Wow, that was a really impressive solve! Feel like you properly tapped into our brains by spotting literally everything we wanted people to spot. At some points in the mid-solve there are a few different ways to progress using different methods, but you always found our favourite :) Making this with Dorlir was an absolute pleasure, he is always very fun to work with. Even though he's like a genius maths professor and I'm just an animator who likes puzzles, we seem to have similar ways of thinking about setting, and usually seem to be on the same page, making our collaborations run very smoothly for the most part! We both love zippers, and snake puzzles, so this seemed like a natural combo for us. The initial idea was Dorlir's, and the deduction which sold it to me was the black dot being opposite the X that he suggested. This was one of the very first deductions we had, before anything else, and Simon is right, with that sort of thing you KNOW that whatever else happens in the setting process, that is staying in there. The checkerboard deduction was also always going to be the break-in - I knew Simon would get that straight away. In our initial chat about it we thought of some other good pairings of clues that would either be very useful together (like the black dot and X), or which couldn't work together, which we thought could somehow be good in forcing the direction of the snake. Other things we listed were 'lets have a white dot opposite a parity diamond' and 'lets sneakily overlap an X and a V." It was then a case of, would we be able to fit in all these things we'd thought of. It was quite unusual to have so many deductions already crystallised in our minds before even opening up SudokuMaker, but we knew if we could pull it off it could be something very cool. Dorlir was very nice and handed me the reins to have a play around with placing some clues to force the snake path. I was really happy with the opening moves for box 9, but then it proved to be verrry difficult to find a valid filled grid with a working zippersnake that included all the things we wanted. This is usually the case with a very restricted ruleset like this, and it took several days until I found a good solution. One thing I'd also thought of which didn't make the final version was to have two inequality signs potentially opposite eachother, but pointing the wrong way relative to eachother, meaning they couldn't go opposite eachother on the snake, which would force the snake's direction elsewhere. In the end though this wasn't too different from some of the logic we had in there, so was happy to scrap that in favour of the ruleset not becoming too long. At first though, we had thought the rule might be that all clues must be on the snake (but that turned out to be too restrictive as it didn't allow for us to have the impossible combos that meant the snake could not go to certain clues) OR not have any special rule about that, meaning the snake would have been free to take just one half of a clue domino (but this turned out to be not restrictive enough; it was too hard to force where the snake would go without adding an obscene number of clues.) So I think my favourite contribution to this was to make the rule about every clue domino must be entirely on or entirely off the snake, as that struck the perfect balance, and the whole setting process just flowed so well after that. Dorlir loved the opening section, and then we worked together to find the perfect positions for the rest of the clues for the 2nd half. This was very fun too - we enjoyed trying to use the same types of clues in different ways to bring about different kinds of logic. We made several rounds of tweaks at the end. One thing we were annoyed about was that we only had one red diamond, and it seems like a bit of a random and shoehorned rule unless you have at least two of something. But at the same time we obviously wanted every clue to serve a purpose and not just be placed in for the sake of it. However with some tinkering, Dorlir eventually found a clever way to ease the most difficult (bordering on tedious) part of the solve with a nicely placed 2nd red diamond on the left hand side, solving both problems at once. Thanks so much CTC for the feature, really happy you enjoyed it!
I enjoyed solving this very much, thanks to both setters! It took me an hour, which seems like the perfect amount of time to enjoy a puzzle - tricky, but in an overly technical way.
I loved this, and the fact that I, as a solver, can place a few walls from the start rewards me for thinking about the constraints before starting to move the snake.
Not only are Simon and Mark pleasing people with their solves but you guys and all of the other creators (shout out to Sandra) are pleasing us too. Thank you for your efforts - and it's nice to read how much pleasure you get when setting the puzzles as we do when attempting to solve them, or if I am honest, just watching them them being solved by someone with far more skills than I !
Oh Simon. The fact that you solved yesterday's puzzle as easily as you did despite the big miss just shows how truly brilliant you are. The imperfections in your solves are a huge part of your charm! Thank you for being just the way you are!
As my own small contribution to the poetry surrounding today's video, I've attempted to make the rules of this puzzle into something resembling a rhyme... Cell to cell, the Zippersnake orthogonal, a path must take with purple at its heart and tips and equal pair sums on its zips. No touching on this snake must be (not even diagonally). To solve this puzzle, you may use the dominoes containing clues. In each and every clue-bound pair the snake is either wholly there or wholly absent; and what's more, each clue denotes a different law. White dots prescribe consecutives, while black a double ratio gives. Green pairs, at least, are five betwixt and diamond parities are fixed. A V-pair sums to five, and then an X-pair sums to total ten. With just these clues, now draw the line and add the digits one to nine once in each column, box and row (the standard rules we all should know). How long, I wonder, will you take to catch the hissing Zippersnake?
That was epic!! You clearly have a calling - please immortalize other Sudoku games in verse. And maybe Mark & Simon will include those poems in their next sudoku collection. Well done!
@@jimi02468 idk that would mean he would have to attempt the absolutely torturous pronunciation of 'diagonally' I've used to give the line the right number of syllables... 😅
Very happy you did another puzzle of mine with marty, I really enjoyed all the video and logic you used very nice solve, thank you again and take care!
