Fantastic solve as always by Simon! I'm so glad you found all of the core logic involved (with the 10 and 20 sums), and especially pleased you found the intended Sudoku near the end (the 5/7 pair in row 4). The concept for this puzzle started as I was thinking about other duality-type puzzles that may be possible (insert shameless plug for the recent Skunkworks puzzle pack here), and the thought of the number of a cage being both the sum and a look-and-say clue came to mind. As I thought about it, I realized all the points you discussed while solving, and started wondering if I could take that concept and make it so the actual total was initially unknown for every cage. I was incredibly delighted when I found that this was, in fact, possible!
@@arkadeusz91 The original title was actually "Look, A Killer!", but Chameleon came up with the final name, so I'm actually not sure if it's specifically an AC reference 😅
@@Ytterbio Well, that would fit as well, as one of the best AC and Rock Album,s ever is Kiiller. (And I did construct a sudoku that I named Halo of Flies which is a tune on that album, and if I ever manage to figure out how to solve it, I will submit it to CtC, I would love to see Simon cut his teeth on it)
28:50 A 4-cell cage in a single house consists of two low digits, a high digit, and a whatever digit, where the whatever digit is not limited to being a second high digit.
That's true, but it thankfully ended up not mattering. When Simon did get to that 4 cell cage in box 9, he pointed out there could only be 1 small digit in the row 9 part. Which then makes the 3 small digits option he overlooked be impossible.
51:59 There was a much easier way to prove that r8c9 was 1. In fact, it had been clear for about 15 minutes (as soon as you put the 1 in r3c7). The reasoning goes- if you don't have the 1 in the cage, the digits that add up to 10 must be 2, 3, 5 and now you don't have enough digits in the *adjacent* vertical 4 cell cage to put the 2, 3 and 5 it needs.
If I encountered this puzzle anywhere else, say a newspaper or a puzzle magazine, I'd have simply written it off as "stupid fools, they've not printed it correctly". It being CtC, instead I go "ok, no given digits, no cage totals - let's get cracking!"
Usually I can follow along with your logic, and see how it is working as you explain it in real time, but something about this one kept breaking my brain. I had to pause and back up several times, and ask myself how you made the deductions. Well done. I am pretty sure I would have taken days to solve it by myself.
I was planning on racing you to solve this, but man, this was not the puzzle for me, lol. I couldn't even see where you were going most of the time. I gave up and decided to just enjoy the ride of your solve.
I got held up coming to this by the monthly reward pack - which is really great this month: loved it. Now an intriguing puzzle without time to try it myself, but I can see some nice things already.
I finished in 137 minutes. This was a tough one, but it was so fun to solve. I had a great time figuring out the meta of the puzzle and rewired my brain to think about them adding up to 10 or 20 plus the end digit. That made things very clear in my mind. I think my favorite part was seeing that r8c1 couldn't be 234 as this would force the cage in the bottom right of box 9 to not have any partners for 1 that add to 10. I was a little slow on this one, but it was so fun to solve. Great Puzzle!
Well Simon and Mark have a lot to answer for. Was just at the bar ordering a coke and Losing my religion came on. Absent mindedly I sang “That’s 3 in the corner, that’s 3 in the spotlight proving it’s position” The lady serving me said “I takeit you do know those aren’t the correct lyrics “ To which I replied I take it you don’t do Sudoku or watch @CrackingTheCryptic”
Oh my, that was a hard one I think, it pays to know all sum combinations by heart. The ruleset was very elegant indeed, and somehow the puzzle kept resisting until the very end. Nicely done!
Took me over an hour until I realized I messed it up, and then it still took me 1:17:57 and some small clues from the video afterwards. Dang, that was hard.
