Oh, wow, thanks so much! Very cool to see this on the channel (and a new personal record video length 😁). This is a puzzle that benefited a lot from feedback by early testers and solvers. Thanks in particular to MicroStudy, DarthParadox, Fool on Hill, and Myxo (and apologies to anyone I'm leaving out). Really looking forward to watching Simon take it on. (psst: if you're reading this, you probably like sudoku, so I should mention that I publish five new puzzles every week in my newsletter, Artisanal Sudoku. TH-cam won't let me post a link, but it's not hard to find. I keep them fairly approachable (more so than this one, at least), and lately I've been including a fog puzzle every few weeks.)
This was the first deconstructed I solved and so happy the first was as awesome as this puzzle. Well done for the amazing puzzle. I was waiting for it to appear on this channel. Knew it had to be
Don't get it!... How can a 3-cell cage have a total of 2? (By definition) If the other 2 digits don't count towards the total, THEY ARE NOT IN THE CAGE, surely? And why has Simon shaded the other two cell? There's nothing about shading in the ruleset...
@@nightwishlover8913 The shading is just for visual convenience. A 3-cell cage can have a total of 2 if it extends beyond the borders of the regions; cells outside regions don't have digits in them. So a 3-cell cage can have just a single digit in it.
36:46 I think a small unearned placement here - if the cell directly below the 45 pair is "dark," the cage has every opportunity in the world to escape horizontally through dark cells and eventually deposit the 1 elsewhere
Okay, so I think the intended path is to get the 9 in r7c9 first since it's available at this point (using the 9 in r3c11 and seeing it can't go in the 9 cage in below), and go that route. It will then let you see that the 1 must go where Simon puts it.
He literally saw it at 59:00 saying "if this cell is in it HAS to be an 8" and then didn't mark it or remember when he proved that it was in. Also erased the 2 pencil mark in r5c2 causing him to forget the logic he did previously to establish where the 2 cage had to pick up its digit, but as usual came back around via some ridiculous backdoor set-theory logic to show that r6c2 had to be 2 at 1:09:10 he's absolutely amazing.
i saw this comment before the situation and thought "thats a bit silly" and as a person prone to violence when he said "and the 7 here (in r11c10) means this can't be a 7(r8c6) by our jiggery pokery method" i literally screamed "YOU DIDNT NEED JIGGERY POKERY YOU BRITISH INFANT!!" because i like infantalizing grown men, i see hes brilliant, but i think the way he talks about Sudoku is cute
Yes! Given that normally, he immediately makes complicated deductions that I only see after he has explained them (and then, they are quite obvious...), his inability to disambiguate the 78 pair in c6, when one of the 78s has seen another 7 for ages, as well as his blindness to see that r6c2 must be a 2, in order to complete 2 cage, well, they are kind of reassuring. Simon IS human, after all (just better than me at making logical deductions in those other 99% of the cases...).
Also at 1:07:37 he places 78 and doesn't notice the 7 looking at it for almost 5 minutes when he placed the 7 in the bottom row and says this must now be an 8
That hurt me so much to watch. He used the fact r6c2 was a 2 from the cell for a large part of the puzzle earlier to deduce there wasn't a two in r6 or r7 but didn't place it, which also would've cleared a lot of fog.
Wonderful puzzle! I think the two things that make FoW puzzles so satisfying are 1) The fog helps guide focus, reducing the "Where do I look next (eyes glazing over)" affliction many of us suffer from, and 2) The fog reveal serves as a nice "I'm on the right track!" reward. I only wish Sven could implent a Men In Black -style memory wiper for when I incorrectly deduce a digit, plunk it in, don't get a clear, and have to pretend I didn't learn anything.
at ~1:04:00, another way to see r9c10 is 9, is to look at columns 3 and 6 where 9 can only be in r10 and r11. Add to that the 9 in c9 and c11 and now you only have one place left for the 9 in the bottom right box.
At 32:00 you don't need set theory, just fill in the three missing digits (4, 5, 7) in the right end of row 2. This forces which way the 6/7 pair in the 18-cage goes and forces R4C6 to be a 6.
19:43 The simplest way imo to see that r2c7 is not the middle of a cage is that in order for a cage cell to have no cage boundary visible it must be entirely encircled by 8 cage cells, and if it were r1c8 would need to be cage and would have a cage boundary along its top edge at least
Agreed, also after that instead of assuming the cage went down and then invalidating that I would've just said 1 of those top 3 cells has to be a 2, so the cage has to go up at least 1 cell, would've been faster and cleaner imo
56:42. Another amazing puzzle. When I first started watching this channel, if a video was over 30 minutes long, I knew it was outside of my skillset. Now I can look at a sub 1:30:00 video and have a chance to solve it myself. The progress, much like a fog-of-war, is so satisfying to see.
31:05, For the second day in a row Simon explains set theory to prove something that basic sudoku would reveal :) the 457 triple in row 2 of box 1 rules out the 7 in row 3 of box 3 which unwinds into the 6 in box 2. I do love how watching CTC is helping me understand how all of these solving techniques are interrelated (the law of leftovers applies here as well). This right here is why CTC has helped me become better at sudoku than I ever expected to become.
32:39 row 2 contains the digits 1 to 9, so some sudoku on 7 would land on the same result as the set theory xD But Simon wouldn't do sudoku this early in the puzzle, that's ludicrous
Best part: 1:07:24 Simon enters two 9's which clears the fog and shows the entire 8 cage and then immediately says "I still want to know what this 8 cage is doing. I suspect there is a way I can tell that, but I haven't figured out how to do that." 😁
To make legitimate progress at 36:45, notice how R7C9 must be a 9. There is no other place within the box for 9. Then you get to see a cage which traps the 5 cage so that it cannot have more counting cells. R6C9 becomes a 5, turning R6C6 into a 4. Then it more or less transposes into Simon's solution.