"It's a... song by Foreigner, check it and see: In the corner we do not have a three! Come on, Simon! Yeah it's eight more than that- It's an... ELEVEN, ELEVEN!"
Haven't watched the rest of the video yet, but around 54 minutes, a nice deduction that's available is that the remainder of the snake on the left is confined to the first two columns which already have their 5's in them, so the corresponding snake in box 2 can't have a 3 on it, so the 3 in box 2 is on the V.
Eeeeee! 😆 Ok I squealed, I never expected the full reading AHHH its beautiful, and I need to collect myself from this puddle of giddy goo I am now, and go actually watch the puzzle too 😆 This made my year, thank you so much, you're a treasure!! 🥰🥰🥰 And thank you for noting you sent a message, I didn't catch it this morning so am heading there next 😁🙏🙏
@@longwaytotipperary Thanks so much!! There are 100,000s of newer subscribers who prob didn't get to experience the first reading yrs ago, so it's a treat for many! :D Every time a quote pops up in a video, it's a delight. ☺
36:58 I did have to watch the tip at the beginning - that we can figure out which circle is the center by drawing a checkerboard pattern - to get started though. Once the start and end were clear it flowed really nicely. Looking ahead and seeing which clues do not work together was beautiful.
35:59 for me. Fantastic puzzle, with lots of fresh logic throughout. I love it! A couple of things that could have made Simon's solve path easier (around the 53:00 mark): Even before there was a 1-7 pair in row 8, there were 127 pencil marks on the green dot - which means the 7 in the row must be on the dot. That prevents r8c9 from being 7 - which prevents r9c8 from being 1 by snake logic. That means the 1 in column 8 must be in box 1, which means that r1c7 can't be 1. So now r1c7 is only 2 or 7, which will need a 1 or a 6 after the 5 on the snake in box 4. We know that the 6 in row 4 is in box 6. Also, because the green dot in row 8 must have a 7, it must have a 1 counterpart in row 5. So from the 5 in r5c2, the snake either goes to a 1 (which can only be in r4c2) or a 6 (which can only be in r5c1). But a 6 in r5c1 would require another even digit on the red dot (in r4c1). 2 and 6 are in the box and 8 can't go on the snake, so the only available candidate is 4, which would require a 4 as a counterpart in r1c6... which is ruled out by sudoku, as there's already a 4 in the column. So the left side of the snake can only extend with a 1 in r4c2. It's a lot of steps, but they're all fairly straightforward, and it bypasses the only "very complicated" part of Simon's solve (around 56:00).
Yes, often when Simon claims some very difficult piece of (usually very impressive) logic, especially after much of the puzzle has been broken, it’s because he’s been careless or lazy with sudoku or pencil marks. The second half of that video was an endurance test lol. The 7 on the green dot in row 8 particularly irked me!
I finished in 61:40 minutes. This puzzle agreed with me so well. I was so happy to spot the parity trick very early and from there, it was like butter. There were so many cool tricks involving bouncing from one end of the line to the other to see if it breaks. That is such a cool idea. I was a little surprised to get an 8 for the zipper as I was expecting a 9. I think my favorite part was spotting the lines that could potentially go into the parity clue on the right side being broken by the consecutive clue. That kickstarted the whole idea towards finishing the puzzle. I very much enjoyed this one. It has to be one of my favorites. As always, it feels good to beat Simon's time. Great Puzzle!
Late at the party, only saw this one today. Wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it might be because of the video length, took me 38 minutes including verifying multiple times that I had identified the middle digit correctly. Listened to Simon afterwards, explaining the bishop theory which sounded hopelessly complex. For me the key was that the path between the two upmost purples was an even number of digits but to get from either one to the bottom purple the path was an odd number of digits and any deviation from the path is also always an even number of digits, i.e. if you take one step to the side you must take one step back to return to the path. Loved how the restrictions on both sides of the zipper line interacted to create a well defined path. Hats off to Marty and Dorlir for creating this.
Simon, Simon, Simon. A wonderfully interesting puzzle, with a fantastically interesting solve, tickled my brain - and then that wonderful recital of The Raven. You clearly love that poem and you declaim it with such a perfect affect. Thank you!
2:17:59 - What a fabulous puzzle - I loved working out which one was the middle dot and the gorgeous placing of the various domino links directing the route of the snake. I know it took me over 2 hours but I loved every minute of it! Thanks @martysears & @dorlir
That was a smashing puzzle. Such a simple yet effective break-in and then almost amusing the way each piece of logic dawned on you as you went along. There was a slightly trickier step in the middle perhaps but even that was well signalled. Great stuff, thanks Marty and Dorlir. 🙂
I was fortunate to _not_ notice the restricted 6 in box 6 until pretty late. It eliminated a bunch of 6s in other cells, giving me 17-pairs and leading me directly to the end of the puzzle. Because Simon found it _much_ earlier than I, he then didn't notice it when marking up cells like R4C2 and R4C6, and it slowed his solution.
Happy combination of rules, thanks, with some elegant deductions to be made. Once you get that initial deduction about the snake, much of it falls into place.