EDIT: Oh wait, I see my mistake. I think. You correctly note that column 1 will have four low digits so R4C2 and R7C3 cannot be repeated low digits. But I still think looking at the 4 cell cage in box 1 is the right answer. 11:40 Aren't you looking at the wrong cage now Simon? If R2C1 and R3C1 need to be high digits in a 4 cell cage that is constricted to box 1. Then the minimal that cage can be is 11 with a [56] pair. But that is before you consider the other two cells in the cage. If they were [12] then the minimum of the cage is now 14. That cage could, for the sake of not getting to a 20 sum or higher, take one more high digit, but only just. It could take 5, 6 and 7 to make 18 and then a 1 digit to get to 19. But then you don't have a 9 in it. Point is, that 4 cell cage in box 1 can't have more high digits so R2C2 and R3C2 are from low digits only. This makes R2C3 and R3C3 high digits. NOW you can look at column 2 if you want. Because you can only have one more low digit in that column, the rest have to be high digits. So the cage you are looking at is going to have four of the digits from [56789] and will be a minimum of 26, and so there will be repeated digits in the cage and those are R4C2 and R7C3. There's not enough room to make those repeated digits high digits. I.E, if you used high digits as the repeated digit, the cage would be a 30+ cage and would need three repeated digits. EDIT: Ah right, there will be THREE high digits in column 2 in that L shaped cage. Let's use [567] which is 18. Of course R3C2 and R7C3 repeat but they can be high digits without a problem as long as you don't add more than 11 in total. I.E, you can reach a 29 sum in the cage just fine. Well, since R3C2 and R7C3 can't be low digits, there still has to be a low digit in that cage. Going forwards, I think it's worth noting that none of the cages in the grid seem to allow for three repeated digits. So all cages are less than 30.
Well, I don't know yet about the puzzle, but the ruleset is magnificent❗I am looking forward to solving this puzzle before watching the video. Thank you for featuring it. 😏👍👍👍
Even though I watched you solve it, it still looked like an impossible puzzle to me. Mind you I’ve never ventured outside of normal sudoku rules. And the fact that solving it seems so impossible to me. I can’t even wrap my head around how one would even make such a puzzle.. absolute masterpiece!
Omg this never happens! (Me being early and also what I am about to say). For the first time I can remember I found a different path to Simon! Now, I am an enjoyer of sudoku, but I watch these videos just for fun and don't usually try to learn anything or do them myself first. Every once in a while, there will be something obvious that Simon misses because he's thinking too hard (lol) but this time I actually thought of a way to find a digit differently than Simon did, and before him as well. Now if you are still reading, I will be going into detail. At around 44:34 Simon was struggling to figure out where to go next, and I automatically thought about the 1st Column. Why? I don't know. Now, he had proven that the five digit cage in Row 1 had to have 1234 and whatever number was in the unit digit in the cage sum. (At this point I paused the video so I could continue my train of thought without listening to Simon). And with the extra info we have now, I was able to figure out Oh, no, I just realized my logic is flawed, dang it. I'll continue. I THOUGHT that in that cage in Column 1 the digit accompanying the 1234 quadruple had to be a 6 or 8 because I was thinking it was in the bottom two cells, in the same box as the 79 pair (it totally doesn't have to be). Now this led to 8 being ruled out in Box 1, and the 2 by 2 cage having a 57 pair. And this leads to the other two cells in the box being a 68 pair, which makes the blue cell 5. Once I "figured" this out, I pushed play on the video and watched Simon do something else entirely while I was sooooo smug at figuring it out before him. Then he got the 5 in a completely different way, and I wanted to see if anyone else thought of the same thing I did and came down here to type this comment out. Halfway through I realized the flaw and now I'm just surprised it was right. Edit: Turns out all of my logic was correct because Simon ended up doing a lot of the same stuff, my problem was just in correctly guessing where the high digit was in that cage!
Isn't this puzzle broken? There is a 4 cell cage in box one with four different digits none of which is a 1. How does the look see work there? Could someone explain?
You can think of the cage totals like spoken phrases, so a 17 total means "there is one 7 [in the cage]." A 24 total would mean "there are two 4s [in the cage]." Etc.