I just finished this in 86:37, but to tell the truth, I had a lot of help through mistakes that didn’t clear fog. The thing is just a few months ago I don’t think I could have even gotten a third of the way into the puzzle, but I’ve learned so much from this channel that I at least have a fighting chance on puzzles like this.
@@Silvergrooves42 I noticed that if it went down into the ridiculously big cage, it must go into the green square, which means there would be two counting squares, which means it would have to be a 3-2 pair, but since the known cell couldn't be 2, that means the green cell must be 2, but there's a 2 in the same column already, so it can't be a 3-2 and must be a lone 5, so the cage can't go down and become a part of the huge cage. That was my logic. Simon's still way better at this than I am, it's just different people notice different things.
I was telling him to look at the 9 cage on the right hand side middle box😂 There's no way to make it a 3 cell cage with the 2 counting cells and the numbers that already see it
1:00:30 A sane way to deduce that 9 could be by noticing that in column 6 a nine has to be either in row 10 or row 11. And in column 3 it is also has to be either in row 10 or row 11. Therefore in bottom right box there's only one spot left for a 9.
At 32:30, I enjoyed the complicated set-theory solution to determine the 6 and 7 in box 2. I just did sudoku on row 2, which seemed much simpler, but what do I know. :) Awesome! Simon did the same later when he forgot that he'd already deduced the 8 in box 8, and didn't notice the sudoku when it came time to fill it in. Instead, he used "jiggery-pokery" to get it a few minutes later. :)
Solved in only about an hour, really impressed with this one! I adore fog sudoku, don't have to worry about spotting the break-in, and the puzzle just flows wonderfully from one deduction to the next. Highly highly recommend this one :D
I'll admit to needing a hint; specifically, the comment Simon made at the 17:26 point of the video. With that one little kick in the keister, I was able to finish the rest of the sudoku (though it still took me nearly two hours, clocking in at a total time of 1:45:09). Insane puzzle!
Simon, the way that you've evolved and updated your explanations for various sudoku secrets has been marvelous to watch, especially regarding phistomephels ring, and the way an X-wing in rows x, y helps place a digit in row z.
36:46 The pointed cell in r9c6 could not indeed contain an one. But the one could leave in r9c5, for example. At that point, we did not know where box 8 was.
73:52, fun solve, I feel liked it took my a long time to figure out the path for each row of boxes, flew through them once I got a break in, then got stuck again for the next row of boxes. Figuring out the placement of Box 8 took me the longest, probably 20 minutes of just staring at the screen to see what to do next. Sometime in the last week I commented that fog sudokus with cages take advantage of the clue being in the left most cell of the top row and here we get this one!
60:42 for me, I honestly hadn't expected to finish a puzzle like this in just over an hour, but it really went quite smoothly. I only felt stuck once or twice, but managed to work through it without any help from the video. I was also so invested in the puzzle that I didn't even realise an hour had just flown by, which I think really says something about the flow of it.
54:16 for me, although I think I got lucky after not considering a possibility for a way that the 8 cage in box 7 could have grown. Fantastic puzzle! I particularly like puzzles that require multiple different types of logic, and I really felt that here.
At 1:04:30 there was a easier way. Column 6 needed a nine that could only go on the bottom 2 rows, making an x wing of 9's on the bottom rows, making r9c10 the only possible place for 9 on box 9
Simon, so interesting and fun to watch you do one of these deconstruction puzzles - and this time in the fog! I loved it. I also love the term 'grid furniture' and that you used the word piste early on - this channel is so rich, not only in logic and fun, but in excellent vocabulary. Thank you!
I love Fog of War. I never guess , but I can often tell straight away if I've made a logical error. It's not as impressive as Simon's solves but it's a nice extra crutch! Which I needed today for the 18 cage. 45:05
88:28, not a bad time for me! Especially since I won’t even attempt videos longer than 45 minutes because I always spend like 2 hours fooling around and then give up. But I love fog sudokus so much that I knew I’d be able to do it. I struggled a lot toward the end and finding the position of box “8” before realizing that the solution was to solve the numbers in box 9 using the 11 cage… I just really didn’t want to solve the 11 cage because it seemed really difficult and not useful. But it took like 10 seconds to do so.
YEEEEEES! Beating Simon by 2 minutes makes me proud (completely compartmentalizing that he's explaning, being entertaining etc., while I'm staring at a screen for an hour like a catatonic rabbit...).
32:41 normal people: well row 2 needs a 7 somewhere so it must be in the middle row of that third box. that means the 7 from the 67 pair has to be in the second box. therefore that other 67 must be a 6. simon: lets use set theory
This is the first deconstruction puzzle i attempted, took me about 2 hours with mistakes and having skipped to the solution for cross checking when i was hard stuck tho i didn't listen to explanations and only really needed help with the last 2 boxes so overall i think i did fairly well. i LOVE fog of war puzzles and hope we get more awsome ones in the future!