A really lovely puzzle - never a dull moment, you have to continue developing little clues. In the question whether or not to circumnavigate in box 7, I simply counted the number of steps towards the end zone - at that point the upper right snake hal was already limited
At around 45:00, there must be a 4 in r9c123, by sudoku. That means the snake could never circumnavigate box 7. I think this is easier to see than counting the potential size of the right hand size of the snake.
01:28:12 for me. What an incredible puzzle, the way the middle of the zipper line must be at box 9 and the way "x" clue and the black dot determines the total is marvelous.
Well, it was fun building a snake, But now I'll think I'll take a break, With the puzzle I'm smitten, But by the snake bitten, And now I cannot stay awake.
I got my snake caught in a zipper in little under half an hour (29:48). This solve was way more pleasurable than my previous line suggests, so much fun logic around every corner.
Nice solve! You missed an early trick that would have saved you a lot of time at the end. R8C3 and R8C4 have a german whisper dot and must have a high number, so they must have a 7. It would fix your 17 pairs.
Anyone else notice that D4 stories are never concluded? I have such blue ears from never getting to hear the full story. Still…vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv, love this guy’s performances.
I lost like 3 hours on this puzzle because i was on dark mode, which flipped the black and white Kropki dots. And up to the point I reached, the snake path looks COMPLETELY different from what Simon had. I had to go back here to be sure I was not missing something when I reached a complete halt.
But this corner goes to eleven! Must be possible :-) And don't apologise for Yesterday. It's nice to see that you are a little bit mortal sometimes. Today you spotted the bishops-trick instantly.
At 26:33 I did the deduction a slightly different way: And 8 would have to be opposite a 1 to make the sum 9, but then the 4 would be opposite 5 placing a 5 on the X. Which rules out 9 as a sum, and 8 from the snake.
I also used the pen tool for the snake, so I coloured the digit pairs from the start and that did give me a few useful deductions early on that made the end game easier.
30:30 Another way to go here - since r9c6 is the zipper partner of r7c8, and everything else on the zipper in box 9 has its partner in that box, whatever is in r9c6 must be on the green dot in box 9. The only thing that can be in a green dot relationship with a 9 and a white dot relationship with a 4 or a 6 is a 3.
You could have made better earlier progress on 1s and 7s had you remembered your blue line on the German dot needed a high digit 7. Eliminating a 7 pencil mark in box 9. And also forcing a 1 on the pairing blue line mark.
I liked that puzzle a lot, in contrast to the one from yesterday, because although it was "hard", it was fairly clear what to do next at each point. 35:32 for me.
i got the shape of the snake from counting the squares and how it fits the clues, but then i got stuck trying to actually fill it in. i got the initial numbers with the x and black dot, but made a mistake at some point and i couldnt work out where lol and there were too many numbers balanced on the mistake to unravel again
I think they probably have haha. But I can promise you I never intentionally put them in my puzzles, but if one happens to sneak in there and we get to see Simon be happy for a moment, then it’s all good 😊
Absolutely! It's just a feeling - would be nice to have statistics - that about half of the puzzles have 3 in the corner. I should calculate the probability on a normal distribution of digits. 🤔
The line DLC for the CTC app has an issue with puzzle 54. Neither the rules nor the icons at the top mention the king's constraint. I couldn't solve the puzzle until I looked at the hint number one which mentioned the king's constraint. After that, that piece of information alone allowed me to solve the puzzle. You should update the rules. Normally kings move puzzles highlight king's moves, but this didn't. So it's definitely not specified anywhere except the hints.
I have a question: if the purple Shake c‘ant touch itself diagonally then why is it possible to make a left turn and then directly after, a right turn. Is the snake not touching itself diagonally?
No. The inside corner is a single point on the snake's surface, similar to the single point on the surface where two adjacent cells touch along a straight section. Edit: Or, for that matter, any other point on the snake's boundary.
what Rich Smith said is correct. This rule is talking about two separate sections of the snake coming together and meeting at the same point, rather than what happens at the inside corner of a right angle turn
Of all the tools they guide u to use...checkerboardkng is my fav now. Tho i do use PF-ring alot ...dont really like too and dont think i like set repl. Tho the set+45|90 is a nifty one.
why do you not have the app turn impossible pencil marks red? this would not effect the logic. it would just help with the scanning to find pencil marks you should remove. I.E. at 59:49 "i just noticed that can not be a two". that was after looking at the grid for 20sec. and the last thing you did was remove a 5 that was just scanning. for a known digit. personally i think the app should fill in true "naked signals". cells that have 8 known digits looking at them, not 6 and a pair or the like as you do not know the order of the par yet. i do sudoku for the logic puzzle an exercise in scanning.
Here I go again, yelling at simon! But this time... he heard me?! ...I'm impressed and a little worried. XD I loved this puzzle. Hard enough to make me think, but has an approachable solve. Sometimes when I get stuck, I watch the videos and realize there was no way my brain would have ever reached that conclusion on its own. Not with this one! I figured it out on my own, even if it did take a few minutes for me to realize I could build the snake from the midpoint...🫠
Wow, that was a really impressive solve! Feel like you properly tapped into our brains by spotting literally everything we wanted people to spot. At some points in the mid-solve there are a few different ways to progress using different methods, but you always found our favourite :)
Making this with Dorlir was an absolute pleasure, he is always very fun to work with. Even though he's like a genius maths professor and I'm just an animator who likes puzzles, we seem to have similar ways of thinking about setting, and usually seem to be on the same page, making our collaborations run very smoothly for the most part!
