be joined by 1 & 2. The 89 in C4 means the arrow in R1C3 must be 7 made up of 34, this makes the 7 in box 8 go in R8C4, next to 2, 1, then 8. It also resolves which of the 78 arrows is which.
The 4 in R6 must have 3 on the tip. This means the 3 on the 8 arrows is in R6, with 5 in R5. So 5 on the 7 arrow is in R6 with 2 in R5, which means 2 on the 8 is in R6, with 6 in R5. Keep going in this fashion until all the arrows are populated. After this, you're left with 567 in R5C1/2/4, 4 in R5C5 with 5 above it, 12 in R5C8/9, 123 in R6C1/2/3, 8 in R6C4, 79 in R6C5/6, and 456 in R6C7/8/9. We can fix R5C4=6 and R6C3=2. In C4, we have 523 to place in box 2, the 5 must go in the circle, with 2 on the arrow, leaving 1 and 2 on the arrow in box 1, with 3 below the 2. This resolves the 17/35 arrows below. R2C6 can only be 4, with 14 on the arrow in box 3, making it a 9 arrow, resolving the 79 in box 5. The 14 on the arrow in box 3 must have the 4 on the dot with an 8 in the corner. The rest is just simple sudoku, other than the logic you did spot which placed the 2 in R9 under the 16 arrow.
@ 33:03 "now, I've missed some sudoku" - understatement of the year. I know that this was a live solve, and we can't expect a perfect solve every time, but for someone with your experience to miss so much easy logic takes real determination.
11:20 I'm a bit stuck now. Thanks for the math. Here's are two questions: where must 9 go in row 4? Then where must 9 go in row 5?
13:20 It's a lot later now, and I've finished the puzzle. Thanks for the 72 heads-up in block 8. I already had 81, and I'd also removed 9 as possible in one of the circles, so the other two had to both be 9. I used the 45 math -- I'd ruled out 6 in a different way from row 7's circles.
22:50 I used brute force on the arrows leading to the 8 -- similar to Simon's arrows leading to 7 -- something Mark would appreciate. I could whittle down the occupants of the cells.
33:00 "Where are you, Sudoku nonsense?" You can unravel a chunk of green.
Simon and Mark, Thank you both for a great channel. I started watching a while back and was pleased when I completed a puzzle in less than twice your time. Today was a red letter day; I beat your time!!!!. (until you noticed your time was in fact better than clocked) Thanks again for introducing me to these puzzle.
You gotta give it to Simon that when he flexes, he does it in a very humble, gentleman-like way! It's admirable. ☺
Fantastic finish, but sudoku would have given a less pretty one with the 3&7 in the middle box looking at box 4
I so much enjoy Simon’s logic, which has improved my own solving in so many ways! However, sometines the logic becomes too complex and the ” actual sodoku” gets lost in the process! (Yes, I am aware that Simons mentions this quite frequently but still 😀)
18:39 for me. I love puzzles like this where sudoku skills balance out the bigger logical leaps required. Once I get over the hurdle of where to start then being quick at sudoku speeds up my time immensely
10 minutes in and I'm wondering when Simon is going to take the obvious first step of asking where 9 and 8 go in boxes 6 and 4...
This one was truly awesome. I still can't quite do them without .. "guidance" from Simon, but often I am able to see what he talking about before he says it. Maybe I'm just not being patient with myself enough. Either way, I enjoy watching and playing along!
How long can Simon not do sudoku in rows 5 and 6?
It must have been the blue/green colouring. Seemed to completely obliterate his ability to scan across those two rows.
That was painful to see lol
Took me over an hour, but I'm happy to have solved it. Very nice puzzle! Thank you!
25:26 For me, this puzzle looked quite intimidating initially, however changing my approach and homing on certain digits seemed to have cracked that nut open, but not without showing off some wonderful logic around the middle box
Just beautiful!! Another unbelievably enjoyable puzzle, thank you so much for sharing this
32:02 for me
As the author says, it is fairly approachable.
It is delightful to solve it.
Thanks for the puzzle and solving.
Wow. 34:08 for me, and that is a surprise. I usually need 2-3 times the video length, if I can make it at all. I never thought of the secret, but I had the most wonderful ping-pong interactions between the left and right set of arrows, which made me smile quite a bit (and then worry that I must have made a mistake as everything went too smooth)
Great puzzle, lots of fun 38:32. With 9 limited to row 4 in box 6 due to arrows and kropkis, the 9 in r5c3 jumped off the page and was my first digit. The 9 in r7 box 8 limited the circles in r7 to 7/8, although I see I took some false liberties in not including a 6 as a possibly.
i also imediately saw it through that
I had to keep stopping throughout my solve to say how beautiful a piece of logic was.
8:48 for me. Great puzzle!!
Absolutely LOVED that extra bit of logic needed right at the end. I was so ready for the rest to be very straightforward, but it was such a clever finish, really made me smile when I found it!