@@Landee 90% of all the movies she reviews are "best movie ever", so it looked to quite similar. (Dawn is a pretty blond Scottish woman, and often quite fun in her reviews and actually kind of smart also. Wonder how she would do on sudoku.)
64:58 for my time. That was a rather difficult but beautiful puzzle, there was a constant difficulty but a very natural flow and the kind of logic it involves is very neat (though I think Simon made a mistake a 4-cells teenage cage must always include 2 lows and 2 highs, as the unit number could very well be a low one). Plus a classical Xwing of 2s and a hidden 5-7 pair in the end to finish it, lovely!
Fantastic solve as always by Simon! I'm so glad you found all of the core logic involved (with the 10 and 20 sums), and especially pleased you found the intended Sudoku near the end (the 5/7 pair in row 4). The concept for this puzzle started as I was thinking about other duality-type puzzles that may be possible (insert shameless plug for the recent Skunkworks puzzle pack here), and the thought of the number of a cage being both the sum and a look-and-say clue came to mind. As I thought about it, I realized all the points you discussed while solving, and started wondering if I could take that concept and make it so the actual total was initially unknown for every cage. I was incredibly delighted when I found that this was, in fact, possible!
I was wandering - is the title of the puzzle reference to Alice Cooper song or is it just coincidence?
@@arkadeusz91 Didn't think about that, but now I wonder too. (Long term AC fan)
@@arkadeusz91 The original title was actually "Look, A Killer!", but Chameleon came up with the final name, so I'm actually not sure if it's specifically an AC reference 😅
This puzzle is pure *magic‼*
@@Ytterbio Well, that would fit as well, as one of the best AC and Rock Album,s ever is Kiiller. (And I did construct a sudoku that I named Halo of Flies which is a tune on that album, and if I ever manage to figure out how to solve it, I will submit it to CtC, I would love to see Simon cut his teeth on it)
28:50 A 4-cell cage in a single house consists of two low digits, a high digit, and a whatever digit, where the whatever digit is not limited to being a second high digit.
I believe the only fact Simon ended up using is that there must be (at least) two digits in the bottom-right cage
Just to be concrete, the combination 1-2-3-6 adds to 12, and contains (exactly) one 2.
@@MasterHigure other combinations that also work with 3 low digits are 1-2-3-5, 1-2-3-7, 1-2-4-7, 1-3-4-6, and 2-3-4-5
That's true, but it thankfully ended up not mattering. When Simon did get to that 4 cell cage in box 9, he pointed out there could only be 1 small digit in the row 9 part. Which then makes the 3 small digits option he overlooked be impossible.
«All of the shenanigans involving the nonsense» 😊
Simon is nothing if not eloquent 8^)
Rasmus from denmark here - what a pleasant surprise! Many thanks for the birthday wishes 😊
Happy birthday!
51:59 There was a much easier way to prove that r8c9 was 1. In fact, it had been clear for about 15 minutes (as soon as you put the 1 in r3c7).
The reasoning goes- if you don't have the 1 in the cage, the digits that add up to 10 must be 2, 3, 5 and now you don't have enough digits in the *adjacent* vertical 4 cell cage to put the 2, 3 and 5 it needs.
If I encountered this puzzle anywhere else, say a newspaper or a puzzle magazine, I'd have simply written it off as "stupid fools, they've not printed it correctly". It being CtC, instead I go "ok, no given digits, no cage totals - let's get cracking!"
Usually I can follow along with your logic, and see how it is working as you explain it in real time, but something about this one kept breaking my brain. I had to pause and back up several times, and ask myself how you made the deductions. Well done. I am pretty sure I would have taken days to solve it by myself.