We both love zippers, and snake puzzles, so this seemed like a natural combo for us. The initial idea was Dorlir's, and the deduction which sold it to me was the black dot being opposite the X that he suggested. This was one of the very first deductions we had, before anything else, and Simon is right, with that sort of thing you KNOW that whatever else happens in the setting process, that is staying in there. The checkerboard deduction was also always going to be the break-in - I knew Simon would get that straight away.
In our initial chat about it we thought of some other good pairings of clues that would either be very useful together (like the black dot and X), or which couldn't work together, which we thought could somehow be good in forcing the direction of the snake. Other things we listed were 'lets have a white dot opposite a parity diamond' and 'lets sneakily overlap an X and a V." It was then a case of, would we be able to fit in all these things we'd thought of. It was quite unusual to have so many deductions already crystallised in our minds before even opening up SudokuMaker, but we knew if we could pull it off it could be something very cool.
Dorlir was very nice and handed me the reins to have a play around with placing some clues to force the snake path. I was really happy with the opening moves for box 9, but then it proved to be verrry difficult to find a valid filled grid with a working zippersnake that included all the things we wanted. This is usually the case with a very restricted ruleset like this, and it took several days until I found a good solution. One thing I'd also thought of which didn't make the final version was to have two inequality signs potentially opposite eachother, but pointing the wrong way relative to eachother, meaning they couldn't go opposite eachother on the snake, which would force the snake's direction elsewhere. In the end though this wasn't too different from some of the logic we had in there, so was happy to scrap that in favour of the ruleset not becoming too long.
At first though, we had thought the rule might be that all clues must be on the snake (but that turned out to be too restrictive as it didn't allow for us to have the impossible combos that meant the snake could not go to certain clues) OR not have any special rule about that, meaning the snake would have been free to take just one half of a clue domino (but this turned out to be not restrictive enough; it was too hard to force where the snake would go without adding an obscene number of clues.)
So I think my favourite contribution to this was to make the rule about every clue domino must be entirely on or entirely off the snake, as that struck the perfect balance, and the whole setting process just flowed so well after that.
Dorlir loved the opening section, and then we worked together to find the perfect positions for the rest of the clues for the 2nd half. This was very fun too - we enjoyed trying to use the same types of clues in different ways to bring about different kinds of logic.
We made several rounds of tweaks at the end. One thing we were annoyed about was that we only had one red diamond, and it seems like a bit of a random and shoehorned rule unless you have at least two of something. But at the same time we obviously wanted every clue to serve a purpose and not just be placed in for the sake of it. However with some tinkering, Dorlir eventually found a clever way to ease the most difficult (bordering on tedious) part of the solve with a nicely placed 2nd red diamond on the left hand side, solving both problems at once.
Thanks so much CTC for the feature, really happy you enjoyed it!
Thank you both for a wonderful puzzle and for giving us insight into the creative process!!
Yes, thank you for the background info. Always interesting to find out how these sudoku collaborations work. 😉
I enjoyed solving this very much, thanks to both setters! It took me an hour, which seems like the perfect amount of time to enjoy a puzzle - tricky, but in an overly technical way.
I loved this, and the fact that I, as a solver, can place a few walls from the start rewards me for thinking about the constraints before starting to move the snake.
Not only are Simon and Mark pleasing people with their solves but you guys and all of the other creators (shout out to Sandra) are pleasing us too. Thank you for your efforts - and it's nice to read how much pleasure you get when setting the puzzles as we do when attempting to solve them, or if I am honest, just watching them them being solved by someone with far more skills than I !
Oh Simon. The fact that you solved yesterday's puzzle as easily as you did despite the big miss just shows how truly brilliant you are. The imperfections in your solves are a huge part of your charm! Thank you for being just the way you are!
As my own small contribution to the poetry surrounding today's video, I've attempted to make the rules of this puzzle into something resembling a rhyme...
Cell to cell, the Zippersnake
orthogonal, a path must take
with purple at its heart and tips
and equal pair sums on its zips.
No touching on this snake must be
(not even diagonally).
To solve this puzzle, you may use
the dominoes containing clues.
In each and every clue-bound pair
the snake is either wholly there
or wholly absent; and what's more,
each clue denotes a different law.
White dots prescribe consecutives,
while black a double ratio gives.
Green pairs, at least, are five betwixt
and diamond parities are fixed.
A V-pair sums to five, and then
an X-pair sums to total ten.
With just these clues, now draw the line
and add the digits one to nine
once in each column, box and row
(the standard rules we all should know).
How long, I wonder, will you take
to catch the hissing Zippersnake?
That was epic!! You clearly have a calling - please immortalize other Sudoku games in verse. And maybe Mark & Simon will include those poems in their next sudoku collection. Well done!
@@annek3296 Thank you 😊
Simon MUST read this in the next video.
woooow! that was amazing and lovely to read. You're very talented, and I'm flattered that you felt inspired to do that in the first place ♥
@@jimi02468 idk that would mean he would have to attempt the absolutely torturous pronunciation of 'diagonally' I've used to give the line the right number of syllables... 😅
Very happy you did another puzzle of mine with marty, I really enjoyed all the video and logic you used very nice solve, thank you again and take care!