I think this is one of the most difficult sudokus I've ever solved by myself. When I discovered the 135 pattern I couldn't stop thinking I wanted to hear Simon's reaction to it. And he didn't disappoint, upon solving it I watched it 1:05:28
Did this on LMD a few days ago and found it very tough! At around 53 minutes there was a really neat piece of logic available, that either a 6 or 7 in r7c3 forced a repeated digit into the 45 cage in r5c4, making r7c3 a 4. Great solve though, and a brilliant puzzle!
for the stuff at about 33:15 you can get the same result from observing that r2 c9-11 have to be a 457 triple to complete the row, giving you a 6 in r3c9
I'm usually intimidated by hour+ long video puzzles, but since it was fog I decided to give it a go, and boy was I glad I did. Very fun solve. More fog please!!
Finished in 42 minutes of absolute joy 👍🏻👍🏻 Fog of War and Deconstruction puzzles are both among the very best developments in the sudoku world, and to combine them like this is sublime. Although I must confess that I did slightly fluke the 1 in box 5 like Simon did, without considering the possibility of the cage extending down through dark cells and then out to the side 😳
1:21:29! This was a really nice FoW and Deconstruction hybrid! Probably could've saved some time if I had spotted r7c1 earlier, but it was still a fantastic puzzle nevertheless!
@@EricMill And you know that this is part of the game? He saying „I‘m sorry, you’re probably all shouting at me now.“ and us making fun of his atrocious scanning in the comments… we love him, but sometimes, he just drives us bonkers 😃
I haven't watched this yet, I'm giving a try to the puzzle. Good progress in about 80 minutes, now I'm kinda stuck with about half the digits in their right place. I won't surrender. EDIT - Done. Really amazing puzzle!
At 9:00, I thought that the nine highlighted cells might also possess the property of having nine non-repeating digits. Alas, the solution has twice the 1 and not the 9 in these cells🤔
@36:50 I think Simon did not take into account the possibility of the 1 going with the 4 and 5 being in a bigger cage with grey cells. If someone has some ideas on how to solve this part, you're welcome.
The only move I think you can make at that point is to ask where 9 can go in the middle-right box. That then uncovers enough information to sort out the 5 cage
1:04:30 You've been deliberating on this so long, when it's much easier to spot the x-wing of 9's in c3 and c6 which places it in box 9. Sometimes you just gotta do sudoku in a sudoku puzzle lol.
At 36:49, whats stopping the cage from extending one cell down and then left? That could work concidering that box 7 could be r8-10 and column 3-5, and box 8 being r9-11 and column 6-8. Am i missing something that makes that configuration impossible?
And that 2 was solvable since 47:30 🤷♂But instead of taking it with the cage clues and the obvious ways lets take it with a 13 pair 😅 22 minutes later
That is so beautiful 🤩👍🏻 I absolutely loved solving this 🎉 And I have no doubt that Simon would have quickly found the „right“ way to place the 1 in the middle box 😄
61:14 - couldn't have done it without Simon holding my hand, although I tend to pause him and work for a while so I can think some things through on my own. I also pencil marked row 2 to figure out what Simon used set theory to discover. Drawing the lines for the cages helped me immensely in breaking into the bottom part of the puzzle. I think Simon's logic is always beautifully explained, and now I do things like color puzzles and think of set theory that I never would've dreamed of doing before I started watching the channel.
You can get the 9 in box nine with an x-wing on 9s because even though you don't know exactly where box 8 is yet, you know the nine in box 8 can only possibly go in the bottom two rows of the grid, just like the 9 in box 7, so the 9 in box nine has to go in the top row of box 9.
44:45 - I really get into this build.. .kept screaming at the screen to notice that the 5 cage CANNOT connect to the cage on row 8.... lol.. he sees so much that i dont notice, its funny when i notice something first...
36:46 maybe I'm wrong, but couldn't you make R8C6 black and make the 1 go on a merry to either left or right? As far as I'm concerned you could make R8C4 the 1 and all R8C5-7 black per example.
Simon worked that X-Wing on 2s using the 2 in column 2 so hard, until it should have been resolved by the placing of the 8 at @47:29, but then he never referenced the 2 cage again for the remainder of the puzzle, eventually placing the 2 over 20 minutes later by elimnation in the column. Poor 2 :(
We love you Simon. You ignored the fact that you had proved the 2 in the 2 cage and the 8 in the 45 cage. And the fact that you had an X wing on 5s with 2 looking at row 11 and 4s and 7s looking at cells. Loads of sudoku to be done in fact. But no! He refuses and uses modified set jiggery pokery. Another wonderful video of shouting at the screen. Than you.
I watched the first 40 minutes confident I wouldn’t be able to this but changed my mind half way through and finished the puzzle myself! Definitely not a full solve but it’s the first fog of war I’ve ever finished so I’m happy!
Those two blank squares with no cages in it weren't meaningful to me until I saw your solve. This is a very smart construction idea. Negative constraints can be so powerful.
At ~37:00, I don't see how you were able to conclude that the cage didn't extend into one of the bottom cages, using non-box cells in the interim. It's not obvious to me why the cage must stay in that box...
Love it when Simon uses some funny version of SET theory instead of simply asking himself what digits were left in R2 which includes a 7 and disambiguates the 67 in cage 3....😅😂
And then he goes and does it again when it wasn't necessary. Instead of using SET on boxes 7, 8, and 9, he could simply ask what was missing in column 2 (which is the 58 pair that Simon gets to later). Since that pair sees the previous 5 x-wing in boxes 8 and 9, that disambiguates those two. 😂
The 1 R7C5 36:48 was not a good deduction, since it can be elsewhere at this point. It could be R7C4 if the cage go out and come back or in another box below.
What would be good for the app is if there is a delay between entering a final digit and the lifting of the fog… there are times where I have accidentally added a final digit instead of a pencil mark revealing the fog without me deducting the answer. So a delay or confirmation action would give people a chance to correct if a number is entered in error.