Rules: 06:05
Let's Get Cracking: 08:22
Simon's time: 1h2m47s
Puzzle Solved: 1:11:09
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
The Secret: 4x (18:10, 18:16, 18:19, 38:57)
Bobbins: 2x (50:55, 1:07:26)
Knowledge Bomb: 1x (25:29)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Ah: 22x (10:19, 13:33, 16:20, 19:01, 20:51, 22:42, 25:44, 29:28, 32:44, 34:24, 34:24, 36:09, 39:23, 40:33, 43:01, 43:01, 49:37, 52:34, 54:25, 56:21, 1:00:56, 1:05:11)
Beautiful: 11x (17:30, 40:51, 46:43, 58:06, 1:00:56, 1:00:56, 1:03:23, 1:05:21, 1:08:55, 1:11:05, 1:12:28)
Cake!: 10x (03:16, 03:18, 03:34, 03:40, 03:46, 03:58, 04:00, 04:12, 04:37, 05:25)
By Sudoku: 9x (27:07, 29:16, 40:57, 42:27, 45:25, 52:12, 1:00:41, 1:09:49, 1:10:29)
Sorry: 7x (18:41, 19:55, 21:13, 26:11, 27:16, 45:36, 46:22)
Hang On: 6x (03:37, 13:33, 15:24, 22:33, 26:59, 31:49)
Obviously: 5x (11:58, 15:14, 29:56, 1:00:15, 1:12:18)
Nonsense: 4x (56:49, 56:51, 1:02:46, 1:10:35)
Ridiculous: 4x (17:33, 46:47, 57:45, 1:04:59)
I've Got It!: 4x (34:24, 34:32, 34:32, 58:12)
In Fact: 4x (09:12, 29:58, 37:26, 1:02:55)
Nature: 4x (14:04, 50:40, 50:43, 1:11:42)
Come on Simon: 3x (44:40, 47:49, 1:07:26)
What Does This Mean?: 3x (39:12, 41:04, 59:34)
Naughty: 2x (26:16, 54:29)
Brilliant: 2x (40:54, 43:01)
Gorgeous: 2x (1:05:15, 1:12:14)
Magnificent: 2x (04:07, 34:39)
Uniqueness: 2x (1:03:41, 1:03:44)
Weird: 2x (32:32, 1:02:16)
The Answer is: 1x (59:15)
I Have no Clue: 1x (53:55)
Lovely: 1x (1:09:10)
Hypothecate: 1x (37:33)
Take a Bow: 1x (1:12:35)
Shouting: 1x (05:24)
Shenanigans: 1x (1:10:33)
Surely: 1x (1:03:58)
Phone is Buzzing: 1x (1:07:02)
That's Huge: 1x (46:20)
Pencil Mark/mark: 1x (11:15)
Triangular Number: 1x (09:01)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Twenty (45 mentions)
Two (129 mentions)
Blue (6 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
Low (39) - High (20)
Even (4) - Odd (1)
Column (16) - Row (13)
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!
I'd love to see a "teenage" count on this one, otherwise love these counters
The cake was enjoyed, although i now fear we'll never sleep! Thank you for the birthday shout-out 😊
I was planning on racing you to solve this, but man, this was not the puzzle for me, lol. I couldn't even see where you were going most of the time. I gave up and decided to just enjoy the ride of your solve.
I got held up coming to this by the monthly reward pack - which is really great this month: loved it. Now an intriguing puzzle without time to try it myself, but I can see some nice things already.
I finished in 137 minutes. This was a tough one, but it was so fun to solve. I had a great time figuring out the meta of the puzzle and rewired my brain to think about them adding up to 10 or 20 plus the end digit. That made things very clear in my mind. I think my favorite part was seeing that r8c1 couldn't be 234 as this would force the cage in the bottom right of box 9 to not have any partners for 1 that add to 10. I was a little slow on this one, but it was so fun to solve. Great Puzzle!
Well Simon and Mark have a lot to answer for.
Was just at the bar ordering a coke and Losing my religion came on.