That's 11 in the corner. That's 11 in the spotlight, breaking the sudoku!
"there is no song that you could write that would justify putting 11 in the corner" Challenge accepted!
Maybe a 38 Schrodinger's cell!
😄
I mean 11 in base 2 is a 3 in base 10… so…
"It's a... song by Foreigner, check it and see:
In the corner we do not have a three!
Come on, Simon! Yeah it's eight more than that-
It's an... ELEVEN, ELEVEN!"
Haven't watched the rest of the video yet, but around 54 minutes, a nice deduction that's available is that the remainder of the snake on the left is confined to the first two columns which already have their 5's in them, so the corresponding snake in box 2 can't have a 3 on it, so the 3 in box 2 is on the V.
Eeeeee! 😆 Ok I squealed, I never expected the full reading AHHH its beautiful, and I need to collect myself from this puddle of giddy goo I am now, and go actually watch the puzzle too 😆 This made my year, thank you so much, you're a treasure!! 🥰🥰🥰
And thank you for noting you sent a message, I didn't catch it this morning so am heading there next 😁🙏🙏
Hang on, it's meant to be your birthday - Thank you so so much!!!
Happy birthday Lori!!! 🎉🎉 And thank you for getting Simon to read us the Raven!!!
@@CrackingTheCryptic Yes, and I get to do what I want on my birthday!! 😈
@@longwaytotipperary Thanks so much!! There are 100,000s of newer subscribers who prob didn't get to experience the first reading yrs ago, so it's a treat for many! :D Every time a quote pops up in a video, it's a delight. ☺
@@LorisLaboratory whole heartedly agree!!
36:58
I did have to watch the tip at the beginning - that we can figure out which circle is the center by drawing a checkerboard pattern - to get started though. Once the start and end were clear it flowed really nicely. Looking ahead and seeing which clues do not work together was beautiful.
57:28 finish. This is my first time seeing a zippersnake in the wild, and I have to say it is quite a fascinating creature! An excellent puzzle, fun!
thanks for reciting The Raven. I can make a good case that The Raven is the best poem of all time, in any language.
35:59 for me. Fantastic puzzle, with lots of fresh logic throughout. I love it!
A couple of things that could have made Simon's solve path easier (around the 53:00 mark):
Even before there was a 1-7 pair in row 8, there were 127 pencil marks on the green dot - which means the 7 in the row must be on the dot. That prevents r8c9 from being 7 - which prevents r9c8 from being 1 by snake logic. That means the 1 in column 8 must be in box 1, which means that r1c7 can't be 1.
So now r1c7 is only 2 or 7, which will need a 1 or a 6 after the 5 on the snake in box 4. We know that the 6 in row 4 is in box 6. Also, because the green dot in row 8 must have a 7, it must have a 1 counterpart in row 5. So from the 5 in r5c2, the snake either goes to a 1 (which can only be in r4c2) or a 6 (which can only be in r5c1).
But a 6 in r5c1 would require another even digit on the red dot (in r4c1). 2 and 6 are in the box and 8 can't go on the snake, so the only available candidate is 4, which would require a 4 as a counterpart in r1c6... which is ruled out by sudoku, as there's already a 4 in the column. So the left side of the snake can only extend with a 1 in r4c2.
It's a lot of steps, but they're all fairly straightforward, and it bypasses the only "very complicated" part of Simon's solve (around 56:00).
Yes, often when Simon claims some very difficult piece of (usually very impressive) logic, especially after much of the puzzle has been broken, it’s because he’s been careless or lazy with sudoku or pencil marks. The second half of that video was an endurance test lol. The 7 on the green dot in row 8 particularly irked me!
I'm not sure if it's new, but I really like the term "sudoku furniture". 😊
What a amazing puzzle for today! The pink/purple snake is the cutest! Great solve Simon, thank you! 😀
I finished in 61:40 minutes. This puzzle agreed with me so well. I was so happy to spot the parity trick very early and from there, it was like butter. There were so many cool tricks involving bouncing from one end of the line to the other to see if it breaks. That is such a cool idea. I was a little surprised to get an 8 for the zipper as I was expecting a 9. I think my favorite part was spotting the lines that could potentially go into the parity clue on the right side being broken by the consecutive clue. That kickstarted the whole idea towards finishing the puzzle. I very much enjoyed this one. It has to be one of my favorites. As always, it feels good to beat Simon's time. Great Puzzle!
Late at the party, only saw this one today. Wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it might be because of the video length, took me 38 minutes including verifying multiple times that I had identified the middle digit correctly. Listened to Simon afterwards, explaining the bishop theory which sounded hopelessly complex. For me the key was that the path between the two upmost purples was an even number of digits but to get from either one to the bottom purple the path was an odd number of digits and any deviation from the path is also always an even number of digits, i.e. if you take one step to the side you must take one step back to return to the path. Loved how the restrictions on both sides of the zipper line interacted to create a well defined path. Hats off to Marty and Dorlir for creating this.