'Only' 57 minutes into the video, but before I forget, wow 😍. How does one set this... especially with the I don't know, 18 or so cell cage connecting four regions.
At 36:50 what is to stop the 10-cage in column 6 from continuing downward into a dark square, then turning either left or right and picking up the final 1 from either of the two adjacent column, or even further afield? I can't see how Simon has proved that the 1 had to go where he placed it.
I've figured out the correct path at this point. There is a naked 9 in the middle right box. Placing it reveals enough to place the 5 in the box, which disambiguates the 45 pair in the 10-cage, revealing the location of its completion.
Figuring out the 9 in box 9 can be done more easily by notcing that the 9 in box 8 has to go in row 10 or 11, which creates an X-wing with box 7's 9, placing 9 in box 9 without having to do any math on the cage.
1:09:05 I’m not proud to say I called you a rude name when you placed that 2, but it had been there for ages and the 1-3 “giving it” to you gave me a good laugh.
1:05:00 Wow, very intricate logic to deduce that 9. But your suspicion was right, you could've simply used sudoku to get that 9 though since in column 3 there had to be a 9 in row 10 or 11 and in column 6 there also had to be a 9 in row 10 or 11 so in column 10 9 couldn't go in those rows. Btw I found it very amusing how long it took you to disambiguate the 78 pair in column 6 a while later even though you already stated several minutes earlier that if the cage extended upwards the top cell would have to be an 8 (And of course you use set theory instead of the 7 that was in the same row) :D
You mentioned the yellow lines looked like "some complicated electrical circuit". I wish there was a setter taking this idea to make a sudoku with some "electrical wires" rules! 🙂
Oh, wow, thanks so much! Very cool to see this on the channel (and a new personal record video length 😁). This is a puzzle that benefited a lot from feedback by early testers and solvers. Thanks in particular to MicroStudy, DarthParadox, Fool on Hill, and Myxo (and apologies to anyone I'm leaving out). Really looking forward to watching Simon take it on.
(psst: if you're reading this, you probably like sudoku, so I should mention that I publish five new puzzles every week in my newsletter, Artisanal Sudoku. TH-cam won't let me post a link, but it's not hard to find. I keep them fairly approachable (more so than this one, at least), and lately I've been including a fog puzzle every few weeks.)
This was the first deconstructed I solved and so happy the first was as awesome as this puzzle. Well done for the amazing puzzle. I was waiting for it to appear on this channel. Knew it had to be
This was a really great puzzle. Every step was so rewarding when I figured it out.
Don't get it!... How can a 3-cell cage have a total of 2? (By definition) If the other 2 digits don't count towards the total, THEY ARE NOT IN THE CAGE, surely? And why has Simon shaded the other two cell? There's nothing about shading in the ruleset...
@@nightwishlover8913 The shading is just for visual convenience. A 3-cell cage can have a total of 2 if it extends beyond the borders of the regions; cells outside regions don't have digits in them. So a 3-cell cage can have just a single digit in it.
@@eytanz So why not just make it a 1-cell cage? Oh I see - it shows the limits of the 3x3 box (I guess)?
36:46 I think a small unearned placement here - if the cell directly below the 45 pair is "dark," the cage has every opportunity in the world to escape horizontally through dark cells and eventually deposit the 1 elsewhere
Just came to comment this. He fluked the 1, it had plenty of possibilities in other regions if the cage extended outwards.
Okay, so I think the intended path is to get the 9 in r7c9 first since it's available at this point (using the 9 in r3c11 and seeing it can't go in the 9 cage in below), and go that route. It will then let you see that the 1 must go where Simon puts it.
@@Hybridrofl Yeah pretty sure it is the intended route. It's what I did. It's so easy to slip up and use false logic on this puzzle
@@Hybridrofl I'm trying to follow your logic here. I can see how you can get the 9 at that point, but not how that determines the 1.
@@chris5619 You just keep going from that point. Was really just stating that this is the start of the path that leads up to it.
Hopefully a Fog app is coming soon.
I was thinking a Fog Patreon reward set would be fun some month.
I would think a Lines app would be next. Renbans, German & Dutch whispers, Entropy Lines, equal sun lines, etc.
i'd buy it in a heartbeat
Day one purchase for me. Fog is my absolute favorite rule set
Brilliant puzzle and amazing solve
Simon doing jiggery pokery when there's a clear 7 looking at r8c6 for like 10 minutes is amusing, and par for the course honestly
He literally saw it at 59:00 saying "if this cell is in it HAS to be an 8" and then didn't mark it or remember when he proved that it was in. Also erased the 2 pencil mark in r5c2 causing him to forget the logic he did previously to establish where the 2 cage had to pick up its digit, but as usual came back around via some ridiculous backdoor set-theory logic to show that r6c2 had to be 2 at 1:09:10 he's absolutely amazing.
i saw this comment before the situation and thought "thats a bit silly" and as a person prone to violence when he said "and the 7 here (in r11c10) means this can't be a 7(r8c6) by our jiggery pokery method" i literally screamed "YOU DIDNT NEED JIGGERY POKERY YOU BRITISH INFANT!!" because i like infantalizing grown men, i see hes brilliant, but i think the way he talks about Sudoku is cute
Yes! Given that normally, he immediately makes complicated deductions that I only see after he has explained them (and then, they are quite obvious...), his inability to disambiguate the 78 pair in c6, when one of the 78s has seen another 7 for ages, as well as his blindness to see that r6c2 must be a 2, in order to complete 2 cage, well, they are kind of reassuring. Simon IS human, after all (just better than me at making logical deductions in those other 99% of the cases...).
