Thanks for the kind words everyone. It was a pleasure to make this, and I'm glad it spoke to some of you! If you want to try some of my puzzles, I have posted what I consider my best puzzles on LMD. Links to all of them are found here logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Benutzer/eingestellt.php?name=zetamath If you've done a lot of my puzzles already, you might correctly guess that the puzzle from the intro is real, and combines many of the rulesets of previous puzzles. If you want to give it a go, here is a link: f-puzzles.com/?id=y6lkbtzj .
I dont know how zetamath managed this, but it feels like this video was made specifically for me. If I didn't know any better, I'd think he was inside my head telling me how I should go about setting my first puzzle that I've been working on for a month or two now, and the steps and lessons i've learned along the way. You have no idea how unfathomably helpful i found this video.
I’m still in the first five minutes of the video and came down to the comments to say the same thing. I’ve always loved puzzle video games and non-sudoku Nikoli-style puzzles. Started watching CTC around a year ago, and have wanted to start setting, but I’m not sure how to start. I bet there are many others in our situation, and Zetamath will be an inspiration to many. Now I need to go back and watch the rest of the video.
Having never set a sudoku in my life and being okay at completing them, this is an exceptional video. Approachable logic. Exquisite presentation. Top notch.
This series keeps the amazing quality and variety. I can't thank Mark and Simon and the amazing contributing setters enough. Also, the editing was great in this one. Congratulations, Zetamath.
What a great thing it is when you share a dream. Thanx Zetamath for an incredible incite. CTC is always my pleasure place. Respect to Simon and Mark and the rest of you that keeps on making it that way. X
I have actually just finished my puzzle yesterday, and today I was able to remove a redundant clue. I had a feeling there is another "unnesesary" clue that I might be able to get rid of. But with your tips, I realize that it can still be okay the way it is. Thank you for all the great tips!
This is a really great video. I wish I had seen it before setting my first puzzle. I had an idea for a specific ruleset but I had no clue how to get f-puzzles to help me with it. Thanks to this video, I know now. So I set a puzzle with standard rules. I posted it on the discord server and had 2 responses that told me it was „quite nice“, which made me very happy. I posted it on LMG and had a few solves without comments. After so few responses I thought that setting is probably not what I’m ment to do. Well, this video encourages me to get going and set new puzzles that hopefully other people like.
Thank you so much for making this brilliant insight into your approach to setting. Every time I watch a setting video on this channel, I am concerned that no more will come because each so far might be seen as a hard act to follow! But all so far have been extraordinary in different ways, sometimes contradictory but always right! I am addicted, and looking forward to the next one. Happy Anniversary Zetamath, and thank you again for your video.
Honestly I had exactly the same journey. About 3 years ago I got into Sudoku and I LOVED playing classic Sudoku. Then I discovered Cracking the Cryptic, and I spent AGES AND AGES playing their Sudokus (also trying to beat their times for each, still trying and the closest I have come is 2 mins off), they are so mentally stimulating and have really paved the way for me into Sudoku, and hopefully I will start making my own Sudokus for others to play! So thank you so much to Cracking the Cryptic from me and from New Zealand! not only have you given me something I will enjoy, you gave me another way to procrastinate studying! 😂 - Zaqary
So I'm stopping at 4 minutes in to say that I feel like you and I are kindred spirits, zetamath. The puzzle on this channel that got me very excited and considering puzzle setting was a puzzle very similar to the one you describe (specifically, AFrayedKnot's X-Cages, which uses a similar style of puzzle.) It's that double layer, as well as the enticing relationships, that really got me overjoyed with the idea of puzzles. This was a cool video to watch though, and thanks to zetamath for the interesting talk!
I 😍 this channel. And series. And video. All of the setter's vids have been truely amazing. But this one is just so positive and encouraging, I may even give it a go myself soon. I do have plenty of ideas. I like to think DiMono even saw my comments regarding where to take the 'wrogn' thing; because as it turned out they were _very_ closely aligned with what I posted in comments to (I think) the Undar Beyond tribute. But I've never tried setting any of them because even with the best advice about themes and pacing and audience targeting and construction techniques it still looks so damn hard to get started! All of the videos in this series have been amazing. But I like this one especially because it is so humble and so 'Just go and try it.' (Admittedly, I've not seen it all yet. But if it takes a sharp left at the traffic lights I can always edit this.) I admire how quickly you have risen to setting such amazing puzzles, and I'm sure this video will inspire so many others that Simon and Mark will someday reflect on the beast they have unleashed with this series! 😈 So in summary; a very 'approachable' setter's video.