Simon, Simon, Simon. A wonderfully interesting puzzle, with a fantastically interesting solve, tickled my brain - and then that wonderful recital of The Raven. You clearly love that poem and you declaim it with such a perfect affect. Thank you!
Rules: 09:51
Let's Get Cracking: 14:06
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
The Raven: 13x (06:55, 1:19:20, 1:19:22, 1:19:29, 1:22:25, 1:23:01, 1:23:01, 1:23:09, 1:23:36, 1:24:31, 1:26:16, 1:26:41, 1:27:07, 1:27:12)
Three In the Corner: 3x (1:00:22, 1:11:48)
Bobbins: 1x (41:27)
Knowledge Bomb: 1x (47:08)
The Secret: 1x (06:35)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Snake: 114x (00:22, 00:48, 00:50, 08:19, 08:29, 09:59, 10:11, 10:11, 10:22, 10:25, 10:27, 10:40, 10:42, 10:51, 11:10, 11:13, 11:31, 12:25, 12:25, 12:31, 12:33, 12:36, 12:38, 13:11, 15:57, 16:11, 16:35, 17:24, 17:42, 17:57, 17:59, 18:07, 18:34, 18:45, 20:02, 20:04, 20:40, 20:50, 21:01, 21:04, 22:03, 22:05, 22:14, 22:14, 22:21, 22:21, 22:36, 22:36, 22:38, 22:38, 22:40, 22:47, 22:47, 23:47, 24:25, 24:27, 24:31, 24:31, 24:42, 28:05, 28:11, 32:56, 33:55, 34:06, 34:12, 34:12, 34:45, 34:48, 34:53, 35:06, 35:13, 36:22, 36:55, 36:59, 37:07, 39:14, 39:17, 39:35, 39:55, 40:04, 40:09, 40:17, 40:44, 40:45, 42:23, 42:27, 43:10, 43:21, 43:21, 43:34, 44:48, 45:09, 45:13, 45:16, 45:40, 45:57, 46:45, 47:00, 47:23, 48:00, 48:06, 48:18, 48:20, 48:24, 49:06, 49:14, 49:17, 49:20, 49:22, 1:08:00, 1:12:24, 1:14:03, 1:17:35, 1:17:35)
Hang On: 17x (17:26, 24:49, 28:18, 29:35, 29:35, 29:35, 35:20, 37:31, 39:40, 39:40, 46:53, 46:53, 46:53, 56:44, 1:06:22, 1:19:10)
Ah: 12x (22:23, 22:23, 22:27, 28:18, 35:51, 50:49, 54:51, 56:44, 1:06:35, 1:07:48, 1:16:14, 1:20:00)
Touch Itself: 11x (10:16, 22:16, 22:47, 24:27, 24:34, 24:37, 34:08, 34:53, 43:36, 45:11, 47:25)
Sorry: 10x (03:17, 12:42, 29:47, 34:41, 37:54, 41:27, 41:27, 54:20, 1:04:43, 1:12:35)
Beautiful: 9x (03:03, 23:03, 32:09, 32:12, 39:35, 43:03, 48:00, 56:09, 56:11)
Clever: 6x (09:37, 31:00, 31:03, 1:17:28, 1:17:50, 1:18:07)
Brilliant: 6x (1:16:58, 1:17:05, 1:17:07, 1:18:37, 1:19:25, 1:19:25)
By Sudoku: 6x (29:10, 30:04, 50:54, 59:51, 1:07:23, 1:10:43)
In Fact: 6x (08:56, 13:11, 43:16, 45:44, 46:23, 1:13:45)
Obviously: 6x (21:13, 28:41, 33:12, 43:56, 56:26, 1:01:20)
Pencil Mark/mark: 6x (15:20, 38:56, 1:03:02, 1:06:38, 1:07:51, 1:13:23)
Naughty: 4x (15:52, 21:28, 56:03, 1:02:21)
Lovely: 4x (04:36, 06:42, 23:04, 1:18:00)
Nature: 4x (18:19, 18:25, 20:13, 1:14:43)
Goodness: 3x (01:13, 35:51, 1:16:55)
Gorgeous: 3x (22:23, 36:28, 47:52)
Come on Simon: 3x (41:43, 55:01, 1:05:45)
Surely: 3x (17:00, 1:22:03, 1:22:03)
What Does This Mean?: 3x (10:19, 27:13, 30:29)
Cake!: 3x (06:10, 07:36, 08:00)
Good Grief: 2x (55:59, 56:04)
Bother: 2x (50:49, 1:12:16)
The Answer is: 2x (02:19, 31:16)
Stuck: 2x (04:13, 1:05:32)
Shouting: 2x (04:56, 41:27)
Box Thingy: 2x (30:04, 51:26)
Wow: 2x (53:35, 58:28)
Weird: 2x (42:44, 44:54)
Out of Nowhere: 1x (53:12)
In the Spotlight: 1x (1:11:54)
Horrible Feeling: 1x (38:18)
Flurry of Activity: 1x (1:08:41)
I've Got It!: 1x (01:31)
Disappointing: 1x (57:59)
Almost Interesting: 1x (14:40)
Have a Think: 1x (38:13)
Thingy Thing: 1x (51:26)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Seventeen (11 mentions)
Two (87 mentions)
Green (12 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
Low (4) - High (3)
Even (25) - Odd (16)
Lower (2) - Higher (1)
Black (7) - White (5)
Row (16) - Column (9)
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!