31:18 That was some interesting and unexpected logic. Took me a while to disambiguate all the pairs I had found. That was a super interesting arrow sudoku, definitely worthy of its fanfare!
This puzzle is such a delight. It (and the whole video, really) reminds me of the type of puzzles we saw on the channel a few years ago before setters went mad with power. You could sell me a whole book of puzzles just like this.
I thought it looked much harder than it was. Great puzzle! Thanks to the setter!
Simon finishes with the three that has been available for more than 6 minutes..... "I love that finish! " :-)
I just love how Simon does all this complex stuff and then keeps overlooking 3 in row 5 for over 10 minutes 😂
I have to admit, I was stuck for a while at that last part, not seeing that an arrow was ready to shoot itself from the sky if it was filled in incorrectly. Done in 25:54 and really pleased with that spot that stumped me. I solved it by producing two 9s in c8.
Under 30 min tonight, very nice and much needed break from getting stuck on even simpler things because my brain is mush lately.
The simpler way of seeing the start is that there are only two ways of making 6 but there are 3 arrow in the box.
23:17
Started with circles within the centre
Got that they are 789, cause it’s at least 123456 in the middle box rows for circles
Than 9s were in the top row of box 8, so those circles were 78
8/9 are i the bottom row of box 5
So 8/9 are in the only 2 places in boxes 4 and 6, which determined placement of 8 on a dot
4 is on the arrow, so the other digit on that arrow is only 3, because otherwise there will not be the 3rd arrow for 7 in box 4 (it needs 4/3 as 3rd option)
Basically the whole breakthrough
After that i got a few doubles and tripples while placing digits
7, 8, 9s are restricted for box 8
So it came down to the fact it’s 9 in the circle in box 8 and in the circle of box 9 at the bottom row
12:42! For whatever reason, almost all of James Sinclair’s puzzles have been a breeze for me. I’ll be honest though, I do have the pencil mark conflict checker on, since it turns on by default and, though I sometimes turn it off, I’m sure that does help speed up the time
26:09 for me. As always a great puzzle. The / ending was great 🎉
my solve went quite a bit differently than simons, basically no math on rows 5 and 6, and pretty much filled boxes 4-6 without looking at other boxes except box 8 slightly. first thing i noted is that the circles in r7c28 have to be at least 7. this is because they need 3 distinct pairs, otherwise you'd need to repeat a digit in the box above. like simon, you can say they aren't 9s or they would put a 9 on a 2 cell arrow in box 8, so they're a 78 pair. like simon (at 14:27), i concluded 8 and 9 have to be off the arrows in boxes 4 and 6, so r5c37 are an 89 pair, but 9 can't go on the black dot. this gives us an 98 on the white dot and an 84 on the black dot, giving us a 3 or 4 in r5c6. Like we mentioned before, the arrows need 3 distinct pairs to fill them, in particular, the 7 needs a 34 pair somewhere, but if the 8 has a double 4 arrow, we'd block any chance for 7 to get a 4, so 8 has a these pairs on the arrows: 17,26,35. with that, we know the composition of all 6 arrows, and can fill the blue with a 4789 quad making the center square a 4 by sudoku. the 3 in row 5 tells us the 8 gets it's 3 from the bottom row, and so it's 5 from the top, which bounces to the 7 sorting out the 52 pair, which bounces back to the 8 sorting the 26 pair, then back to the 7 for the 16 pair and back to the 8 for the 17 pair. so in total, we have 567 in row 5 for the 8 arrows, and 123 in row 6 for the 8, a 12 in row 5 and 56 in row 6 for the 7. with a bit of sudoku, you can then limit all squares in boxes 4-6 to 1-3 options. without really ever looking elsewhere. the rest of the solve is similar but slightly aided by less options.
I did find it funny that the last thing simon did was sort out the central boxes, while it's what i started with.
I love that last logic move that forces a 2 in the bottom row of box 9!
I really enjoyed this puzzle. Particular a dawning moment as regards where 4 went in box 5 that got the logic flowing for me. ETA: Of course, you found a much nicer way to do it that ignored that entirely, as almost expected. I enjoyed that moment anyway(!)
"You can see how It's incredibly tight, isn't the Logic". Nope, I can see someone trying not to do Sudoku in a Sudoku puzzle, and incredibly failing at seeing it when he does try.😆
It was a bit frustrating watching, was expecting for a chain of sweet steps and praise for how things nicely bonce back and forth. Though screaming >no don't stop, go that damn step further damn you
16:32 Simon proves that if the blue digits in box 5 contain a four then it must go in r5c5.
20:08 Simon proves that the blue digits in box 5 contain a four.
23:59 Simon finally places the four in r5c5.
It’s honestly so charming to see your brain zooming ahead twenty steps and forgetting to do the basic sudoku in your sudoku puzzles.
Exactly 42:00 minutes 🎉🎉 - that in it self is a win 🥳
That was a great puzzle. I think Simon should be made to do all the puzzles that rely mainly on sudoku to really get going. He's so funny "out of nowhere...." Even i spotted the 9 in box 4 on the white dot from the off. And that 4 in box 5. Loved it!