Absent mindedly I sang “That’s 3 in the corner, that’s 3 in the spotlight proving it’s position” The lady serving me said “I takeit you do know those aren’t the correct lyrics “ To which I replied I take it you don’t do Sudoku or watch @CrackingTheCryptic”
The title of this video is spot on. Indeed, one of the best sudoku of the year.
Oh my, that was a hard one I think, it pays to know all sum combinations by heart. The ruleset was very elegant indeed, and somehow the puzzle kept resisting until the very end. Nicely done!
Fantastic puzzle! The maths is sublime! Thanks Simon and yttrio!
Ohhhhhh that cake! That will be a very happy birthday!
68:20, with a little help with the 26 cage (I wasn't thinking about the repeat digit being in r1c6). Impressed by the logic I had to use.
My copy doesn't include cage totals :(
that's because the puzzle doesn't have cage totals lol
Thats correct, the puzzle does not show cage totals
Like in the video
Yes, I know that's the challenge. I was going for the humorous comment
It's a new Sudoku type , invisible ink Sudoku , pretty much a variant of fog Sudoku.
@@donaldsnyder1543 C'mon, don't be giving people ideas! The minute Sven or Chameleon sees this, we are all doomed!
28:45 Why couldn't it have 3 low digits like 1-2-3-5 totaling 11?
I thought the same, luckily that conclusion didn't reflect afterwards
You're pencil marking [1,2,3,4] as opposed to using a colour for low digits?
WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH SIMON??
I just don't understand how anyone can come up with a puzzle like that
I feel like that title can be applied to at least half of the Sudokus that appear on this channel!
It's a very good one, indeed! 😄
Took me over an hour until I realized I messed it up, and then it still took me 1:17:57 and some small clues from the video afterwards. Dang, that was hard.
EDIT: Oh wait, I see my mistake. I think.
You correctly note that column 1 will have four low digits so R4C2 and R7C3 cannot be repeated low digits.
But I still think looking at the 4 cell cage in box 1 is the right answer.
11:40 Aren't you looking at the wrong cage now Simon?
If R2C1 and R3C1 need to be high digits in a 4 cell cage that is constricted to box 1. Then the minimal that cage can be is 11 with a [56] pair.
But that is before you consider the other two cells in the cage. If they were [12] then the minimum of the cage is now 14.
That cage could, for the sake of not getting to a 20 sum or higher, take one more high digit, but only just. It could take 5, 6 and 7 to make 18 and then a 1 digit to get to 19. But then you don't have a 9 in it.
Point is, that 4 cell cage in box 1 can't have more high digits so R2C2 and R3C2 are from low digits only.
This makes R2C3 and R3C3 high digits.
NOW you can look at column 2 if you want. Because you can only have one more low digit in that column, the rest have to be high digits.
So the cage you are looking at is going to have four of the digits from [56789] and will be a minimum of 26, and so there will be repeated digits in the cage and those are R4C2 and R7C3.
There's not enough room to make those repeated digits high digits. I.E, if you used high digits as the repeated digit, the cage would be a 30+ cage and would need three repeated digits.
EDIT: Ah right, there will be THREE high digits in column 2 in that L shaped cage. Let's use [567] which is 18. Of course R3C2 and R7C3 repeat but they can be high digits without a problem as long as you don't add more than 11 in total. I.E, you can reach a 29 sum in the cage just fine. Well, since R3C2 and R7C3 can't be low digits, there still has to be a low digit in that cage.
Going forwards, I think it's worth noting that none of the cages in the grid seem to allow for three repeated digits. So all cages are less than 30.
Thank you for the birthday wishes Simon!!!!!!!
Happy birthday
This Is One Of The Best Sudoku Puzzles Of 2024 with The Best Sudoku Puzzle Solver of All Times
Well, I don't know yet about the puzzle, but the ruleset is magnificent❗I am looking forward to solving this puzzle before watching the video. Thank you for featuring it.
😏👍👍👍
is there a sudoku advent calendar like there was last year?