@@RB-vw8zq felt this on a spiritual level
Right! He got the 7 and the 8 via set theory instead of basic of the basic sudoku. I don't know whether to be impressed or furious or both! Lol!
Simon missed that the two was in r7c2 . at 49:58, 51:22, and 52:08. And only figures it out at 1:09:06 when he gets a 13 pair. That was pretty funny.
Typically Simon, deducing his heart out to conclude the obvious.
Also at 1:07:37 he places 78 and doesn't notice the 7 looking at it for almost 5 minutes when he placed the 7 in the bottom row and says this must now be an 8
@@jamesdonnelly9217 Maybe he was just being hyper cautious as he was doing a beloved fog of war puzzle?
That hurt me so much to watch. He used the fact r6c2 was a 2 from the cell for a large part of the puzzle earlier to deduce there wasn't a two in r6 or r7 but didn't place it, which also would've cleared a lot of fog.
@@nc_skier2326 Yah he has a bad habit of not looking at his pencil marks when he places a digit, then believes his marks.
Wonderful puzzle! I think the two things that make FoW puzzles so satisfying are 1) The fog helps guide focus, reducing the "Where do I look next (eyes glazing over)" affliction many of us suffer from, and 2) The fog reveal serves as a nice "I'm on the right track!" reward. I only wish Sven could implent a Men In Black -style memory wiper for when I incorrectly deduce a digit, plunk it in, don't get a clear, and have to pretend I didn't learn anything.
1:12:12 I love how simon uses that 7 to elimate a 7 and not the fact the row already has a 7 in it
at ~1:04:00, another way to see r9c10 is 9, is to look at columns 3 and 6 where 9 can only be in r10 and r11. Add to that the 9 in c9 and c11 and now you only have one place left for the 9 in the bottom right box.
That's how I did it too
Yes, pretty simple x-wing, too simple for Simon. 🙂
Did it like that too, but I did have 9 cornermarks in row6. Without them I probably wouldn't have spotted it either
Couldn't it have been 4,2,3? Well not with your method but with his
Around 20:00 it can't be a giant 2-cage because you would still see the dotted top of the cage in R1C8.
At 32:00 you don't need set theory, just fill in the three missing digits (4, 5, 7) in the right end of row 2. This forces which way the 6/7 pair in the 18-cage goes and forces R4C6 to be a 6.
19:43 The simplest way imo to see that r2c7 is not the middle of a cage is that in order for a cage cell to have no cage boundary visible it must be entirely encircled by 8 cage cells, and if it were r1c8 would need to be cage and would have a cage boundary along its top edge at least
Thanks, i was near screaming at this
Agreed, also after that instead of assuming the cage went down and then invalidating that I would've just said 1 of those top 3 cells has to be a 2, so the cage has to go up at least 1 cell, would've been faster and cleaner imo
56:42. Another amazing puzzle. When I first started watching this channel, if a video was over 30 minutes long, I knew it was outside of my skillset. Now I can look at a sub 1:30:00 video and have a chance to solve it myself. The progress, much like a fog-of-war, is so satisfying to see.
31:05, For the second day in a row Simon explains set theory to prove something that basic sudoku would reveal :) the 457 triple in row 2 of box 1 rules out the 7 in row 3 of box 3 which unwinds into the 6 in box 2. I do love how watching CTC is helping me understand how all of these solving techniques are interrelated (the law of leftovers applies here as well). This right here is why CTC has helped me become better at sudoku than I ever expected to become.
32:39 row 2 contains the digits 1 to 9, so some sudoku on 7 would land on the same result as the set theory xD
But Simon wouldn't do sudoku this early in the puzzle, that's ludicrous
Yes looking for a complicated reason seems to be more common than it used to in older videos. Probably why they are all over 1 hour now
PS that isn’t meant to be a trolling comment-just finding some solves less enjoyable than they used to be
I came to the comments for the same thing. I'm like, "Just do Sudoku using your pencil marks." lol
@@shoezomaku Yeah, I agree too. Too many times I've wanted to shout at the screen that he can do something faster by sudoku or his pencil marks.
Best part: 1:07:24 Simon enters two 9's which clears the fog and shows the entire 8 cage and then immediately says "I still want to know what this 8 cage is doing. I suspect there is a way I can tell that, but I haven't figured out how to do that." 😁
My Brother never would i have thought i enjoy a 1 hour+ Video about cracking Puzzles Like that. Keep Up the nice and interesting vids. :)
44:20 the 5 cage can't go outside of the grey or it would merge with the new cage which contains a 7, 8 or 9, hence placing a 5 in c9r6.
To make legitimate progress at 36:45, notice how R7C9 must be a 9. There is no other place within the box for 9. Then you get to see a cage which traps the 5 cage so that it cannot have more counting cells. R6C9 becomes a 5, turning R6C6 into a 4. Then it more or less transposes into Simon's solution.
That still doesn't help determine where the 1 goes, does it?
@@mjschryver When R6C6 becomes 4, fog clears and shows the entire cage. Thus placing the 1.
thank you
Yes, I saw this early on and for once was 'shouting at my screen'. But past that, his logic was outstanding and definitely beyond mine
98:43 for me. I like puzzles like this where the solve path is long but nowhere along it requires mind-breaking, expert level logic.