"Where does 9 go in row 5" was where I started the breakin. This was a really fun one.
Excellent puzzle. -- After a couple of false early developments, I found that I had to be rigorously logical to find the correct solve. -- This would be a good choice for book 3 ;-) Well done to all involved.
Simon never changes, steadfastly missing sudoko to make the puzzle easier to solve. There were at least three times he missed blocks of easy sudoko and found a more obscure and difficult way to logically find a way forward. Especially at the end when he found the 2-6 pair in r9c8 and r9c9
Thanks for this puzzle! I almost solved it in an hour but the last few cells took me an eternity (you made it look so easy).
18:29 for me. Break in flowed really nicely.
Just seen this... James, you are a master at working new and unexpected wonders with classic and familiar constraints. Great puzzle
What do you have against row 6?
First ignores the 4, then the 7 in the 79 pair, and then the 2!
What impresses the most is how Simon dodge easy mistakes. I started the puzzle on my own, then watched the video. At first it felt like Simon was slow, then I realized a couple mistakes of mine.
I had the right conclusions but in a flawed way. For example, I quickly pencil marked the 78 pair in row 7, but using the fact you can't get to 6 in 3 different ways with the sum of two cells, unless you repeat a 3. But that was allowed on the middleish arrows. If you do, it still doesn't work obviously (you starve the other arrow), but I didn't go this far. I did see one digit was outside the box, but thought I was still good since the other half of that pair saw all the other digits.
i subscribed. i like . i comment. and i have many days where i still have to use search to get to my cracking the cryptic
Very elegant puzzle - had a great flow to it. Classic case of Simon doing too much maths and not enough Sudoku. Getting 9 in R5C3 should have taken 20 seconds at most. Whenever a row/column or especialy a box is full of arrow cells, the immediate questions are e.g. where does 9 go. I'm sure also Simon misses "Sudoku nonsense" because he still has box 4-5-6 coloured (remove this!) and the dark green obscures the 35 pencil mark in R5C1 which was resolved several minutes before.
I got stuck in box 8 and had to sleep on it for a while. I basically pulled a Simon: I was just missing basic sudoku that created a 78 pair in the box. This was a really fun puzzle though, I enjoyed discovering all the interactions between the arrows in box 4 and 6.
In box 5,the 9 is in row 6. So out of the three purple spots in row 5, one is in the same box (can't be) one is on a black dot (also can't be) and the only possible is in box 4. Could be seen much earlier, but you cycled back to it.
Lovely puzzle, some really elegant paths. Approachable but really clever and fun to solve. Thanks for sharing it.
24:22 is my time, including a few minutes of brainfreeze
I love watching Simon get lost in beautiful logic and missing the most basic pencil marks. We need to get him a timer that goes off once every 3 minutes just labeled "do Sudoku".
First time I have beaten Simon's time. Amazing what you can do by just using sudoku!! The 9 in R5C3 was a write in from the start.
Great puzzle! It was neat that I was ahead for a bit but messed up and needed to see where it happened.
I was so pleased with myself to (almost instantly) get the 9 in box 4 because of the black dot and the arrow secret of not having a 9 on the arrow.
Almost got this one by myself, I did not see the 126 triple with the arrow and the 2 cells on the bottom of box 9. but as soon as I saw that, I was off to the races. Finished with a time of 53:00 exactly, and I'm pretty happy with that.
Wow! That was fun! And pleasantly challenging.
At the 10 minute mark, simple question is where does 9 go on row 5? It must go on the white dot in box 3. Which give you 8 and 7 in column 3.
My ideal day in England. 8:00pm David Gilmour concert with Mark and Simon. That's all I need.
Oh, btw, the 9s are in row4 of box6 , which throws the "9" on the other side of the wht dot in box4 (which places the 8 in there).
EDIT: even before @6:30
This puzzle fell into place rather nicely.
The 9 in box 4 was classic simon... the long way round
Simon - this was the first time you got me talking at the screen regarding the 4 in box 6 and it's influence on box 5 😂
Nice and easy! I got done in 32 minutes. Then I watched Simon's video... and realized I'd forgotten to consider the possibility that one of the green arrows slicing into the center box could have been 8=4+4. Oh well, it wasn't and I got lucky. :}
My reasoning was that it couldn't be a 4+4 because the 7 circle needs a 3+4.
@@chrisaubuchon315 Oh yeah, that makes sense.
30:58 for me, but I am ashamed to say that I made a logical error in my solve, forgetting about the possibility of repeats on the diagonal arrows in the tridents. As a result, I didn't rule out 6+8 as rigorously as Simon did. I also really enjoyed the logic at the end with the 1256 forcing a 2 in box 9 row 9 though!
Great solve Simon. I'm getting better. I got to the end but couldn't figure out the last trigger though it was staring me in the face.
46:51 for me, happy I was able to actually solve an arrow sudoku, i find them kinda tricky.