Come for the Sudoku. Stay for the readings. Can ruminations on snarks and boojums be far away?
2:17:59 - What a fabulous puzzle - I loved working out which one was the middle dot and the gorgeous placing of the various domino links directing the route of the snake. I know it took me over 2 hours but I loved every minute of it! Thanks @martysears & @dorlir
That was a smashing puzzle. Such a simple yet effective break-in and then almost amusing the way each piece of logic dawned on you as you went along. There was a slightly trickier step in the middle perhaps but even that was well signalled. Great stuff, thanks Marty and Dorlir. 🙂
Thanks very much mate :)
Came here for the puzzle, stayed for the poem, loved both!
For whatever reason, I've never taken much interest in zipper (or circle) puzzles, but I really like how this one played out.
I was fortunate to _not_ notice the restricted 6 in box 6 until pretty late. It eliminated a bunch of 6s in other cells, giving me 17-pairs and leading me directly to the end of the puzzle. Because Simon found it _much_ earlier than I, he then didn't notice it when marking up cells like R4C2 and R4C6, and it slowed his solution.
Love Captain Beaky, Batty Bat and Reckless Rat. Looking forward to your solve today. I am sat with some very basic puzzles while I watch you.
I found Captain Beaky thanks to Simon!
Happy combination of rules, thanks, with some elegant deductions to be made. Once you get that initial deduction about the snake, much of it falls into place.
"That's an 8. Oh no that's not good" he says and proceeds to fill in the last 26 digits in less than 2 minutes.
That was a fun challenge. I felt I struggled at a lot of points but came in about video length, so I'm pretty happy with that. Thanks for sharing it.
I like it when I spot some logic before you, such as the sixes in yesterday’s puzzle. it only happens about once year!
Thank you Simon (and Lori for requesting) for such an impassioned reading of The Raven!!!! And please don’t feel bad about the puzzle yesterday.
It was lucky this puzzle was so hard that I clicked all through the video and found a reading of one of my favourite poems at the end.
A really lovely puzzle - never a dull moment, you have to continue developing little clues.
In the question whether or not to circumnavigate in box 7, I simply counted the number of steps towards the end zone - at that point the upper right snake hal was already limited
At around 45:00, there must be a 4 in r9c123, by sudoku. That means the snake could never circumnavigate box 7. I think this is easier to see than counting the potential size of the right hand size of the snake.
73:57. What a beautiful puzzles. The flow was so smooth and very enjoyable, thank you. Also liked the German whisper DOTS.
01:28:12 for me. What an incredible puzzle, the way the middle of the zipper line must be at box 9 and the way "x" clue and the black dot determines the total is marvelous.
Well, it was fun building a snake,
But now I'll think I'll take a break,
With the puzzle I'm smitten,
But by the snake bitten,
And now I cannot stay awake.
😄
❤️this!
I got my picture taken with REM!!!
That’s me in the corner
😎
I got my snake caught in a zipper in little under half an hour (29:48).
This solve was way more pleasurable than my previous line suggests, so much fun logic around every corner.
You could totally step up a second channel where you just read poetry, Simon. That was beautiful!
What a fantastic puzzle!
The break in took me some time and then it was so obvious. By then I had evaluated so many other implications that the flow was really nice!
Nice solve! You missed an early trick that would have saved you a lot of time at the end. R8C3 and R8C4 have a german whisper dot and must have a high number, so they must have a 7. It would fix your 17 pairs.
Anyone else notice that D4 stories are never concluded? I have such blue ears from never getting to hear the full story. Still…vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv, love this guy’s performances.
Super fun puzzle, which I'm quite proud of having successfully solved (in a shade under two hours).
I lost like 3 hours on this puzzle because i was on dark mode, which flipped the black and white Kropki dots. And up to the point I reached, the snake path looks COMPLETELY different from what Simon had. I had to go back here to be sure I was not missing something when I reached a complete halt.
But this corner goes to eleven! Must be possible :-) And don't apologise for Yesterday. It's nice to see that you are a little bit mortal sometimes. Today you spotted the bishops-trick instantly.
At 26:33 I did the deduction a slightly different way:
And 8 would have to be opposite a 1 to make the sum 9, but then the 4 would be opposite 5 placing a 5 on the X. Which rules out 9 as a sum, and 8 from the snake.
I also used the pen tool for the snake, so I coloured the digit pairs from the start and that did give me a few useful deductions early on that made the end game easier.
Oops - yesterday's description!
Should be fixed now :)
That was fast :) Looking forward to try the puzzle myself.@@CrackingTheCryptic
Great solve and puzzle 👏👏👏
43:51 for me. Not an easy puzzle but each step is approachable and elegant. Very fun puzzle 😊
27:16 - Yeah, Simon, but you can't justify 8 in a corner with a song either.
I could get used to a poem with every solve. 😊
I second that!
Spotting the three in the corner 12 minutes before Simon is a pathetically small victory 😳 but one I’ll take 🙄😒
66:02 for me. Marvelous puzzle!