I just finished this in 86:37, but to tell the truth, I had a lot of help through mistakes that didn’t clear fog. The thing is just a few months ago I don’t think I could have even gotten a third of the way into the puzzle, but I’ve learned so much from this channel that I at least have a fighting chance on puzzles like this.
Anyone else spend 10 minutes trying to psychicly, retroactively tell Simon the 5 cage can’t go down so the 53 has to be a 5? 😂
"After all this time?" - "ALWAYS"
I spent quite a while trying to figure out if the 5 cage could have been just ridiculously big haha.
@@Silvergrooves42 I noticed that if it went down into the ridiculously big cage, it must go into the green square, which means there would be two counting squares, which means it would have to be a 3-2 pair, but since the known cell couldn't be 2, that means the green cell must be 2, but there's a 2 in the same column already, so it can't be a 3-2 and must be a lone 5, so the cage can't go down and become a part of the huge cage. That was my logic.
Simon's still way better at this than I am, it's just different people notice different things.
@@ErzengelDesLichtes Yeah I noticed that too in the end. I just spent way too much time finding that logic haha.
I was telling him to look at the 9 cage on the right hand side middle box😂 There's no way to make it a 3 cell cage with the 2 counting cells and the numbers that already see it
1:00:30 A sane way to deduce that 9 could be by noticing that in column 6 a nine has to be either in row 10 or row 11. And in column 3 it is also has to be either in row 10 or row 11. Therefore in bottom right box there's only one spot left for a 9.
At 32:30, I enjoyed the complicated set-theory solution to determine the 6 and 7 in box 2. I just did sudoku on row 2, which seemed much simpler, but what do I know. :)
Awesome! Simon did the same later when he forgot that he'd already deduced the 8 in box 8, and didn't notice the sudoku when it came time to fill it in. Instead, he used "jiggery-pokery" to get it a few minutes later. :)
1:05:42 there is a simpler way to see a 9 there because we have 2 9's in the bottom 2 rows in the other two cages
Solved in only about an hour, really impressed with this one! I adore fog sudoku, don't have to worry about spotting the break-in, and the puzzle just flows wonderfully from one deduction to the next. Highly highly recommend this one :D
I'll admit to needing a hint; specifically, the comment Simon made at the 17:26 point of the video. With that one little kick in the keister, I was able to finish the rest of the sudoku (though it still took me nearly two hours, clocking in at a total time of 1:45:09).
Insane puzzle!
Simon, the way that you've evolved and updated your explanations for various sudoku secrets has been marvelous to watch, especially regarding phistomephels ring, and the way an X-wing in rows x, y helps place a digit in row z.
36:46 The pointed cell in r9c6 could not indeed contain an one. But the one could leave in r9c5, for example. At that point, we did not know where box 8 was.
You must have miscounted the rows as the cells in question are in row 8, not row 9.
73:52, fun solve, I feel liked it took my a long time to figure out the path for each row of boxes, flew through them once I got a break in, then got stuck again for the next row of boxes. Figuring out the placement of Box 8 took me the longest, probably 20 minutes of just staring at the screen to see what to do next.
Sometime in the last week I commented that fog sudokus with cages take advantage of the clue being in the left most cell of the top row and here we get this one!
Best puzzle you've had in a while!
60:42 for me, I honestly hadn't expected to finish a puzzle like this in just over an hour, but it really went quite smoothly. I only felt stuck once or twice, but managed to work through it without any help from the video. I was also so invested in the puzzle that I didn't even realise an hour had just flown by, which I think really says something about the flow of it.
54:16 for me, although I think I got lucky after not considering a possibility for a way that the 8 cage in box 7 could have grown.
Fantastic puzzle! I particularly like puzzles that require multiple different types of logic, and I really felt that here.
At 1:04:30 there was a easier way. Column 6 needed a nine that could only go on the bottom 2 rows, making an x wing of 9's on the bottom rows, making r9c10 the only possible place for 9 on box 9
Yep, exactly!
Simon, so interesting and fun to watch you do one of these deconstruction puzzles - and this time in the fog! I loved it. I also love the term 'grid furniture' and that you used the word piste early on - this channel is so rich, not only in logic and fun, but in excellent vocabulary. Thank you!
Yes, I noted that phrase too -- never heard it before, but it should become standard.
I love Fog of War. I never guess , but I can often tell straight away if I've made a logical error. It's not as impressive as Simon's solves but it's a nice extra crutch! Which I needed today for the 18 cage. 45:05
88:28, not a bad time for me! Especially since I won’t even attempt videos longer than 45 minutes because I always spend like 2 hours fooling around and then give up. But I love fog sudokus so much that I knew I’d be able to do it. I struggled a lot toward the end and finding the position of box “8” before realizing that the solution was to solve the numbers in box 9 using the 11 cage… I just really didn’t want to solve the 11 cage because it seemed really difficult and not useful. But it took like 10 seconds to do so.
@39:22 I got so excited he was gonna realize 9 goes in the bottom left corner of that 3x3. Such a tease
YEEEEEES! Beating Simon by 2 minutes makes me proud (completely compartmentalizing that he's explaning, being entertaining etc., while I'm staring at a screen for an hour like a catatonic rabbit...).
32:41
normal people: well row 2 needs a 7 somewhere so it must be in the middle row of that third box. that means the 7 from the 67 pair has to be in the second box. therefore that other 67 must be a 6.
simon: lets use set theory
Beautiful and quite approachable puzzle. I love the fogs.
This is the first deconstruction puzzle i attempted, took me about 2 hours with mistakes and having skipped to the solution for cross checking when i was hard stuck tho i didn't listen to explanations and only really needed help with the last 2 boxes so overall i think i did fairly well. i LOVE fog of war puzzles and hope we get more awsome ones in the future!