Not that I'm a setter, but this made me think of an idea. Have a sudoku where some number of boxes have one cage in them, and each box with a cage also has a "pill" where the two digits in the pill match the sum of the digits in the cage. Note that there might be cells in a box which are neither in the cage nor the "pill". And now that I've done the hard part, someone else can spend the weeks of effort to turn that vague idea into a world-class puzzle! 😀
Just a few minutes in and after watching a bunch of these videos, I can already tell this is more my wavelength. Rather than connected layers, I was thinking I like when the digits mean something else. (As in, they "are" something besides the digit, and that's relevant, even if you already know the digit.) The "nobody explodes" one with the bombs is where it really sparked for me, and after looking to see who made it, maybe I shouldn't be surprised! (It was zetamath.) The other big inspiration so far is Sudon'tku by Isaac Resnikoff. I love that it can be an interesting solve for experts and people who are newer alike, because (if this makes sense), you're scaling horizontally, rather than vertically. They may still be better at it with some applicable tricks and being generally better at puzzles, but the gap is much smaller and it's less about in-depth advanced tricks that I quite frankly don't know and am not really interested in. I also like the idea of it being more about the experience rather than obscure math tricks, whether it ends up being easy or hard. Sometimes I worry people might be less interested in the kind of thing I'd like to make, being perhaps by nature, "less sudoku". After all, I'm more into game design than sudoku. Edit: An hour later, I see I was spot on, and came to a lot of the same conclusions throughout, even with what I wrote here, lol. Well I doubt I'll be making as many as zetamath, so it's nice to see the philosophies proven, whether I do them justice or not. One question I still have (that I had from the beginning) is how to ensure unique solutions with new rules that existing tools aren't aware of, especially when "treat pencil marks as given" isn't an option. This is huge for things I mentioned above, where a digit "means something" and itself becomes a clue, which I suppose often falls under global rules rather than local rules. Maybe that's the main point of difference, I really do like global rules where getting a digit gives more information than just having another digit - where a digit isn't just a constant, but a function or method, a game piece, something that affects. I feel like for this I'd need to write my own solving logic, and I guess I'm wondering (out loud in text to nobody in particular right now) what the best existing tool for that would be, or if I would need to start basically from scratch. I also like the idea of a very broad rule with very few clues (or none) that still boils down to a single (or a small set) of solutions. I think there's something elegant feeling about it.
26:01 "and then you just add clues here or there". Now that's what I was wondering when I saw your grid for Shapes/Colours: how on earth are you supposed to go about looking for a suitable cell-set for each shape?
My inner gamer got really excited when I saw "Witness sudoku" at 47:56 as a future idea... The witness is my favourite puzzle game of all time, and if zetamath sets a sudoku using witness puzzles as a ruleset, you best believe Im solving it the second it comes out. And if you see this, which witness puzzle do you think will work best with sudoku?
All it will take is f-puzzles or the like supporting drawing on the grid and there will suddenly be a million different Witness puzzle ideas. I actually think the easiest idea from the witness to use is the omino shapes that combine in various ways. It is so flexible and mindbending, I think it has a lot of potential. But really, there are an awful lot of ideas that would make for great sudoku!
15:20 "it's incredibly easy to box yourself into a puzzle that has no solutions" and 35:42. And incredibly easy to unbox yourself: remove a clue. That happens even when designing a sudoku with no extra global constraints.
33:38 Why do you think this is a bad thing? I think that if your puzzle enables the solver to make a deduction about one part, and another part enables the same deduction, they get a further reward for the work they put in, to find the first deduction. So that should be gratifying for the user. On the other hand, if every step of progress entails a separate deduction and separate thought, the problem might seem to be an ungratifying chore.
I'd like to also congratulate you on professionalism of the video that you have put together - in addition to the information contained within. You led me on a wonderful journey ....
@@bearcubdaycare I did eventually create a less complicated Roman sudoku, with Thermos and Kropki - 1:2 and 1:10. It worked well enough, but I chose to leave it in testing.
i wish i had seen all these setter-video's before i set my first few puzzles. i found that very hard to do, and quite frustrating. a lot of the tips would've really helped. but also, the tips aren't necessarily very easy to apply. so i might actually never have tried. because it's a bit daunting. i underestimated the time it takes to actually make a puzzle work at all.....