Allways perfect timing simon :)
Even though I watched you solve it, it still looked like an impossible puzzle to me. Mind you I’ve never ventured outside of normal sudoku rules.
And the fact that solving it seems so impossible to me. I can’t even wrap my head around how one would even make such a puzzle.. absolute masterpiece!
This was a REALLY hard one for me, so you're definitely not alone on that!
Naughty brain. Haha. I have a naughty brain, but it has absolutely nothing to do with sudoku.
I got diabetes from seeing that cake.
Looking forward to this video.
Omg this never happens! (Me being early and also what I am about to say). For the first time I can remember I found a different path to Simon! Now, I am an enjoyer of sudoku, but I watch these videos just for fun and don't usually try to learn anything or do them myself first. Every once in a while, there will be something obvious that Simon misses because he's thinking too hard (lol) but this time I actually thought of a way to find a digit differently than Simon did, and before him as well.
Now if you are still reading, I will be going into detail.
At around 44:34 Simon was struggling to figure out where to go next, and I automatically thought about the 1st Column. Why? I don't know. Now, he had proven that the five digit cage in Row 1 had to have 1234 and whatever number was in the unit digit in the cage sum. (At this point I paused the video so I could continue my train of thought without listening to Simon). And with the extra info we have now, I was able to figure out
Oh, no, I just realized my logic is flawed, dang it.
I'll continue. I THOUGHT that in that cage in Column 1 the digit accompanying the 1234 quadruple had to be a 6 or 8 because I was thinking it was in the bottom two cells, in the same box as the 79 pair (it totally doesn't have to be). Now this led to 8 being ruled out in Box 1, and the 2 by 2 cage having a 57 pair. And this leads to the other two cells in the box being a 68 pair, which makes the blue cell 5.
Once I "figured" this out, I pushed play on the video and watched Simon do something else entirely while I was sooooo smug at figuring it out before him. Then he got the 5 in a completely different way, and I wanted to see if anyone else thought of the same thing I did and came down here to type this comment out. Halfway through I realized the flaw and now I'm just surprised it was right.
Edit: Turns out all of my logic was correct because Simon ended up doing a lot of the same stuff, my problem was just in correctly guessing where the high digit was in that cage!
What a wonderful cake!!!
Isn't this puzzle broken? There is a 4 cell cage in box one with four different digits none of which is a 1. How does the look see work there? Could someone explain?
The numbers are 2,3,5,7. 5+3+2 are 10, plus one 7 makes 17. You don't need a 1 in the cage, only there is just one 7.
You can think of the cage totals like spoken phrases, so a 17 total means "there is one 7 [in the cage]." A 24 total would mean "there are two 4s [in the cage]." Etc.
Add to 10 the puzzle
Every new video be like : The Best puzzle
You aren't by any chance watching Dawn Marie's movie reactions?
@dolf370 uh don't think so
@@Landee 90% of all the movies she reviews are "best movie ever", so it looked to quite similar. (Dawn is a pretty blond Scottish woman, and often quite fun in her reviews and actually kind of smart also. Wonder how she would do on sudoku.)
@@dolf370 oh okay, thanks for the info 🫶
You should work for MI6! You could break any code!
By the way, Liverpool won by 2-0 😁😁🏆🏆
and were a class above City throughout. Love this Belgian!
@@arandamei2189Belgian? Kevin De Bruyne?? What?
Simon really should get back to sudoku origins... But like REALLY.
70:03 for me
Yesterday’s puzzle was great, looking forwards to this!
1:17:58 for me.
What football?
Cunning little puzzle
64:58 for my time. That was a rather difficult but beautiful puzzle, there was a constant difficulty but a very natural flow and the kind of logic it involves is very neat (though I think Simon made a mistake a 4-cells teenage cage must always include 2 lows and 2 highs, as the unit number could very well be a low one).
Plus a classical Xwing of 2s and a hidden 5-7 pair in the end to finish it, lovely!
Yes, no, err, yes. Delicious.