30:45 for me. What an awesome puzzle, really loved this one!!
I LOVE this type of sudoku so much!!! Thank you! And MOOOOORE of these please!🙂
I think this is one of the most difficult sudokus I've ever solved by myself. When I discovered the 135 pattern I couldn't stop thinking I wanted to hear Simon's reaction to it. And he didn't disappoint, upon solving it I watched it 1:05:28
Still, before putting 9 in R9C10, he should have proved, that 1 and 3 were impossible in R9C8 because of 135 in the circle on the left of R9.
Did this on LMD a few days ago and found it very tough! At around 53 minutes there was a really neat piece of logic available, that either a 6 or 7 in r7c3 forced a repeated digit into the 45 cage in r5c4, making r7c3 a 4. Great solve though, and a brilliant puzzle!
for the stuff at about 33:15 you can get the same result from observing that r2 c9-11 have to be a 457 triple to complete the row, giving you a 6 in r3c9
I'm usually intimidated by hour+ long video puzzles, but since it was fog I decided to give it a go, and boy was I glad I did. Very fun solve. More fog please!!
Finished in 42 minutes of absolute joy 👍🏻👍🏻
Fog of War and Deconstruction puzzles are both among the very best developments in the sudoku world, and to combine them like this is sublime.
Although I must confess that I did slightly fluke the 1 in box 5 like Simon did, without considering the possibility of the cage extending down through dark cells and then out to the side 😳
1:21:29! This was a really nice FoW and Deconstruction hybrid! Probably could've saved some time if I had spotted r7c1 earlier, but it was still a fantastic puzzle nevertheless!
On these amazingly complicated puzzles, I'm always here for Simon's appalling scanning skills. 🙂
You know, when he says he "enjoys reading the comments, especially when they're kind"...
@@EricMill And you know that this is part of the game? He saying „I‘m sorry, you’re probably all shouting at me now.“ and us making fun of his atrocious scanning in the comments… we love him, but sometimes, he just drives us bonkers 😃
@@jensschmidt in podcasts episodes and other interviews, he's described comments like this as tough to read and unpleasant.
I love fog puzzles! This one was great, very tricky but much fun! Thanks to the setter. 🎉
Fun puzzle. My first exposure to fog of war. 63:21 in total, with some missteps
I haven't watched this yet, I'm giving a try to the puzzle. Good progress in about 80 minutes, now I'm kinda stuck with about half the digits in their right place. I won't surrender.
EDIT - Done. Really amazing puzzle!
Lovely puzzle. Very fun to both solve and to watch!
This is an amazing fog variant. This is the first of it I've seen.
At 9:00, I thought that the nine highlighted cells might also possess the property of having nine non-repeating digits. Alas, the solution has twice the 1 and not the 9 in these cells🤔
@36:50 I think Simon did not take into account the possibility of the 1 going with the 4 and 5 being in a bigger cage with grey cells. If someone has some ideas on how to solve this part, you're welcome.
The only move I think you can make at that point is to ask where 9 can go in the middle-right box. That then uncovers enough information to sort out the 5 cage
34:17 for me. Love these Fog of war puzzles!
1:04:30 You've been deliberating on this so long, when it's much easier to spot the x-wing of 9's in c3 and c6 which places it in box 9. Sometimes you just gotta do sudoku in a sudoku puzzle lol.
Jumped on this one as soon as it showed up yesterday! Just a fantastic one, I loved the combination of fog of war/deconstruction.
At 36:49, whats stopping the cage from extending one cell down and then left? That could work concidering that box 7 could be r8-10 and column 3-5, and box 8 being r9-11 and column 6-8. Am i missing something that makes that configuration impossible?
Not at that stage, no. Simon just got lucky (by guessing). It can be proved to be a correct conclusion, but Simon just made an baseless assumption.
1:10:16 With at least 6 digits easily placeable: 'I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to use modified set theory...' 😂
I will always be amazed at the fervor in Simon's "FOG!" pronunciation.
18:12 The location (row 4) of the 45 clue means the 3X3 box he drew is wrong because then the 45 cage's highest row would be row 3 not row 4.
53:20 imagine getting that 7 before the 2 in the same box even if it has been marked forever 😅
And that 2 was solvable since 47:30 🤷♂But instead of taking it with the cage clues and the obvious ways lets take it with a 13 pair 😅 22 minutes later
1:30:10 for me. Sorting out the 1s and 3s at the end took me quite a while. I guess my brain was already burned out by then.
Really fun one 127 min love these fog rules. Never played one of these create own boxes puzzles.
1:05:30 Theres an x wing of 9's in columns 3 and 6 and rows 10 and 11 definitely putting a 9 in r9c10.
That is so beautiful 🤩👍🏻
I absolutely loved solving this 🎉
And I have no doubt that Simon would have quickly found the „right“ way to place the 1 in the middle box 😄
Isak here, you decoded my message fully correctly 😁
61:14 - couldn't have done it without Simon holding my hand, although I tend to pause him and work for a while so I can think some things through on my own. I also pencil marked row 2 to figure out what Simon used set theory to discover. Drawing the lines for the cages helped me immensely in breaking into the bottom part of the puzzle. I think Simon's logic is always beautifully explained, and now I do things like color puzzles and think of set theory that I never would've dreamed of doing before I started watching the channel.
You can get the 9 in box nine with an x-wing on 9s because even though you don't know exactly where box 8 is yet, you know the nine in box 8 can only possibly go in the bottom two rows of the grid, just like the 9 in box 7, so the 9 in box nine has to go in the top row of box 9.