30:30 Another way to go here - since r9c6 is the zipper partner of r7c8, and everything else on the zipper in box 9 has its partner in that box, whatever is in r9c6 must be on the green dot in box 9. The only thing that can be in a green dot relationship with a 9 and a white dot relationship with a 4 or a 6 is a 3.
So glad Simon didn’t end up weeping into his Hovis. Soggy bread is never enjoyable! Perhaps you meant Horlicks?
You could have made better earlier progress on 1s and 7s had you remembered your blue line on the German dot needed a high digit 7. Eliminating a 7 pencil mark in box 9. And also forcing a 1 on the pairing blue line mark.
Really cruel from Simon not to allow the snake to touch itself
I liked that puzzle a lot, in contrast to the one from yesterday, because although it was "hard", it was fairly clear what to do next at each point. 35:32 for me.
Having watched Stranger Things, I would suggest NEVER putting Eleven in the corner.
😂 well said!
😁
37:43 for me. Struggled quite a lot with this one, tough puzzle.
I always told my teacher I would never need algebra in real life. Stop disproving me by using algebra in sudoku.
Thank you for correcting. I thought it was something wrong with my logic.
i got the shape of the snake from counting the squares and how it fits the clues, but then i got stuck trying to actually fill it in. i got the initial numbers with the x and black dot, but made a mistake at some point and i couldnt work out where lol and there were too many numbers balanced on the mistake to unravel again
52:00 the pencil marked sixes in box six!
I enjoyed this one a lot! 35 minutes
Took me about 100 min to solve. Kinda bad at snake stuff but most of it was reasonable to spot.
92:20 with a lot of looks at the video. Either the puzzle was super hard for me or I'm lacking sleep (probably both!)
Can we please please please please please get a domino app all to itself? It's my favorite variant.
I wonder if the number of puzzles with three in the corner have increased in the last year lol
I think they probably have haha. But I can promise you I never intentionally put them in my puzzles, but if one happens to sneak in there and we get to see Simon be happy for a moment, then it’s all good 😊
Absolutely! It's just a feeling - would be nice to have statistics - that about half of the puzzles have 3 in the corner. I should calculate the probability on a normal distribution of digits. 🤔
The line DLC for the CTC app has an issue with puzzle 54. Neither the rules nor the icons at the top mention the king's constraint. I couldn't solve the puzzle until I looked at the hint number one which mentioned the king's constraint. After that, that piece of information alone allowed me to solve the puzzle. You should update the rules. Normally kings move puzzles highlight king's moves, but this didn't. So it's definitely not specified anywhere except the hints.
Scan , Simon . Scan !!!!!!😊
I have a question: if the purple Shake c‘ant touch itself diagonally then why is it possible to make a left turn and then directly after, a right turn. Is the snake not touching itself diagonally?
No. The inside corner is a single point on the snake's surface, similar to the single point on the surface where two adjacent cells touch along a straight section.
Edit: Or, for that matter, any other point on the snake's boundary.
what Rich Smith said is correct. This rule is talking about two separate sections of the snake coming together and meeting at the same point, rather than what happens at the inside corner of a right angle turn
Thank you all❤
Of all the tools they guide u to use...checkerboardkng is my fav now.
Tho i do use PF-ring alot ...dont really like too and dont think i like set repl. Tho the set+45|90 is a nifty one.
Uh oh I think the description is from yesterday
43:32 'To get it in, you've got to get it out again' -- invaluable advise for bishops and actresses everywhere.
'You've gotta get in to get out' that's a song (carpet crawlers by Genesis a beautiful song too) Simon should quote it at every opportunity
1:08:43 DO SUDOKU SIMON !!!!!
That was fantastic
Please don't hit yourself too hard from yester eves adventures.
After the 10 last minutes I have to find Alan Edgar Poe in my local library.
45:35 today. very hard. not insane but hard. needed a lot of marking.
@26:50 Someone please create a puzzle with a schrodinger cell rule where there is a rule that there must be an 11 in a corner.
The description is about the previous video... 🤔
it’s 4 am and I’ve been up since 1 because there’s a hurricane outside👍
The chapter-mark for the poetry isn't working: 79:30 won't do, it needs to be 1:19:30
01:43:59
28:12 for me.
51:43 for me
48:24 for me
why do you not have the app turn impossible pencil marks red? this would not effect the logic. it would just help with the scanning to find pencil marks you should remove. I.E. at 59:49 "i just noticed that can not be a two". that was after looking at the grid for 20sec. and the last thing you did was remove a 5 that was just scanning. for a known digit.
personally i think the app should fill in true "naked signals". cells that have 8 known digits looking at them, not 6 and a pair or the like as you do not know the order of the par yet.
i do sudoku for the logic puzzle an exercise in scanning.
The AI snake in the thumbnail makes me angry
Here I go again, yelling at simon! But this time... he heard me?! ...I'm impressed and a little worried. XD I loved this puzzle. Hard enough to make me think, but has an approachable solve. Sometimes when I get stuck, I watch the videos and realize there was no way my brain would have ever reached that conclusion on its own. Not with this one! I figured it out on my own, even if it did take a few minutes for me to realize I could build the snake from the midpoint...🫠