Hey, I was wondering if there is some sort of catalog for classic sudokus created on the cracking the cryptic's web app? I am currently playing on sudoku.com but there aren't many notation options in there (example middle versus corner pencil marks) like there are on your app =/
I'm loving the video, but as an author (in addition to a setter) I have to comment on your book analogy, because I strongly disagree with it. Some authors write better without knowing the ending of their story, some write better with knowing the ending of their story. I could go into a lot of detail, but instead of doing so I'll just point towards Brandon Sandereson as an example. He writes some of the most surprising endings I have ever come across, yet his writing style is extremely methodical, and he plans everything out in detail, years and sometimes decades in advance. Having said that, I completely agree with this view when it comes to setting puzzles.
![เขามัทรี - เอ็กซ์ ศุภกฤต - จอนนี่มิวสิค [ Official MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AS9ufKuQIVs/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks for the kind words everyone. It was a pleasure to make this, and I'm glad it spoke to some of you!
If you want to try some of my puzzles, I have posted what I consider my best puzzles on LMD. Links to all of them are found here logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Benutzer/eingestellt.php?name=zetamath
If you've done a lot of my puzzles already, you might correctly guess that the puzzle from the intro is real, and combines many of the rulesets of previous puzzles. If you want to give it a go, here is a link: f-puzzles.com/?id=y6lkbtzj .
Are you 3Blue1Brown, because your animation style feels equally beautiful and distinct!
Thank You!
@@Whatwhat3434 I'm not, but we did use his software to animate the sudoku grids, so very good eye!
@@zetamath Oh really? That's excellent!
I dont know how zetamath managed this, but it feels like this video was made specifically for me. If I didn't know any better, I'd think he was inside my head telling me how I should go about setting my first puzzle that I've been working on for a month or two now, and the steps and lessons i've learned along the way.
You have no idea how unfathomably helpful i found this video.
I’m still in the first five minutes of the video and came down to the comments to say the same thing.
I’ve always loved puzzle video games and non-sudoku Nikoli-style puzzles. Started watching CTC around a year ago, and have wanted to start setting, but I’m not sure how to start.
I bet there are many others in our situation, and Zetamath will be an inspiration to many.
Now I need to go back and watch the rest of the video.
@riokaii @@suburiboy Thank you both so much. If you're on the discord, feel free to message me there!
It's so fascinating to see the different philosophies cropping up in this series.
thankyou for such amazing videos that i watch even during sex (when i am orthonogally connected to my wife). Love from Jamaica
!
I’m worried for you
Man, I wish I can brag about this on YT comments. xD
Jokes aside, 😳
🤦♀️
Jamaica do that, or is she happy enough to go along with that? 😬😂
Zetamath is a total graphic wiz! Thanks so much for this video. Invaluable.
That would be my lovely producer/husband, but I'm super glad you liked them!
@@zetamath Nice! Stellar job on that by the way. And of course on the video too!
@@zetamath okay you both have mad skills
Having never set a sudoku in my life and being okay at completing them, this is an exceptional video. Approachable logic. Exquisite presentation. Top notch.
This series keeps the amazing quality and variety. I can't thank Mark and Simon and the amazing contributing setters enough. Also, the editing was great in this one. Congratulations, Zetamath.
this series continues to delight.
thanks CTC for posting this and thanks Zetamath for taking the time on explaining your thoughts and techniques.
great vid :)
What a great thing it is when you share a dream. Thanx Zetamath for an incredible incite. CTC is always my pleasure place. Respect to Simon and Mark and the rest of you that keeps on making it that way. X
I have actually just finished my puzzle yesterday, and today I was able to remove a redundant clue.
I had a feeling there is another "unnesesary" clue that I might be able to get rid of. But with your tips, I realize that it can still be okay the way it is.
Thank you for all the great tips!
This is a really great video. I wish I had seen it before setting my first puzzle. I had an idea for a specific ruleset but I had no clue how to get f-puzzles to help me with it. Thanks to this video, I know now. So I set a puzzle with standard rules. I posted it on the discord server and had 2 responses that told me it was „quite nice“, which made me very happy. I posted it on LMG and had a few solves without comments. After so few responses I thought that setting is probably not what I’m ment to do. Well, this video encourages me to get going and set new puzzles that hopefully other people like.
Thank you so much for making this brilliant insight into your approach to setting. Every time I watch a setting video on this channel, I am concerned that no more will come because each so far might be seen as a hard act to follow! But all so far have been extraordinary in different ways, sometimes contradictory but always right! I am addicted, and looking forward to the next one. Happy Anniversary Zetamath, and thank you again for your video.