Such a beautiful puzzle...🙏
1:09:10 Simon proves that the 2 that was obviously a 2 from logic 30 minutes ago, is in fact a 2, using Sudoku.
44:45 - I really get into this build.. .kept screaming at the screen to notice that the 5 cage CANNOT connect to the cage on row 8.... lol.. he sees so much that i dont notice, its funny when i notice something first...
36:46 maybe I'm wrong, but couldn't you make R8C6 black and make the 1 go on a merry to either left or right? As far as I'm concerned you could make R8C4 the 1 and all R8C5-7 black per example.
Yep, Simon made an assumption and got lucky!
Simon worked that X-Wing on 2s using the 2 in column 2 so hard, until it should have been resolved by the placing of the 8 at @47:29, but then he never referenced the 2 cage again for the remainder of the puzzle, eventually placing the 2 over 20 minutes later by elimnation in the column. Poor 2 :(
That was the most I've ever understood set theory. It was something that has always elduded me as a very novice sudoku solver.
We love you Simon. You ignored the fact that you had proved the 2 in the 2 cage and the 8 in the 45 cage. And the fact that you had an X wing on 5s with 2 looking at row 11 and 4s and 7s looking at cells. Loads of sudoku to be done in fact. But no! He refuses and uses modified set jiggery pokery. Another wonderful video of shouting at the screen. Than you.
almost 80min for me - got stuck 2 times - tks for that great puzzle and solve - also not sure about the 1 at 36:46
At 42:47, Simon says there's a 1 in 3 squares in Row 6, but the 1 could have been in Row 8 (if that 3x3 went down instead of up).
Oh no, I see my error! (As usual, Simon is right :) )
I watched the first 40 minutes confident I wouldn’t be able to this but changed my mind half way through and finished the puzzle myself! Definitely not a full solve but it’s the first fog of war I’ve ever finished so I’m happy!
Those two blank squares with no cages in it weren't meaningful to me until I saw your solve. This is a very smart construction idea. Negative constraints can be so powerful.
Did Simon miss a possible outcome at 36:50? I mean he would have disproved in a single step anyway but Simon missing a possibility is new to me.
1:08:00 I need to figure out what the 8 cage does and heads off not realizing that the cage is fully revealed.
Love the way that Simon uses jiggery pokery when pure Sudoko would suffice. Beautifully typical Simon.
At ~37:00, I don't see how you were able to conclude that the cage didn't extend into one of the bottom cages, using non-box cells in the interim. It's not obvious to me why the cage must stay in that box...
Can't find an easy logical way past this; I can make a bit more progress (eg: the 9 in "box 6"), but I cannot progress without "cheating". :/
Love it when Simon uses some funny version of SET theory instead of simply asking himself what digits were left in R2 which includes a 7 and disambiguates the 67 in cage 3....😅😂
And then he goes and does it again when it wasn't necessary. Instead of using SET on boxes 7, 8, and 9, he could simply ask what was missing in column 2 (which is the 58 pair that Simon gets to later). Since that pair sees the previous 5 x-wing in boxes 8 and 9, that disambiguates those two. 😂
The 1 R7C5 36:48 was not a good deduction, since it can be elsewhere at this point. It could be R7C4 if the cage go out and come back or in another box below.
What would be good for the app is if there is a delay between entering a final digit and the lifting of the fog… there are times where I have accidentally added a final digit instead of a pencil mark revealing the fog without me deducting the answer. So a delay or confirmation action would give people a chance to correct if a number is entered in error.
'Only' 57 minutes into the video, but before I forget, wow 😍.
How does one set this... especially with the I don't know, 18 or so cell cage connecting four regions.
Took me 64 minutes, but i made it through a deconstruction puzzle, and in the fog as well. Wow.
This was so much fun to solve! Thank you to James and Simon.
At 36:50 what is to stop the 10-cage in column 6 from continuing downward into a dark square, then turning either left or right and picking up the final 1 from either of the two adjacent column, or even further afield? I can't see how Simon has proved that the 1 had to go where he placed it.
I've figured out the correct path at this point. There is a naked 9 in the middle right box. Placing it reveals enough to place the 5 in the box, which disambiguates the 45 pair in the 10-cage, revealing the location of its completion.
Figuring out the 9 in box 9 can be done more easily by notcing that the 9 in box 8 has to go in row 10 or 11, which creates an X-wing with box 7's 9, placing 9 in box 9 without having to do any math on the cage.
52:06 for me, absolutely spectacular deconstruction puzzle
1:09:05 I’m not proud to say I called you a rude name when you placed that 2, but it had been there for ages and the 1-3 “giving it” to you gave me a good laugh.
1:05:00 Wow, very intricate logic to deduce that 9. But your suspicion was right, you could've simply used sudoku to get that 9 though since in column 3 there had to be a 9 in row 10 or 11 and in column 6 there also had to be a 9 in row 10 or 11 so in column 10 9 couldn't go in those rows.
Btw I found it very amusing how long it took you to disambiguate the 78 pair in column 6 a while later even though you already stated several minutes earlier that if the cage extended upwards the top cell would have to be an 8 (And of course you use set theory instead of the 7 that was in the same row) :D
You mentioned the yellow lines looked like "some complicated electrical circuit". I wish there was a setter taking this idea to make a sudoku with some "electrical wires" rules! 🙂
5 minutes faster than Simon with a leisurely approach and only touchpad? That's going to be my best achievement in my life.