It's very interesting to see the differences of approach and philosophies all focused on a common goal of creating fun puzzles!
Honestly I had exactly the same journey. About 3 years ago I got into Sudoku and I LOVED playing classic Sudoku. Then I discovered Cracking the Cryptic, and I spent AGES AND AGES playing their Sudokus (also trying to beat their times for each, still trying and the closest I have come is 2 mins off), they are so mentally stimulating and have really paved the way for me into Sudoku, and hopefully I will start making my own Sudokus for others to play!
So thank you so much to Cracking the Cryptic from me and from New Zealand! not only have you given me something I will enjoy, you gave me another way to procrastinate studying! 😂
- Zaqary
I have no desire to be a setter, but I totally enjoyed this! Very clear and easy to understand!
Using breaks of the puzzle to come up with interesting logic sounds so cool. Thanks for all the ideas.
So I'm stopping at 4 minutes in to say that I feel like you and I are kindred spirits, zetamath. The puzzle on this channel that got me very excited and considering puzzle setting was a puzzle very similar to the one you describe (specifically, AFrayedKnot's X-Cages, which uses a similar style of puzzle.) It's that double layer, as well as the enticing relationships, that really got me overjoyed with the idea of puzzles.
This was a cool video to watch though, and thanks to zetamath for the interesting talk!
Awesome video! Thanks for doing this presentation zetamath!
One way to phrase it is "What question did I not ask myself that I should have?"
Great discussion condensing principles and guidelines for setting. Thanks.
I 😍 this channel. And series. And video.
All of the setter's vids have been truely amazing. But this one is just so positive and encouraging, I may even give it a go myself soon.
I do have plenty of ideas. I like to think DiMono even saw my comments regarding where to take the 'wrogn' thing; because as it turned out they were _very_ closely aligned with what I posted in comments to (I think) the Undar Beyond tribute.
But I've never tried setting any of them because even with the best advice about themes and pacing and audience targeting and construction techniques it still looks so damn hard to get started!
All of the videos in this series have been amazing. But I like this one especially because it is so humble and so 'Just go and try it.'
(Admittedly, I've not seen it all yet. But if it takes a sharp left at the traffic lights I can always edit this.)
I admire how quickly you have risen to setting such amazing puzzles, and I'm sure this video will inspire so many others that Simon and Mark will someday reflect on the beast they have unleashed with this series! 😈
So in summary; a very 'approachable' setter's video.
Not that I'm a setter, but this made me think of an idea. Have a sudoku where some number of boxes have one cage in them, and each box with a cage also has a "pill" where the two digits in the pill match the sum of the digits in the cage. Note that there might be cells in a box which are neither in the cage nor the "pill". And now that I've done the hard part, someone else can spend the weeks of effort to turn that vague idea into a world-class puzzle! 😀
Just a few minutes in and after watching a bunch of these videos, I can already tell this is more my wavelength.
Rather than connected layers, I was thinking I like when the digits mean something else. (As in, they "are" something besides the digit, and that's relevant, even if you already know the digit.) The "nobody explodes" one with the bombs is where it really sparked for me, and after looking to see who made it, maybe I shouldn't be surprised! (It was zetamath.) The other big inspiration so far is Sudon'tku by Isaac Resnikoff.
I love that it can be an interesting solve for experts and people who are newer alike, because (if this makes sense), you're scaling horizontally, rather than vertically. They may still be better at it with some applicable tricks and being generally better at puzzles, but the gap is much smaller and it's less about in-depth advanced tricks that I quite frankly don't know and am not really interested in.
I also like the idea of it being more about the experience rather than obscure math tricks, whether it ends up being easy or hard. Sometimes I worry people might be less interested in the kind of thing I'd like to make, being perhaps by nature, "less sudoku". After all, I'm more into game design than sudoku.
Edit: An hour later, I see I was spot on, and came to a lot of the same conclusions throughout, even with what I wrote here, lol. Well I doubt I'll be making as many as zetamath, so it's nice to see the philosophies proven, whether I do them justice or not. One question I still have (that I had from the beginning) is how to ensure unique solutions with new rules that existing tools aren't aware of, especially when "treat pencil marks as given" isn't an option. This is huge for things I mentioned above, where a digit "means something" and itself becomes a clue, which I suppose often falls under global rules rather than local rules.
Maybe that's the main point of difference, I really do like global rules where getting a digit gives more information than just having another digit - where a digit isn't just a constant, but a function or method, a game piece, something that affects. I feel like for this I'd need to write my own solving logic, and I guess I'm wondering (out loud in text to nobody in particular right now) what the best existing tool for that would be, or if I would need to start basically from scratch.
I also like the idea of a very broad rule with very few clues (or none) that still boils down to a single (or a small set) of solutions. I think there's something elegant feeling about it.
I liked the difficulty comment..
1= really easy....
5= takes Simon about an hour
26:01 "and then you just add clues here or there". Now that's what I was wondering when I saw your grid for Shapes/Colours: how on earth are you supposed to go about looking for a suitable cell-set for each shape?
The whole talk i s a tricoloured yin-yang symbol. Congrats, you did it! 👍
My inner gamer got really excited when I saw "Witness sudoku" at 47:56 as a future idea... The witness is my favourite puzzle game of all time, and if zetamath sets a sudoku using witness puzzles as a ruleset, you best believe Im solving it the second it comes out.
And if you see this, which witness puzzle do you think will work best with sudoku?
All it will take is f-puzzles or the like supporting drawing on the grid and there will suddenly be a million different Witness puzzle ideas.
I actually think the easiest idea from the witness to use is the omino shapes that combine in various ways. It is so flexible and mindbending, I think it has a lot of potential. But really, there are an awful lot of ideas that would make for great sudoku!
We have had a lot of requests asking whether I could play The Witness on stream.... is this something anyone would be interested in?!
@@CrackingTheCryptic YES!!
@@CrackingTheCryptic A million times yes!
@@CrackingTheCryptic A thousand times yes!
Excellent video!
15:20 "it's incredibly easy to box yourself into a puzzle that has no solutions" and 35:42. And incredibly easy to unbox yourself: remove a clue. That happens even when designing a sudoku with no extra global constraints.
33:38 Why do you think this is a bad thing? I think that if your puzzle enables the solver to make a deduction about one part, and another part enables the same deduction, they get a further reward for the work they put in, to find the first deduction. So that should be gratifying for the user. On the other hand, if every step of progress entails a separate deduction and separate thought, the problem might seem to be an ungratifying chore.
Very nice video.
I'd like to also congratulate you on professionalism of the video that you have put together - in addition to the information contained within. You led me on a wonderful journey ....
My very first sudoku I tried to set involved ancient Roman scrolls, with Roman numbers.
It didn't work out that well.
Sounds like a neat concept, anyway. Maybe someone can make something from it.
@@bearcubdaycare I did eventually create a less complicated Roman sudoku, with Thermos and Kropki - 1:2 and 1:10.
It worked well enough, but I chose to leave it in testing.
I honestly clicked on this because I saw the Witness screenies. I was not disappointed
i wish i had seen all these setter-video's before i set my first few puzzles. i found that very hard to do, and quite frustrating. a lot of the tips would've really helped. but also, the tips aren't necessarily very easy to apply. so i might actually never have tried. because it's a bit daunting. i underestimated the time it takes to actually make a puzzle work at all.....
does anybody have the link for the fillominoish killer by SirWoezel that he talks about at the beginning?? I can't find it
Tried searching, couldn't find it...
th-cam.com/video/Dn0iOjgIucU/w-d-xo.html
Could Phistomofel make a setting video?
I hope it's just 45 minutes of maniacal laughter.
@@rhoward2227 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
@@rhoward2227 "The simplest way to set a sudoku puzzle is .."
And then what you said.
I think Simon said they have requested it but Phistomofel has not been able to make one yet.
@@stephenbeck7222 ".. Phistomefel has not been able to make one yet which is in any way understandable by mere mortal humans."
FTFY ;)
So cool to see Chris Griffin is into sudoku! (sorry zetamath, you are awesome)
I take it Zetamath is not too crazy about thermos.
🤩
Hey, I was wondering if there is some sort of catalog for classic sudokus created on the cracking the cryptic's web app? I am currently playing on sudoku.com but there aren't many notation options in there (example middle versus corner pencil marks) like there are on your app =/
There is a spreadsheet of every puzzle solved on the channel tinyurl.com/CTCCatalogue
I'm loving the video, but as an author (in addition to a setter) I have to comment on your book analogy, because I strongly disagree with it. Some authors write better without knowing the ending of their story, some write better with knowing the ending of their story.
I could go into a lot of detail, but instead of doing so I'll just point towards Brandon Sandereson as an example. He writes some of the most surprising endings I have ever come across, yet his writing style is extremely methodical, and he plans everything out in detail, years and sometimes decades in advance.
Having said that, I completely agree with this view when it comes to setting puzzles.
The tyranny of some logic .
First!