📕Get my FREE Solving Guide that will help you solve over 80% of all Sudoku puzzles🧩to include NYT Hard👉👉www.buymeacoffee.com/timberlakeB/e/125822 Time Stamps 0:00 Intro 00:23 Fish Strategy Review 03:13 Jellyfish #1 04:47 Jellyfish Definition and Eliminations 07:29 Jellyfish #2 09:21 Jellyfish #3

The secret of understanding Sudoku is still secret for all.

@SmartHobbies

2 ай бұрын

Does it involve the number 45? 😀

I found the 78 jellyfish while cornermarking. but the 9 jellyfish only after I finished centermarking the grid. Only that last one unstuck me, but I still needed to spot lone digits, and triples to get through. It was still a fight. I hope you don't mind if I go into instructor mode, to suggest ideas. There's a general concept which I only know how to explain by examples. Simon did a puzzle a couple years ago (involving "little killers" if that's the right term) where a typo led to a crash, requiring him to backtrack. His first pass through a sequence found one position but missed another -- a certain cell had (say) 46. His second pass found the second but missed the first, so the cell had (say) 67. Both were correct as the cell actually had 6. If a cell contains 46 centermarked, it's not wrong to centermark it 467 because if it contains one of 4 and 6, it automatically contains one of 4, 6, and 7. Triples can be thought of like this. So can a row in a swordfish. If 6 is placed in a cell, it's still perfectly fine to say that that cell must contain 467, for example in a swordfish. If a cell is blocked to a digit, it's still valid to say the digit is in one of two, three, four, etc. cells including the blocked cell. I learned to spot Sashimi finned X-wings and similar, before I heard of them, for this reason. Likewise, before I properly understood the skyscraper, I treated it as a pair of finned X-wings. (Usually only one was needed; a pointing pair took care of the other.) I always color my X-wings, swordfish, etc. -- so that I can recall them. Usually, I don't color a cell blocked to the digit, but I do if a fin is attached to the cell. Twice, "etc." included 5-fish (squirmbags?), one of which was finned (accidental and superfluous). 5:20 One could, if one wanted to, color R9C3 (with 5) and R9C5 (seeing a 7) orange to emphasize the 4x4 nature of the jellyfish. In row 9, 7 is still in one of those four columns.

@SmartHobbies

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing these tips, John. I like how you see smaller stategies as parts of larger ones.

@paulbrooks2539

2 ай бұрын

Lost me !!!!!

@JohnRandomness105

2 ай бұрын

@@paulbrooks2539 Sorry to read that.

This puzzle took me over 1 1/2 hours, over 2 sittings. I stopped after 10 minutes the first time because I was disgusted by the pattern of the puzzle. But then I went back later and finished it. The coloring took me a long time, partially because I don't want fancy apps on my computer. But I found the jellyfishes and a Delta Variant, and that finally got me home. I will say that I would have NEVER been able to finish this puzzle a couple years ago, so that says something anyway.

@SmartHobbies

2 ай бұрын

That is a great way to look at this, Brad, that you know you would not have been able to solve this puzzle a couple of years ago. I am happy to hear about your progress. Great job.

@JohnRandomness105

2 ай бұрын

I remember a comment that went something like this, about a video Simon did: March 2023: What the heck is a swordfish? March 2024: The third column of the swordfish is column 2!

@BradJames878

2 ай бұрын

@@JohnRandomness105 Yes, someone is making up names as they go along, and even the silly names seem to stick. One thing about Simon though, In the last few videos of CTC that I went back and watched, I noticed he says 'box' instead of "block." All the other Sudoku uploaders that I've seen use 'block." I'm a big fan of consistency; maybe one day Simon will come around and join the crowd. And I know it's wishful thinking, but maybe even one day there will be a consistent name for these 3 terms that all mean the same thing: tower, racetrack, band. I personally prefer "band," for 'tower' doesn't make much sense if the blocks run along the horizontal direction. Maybe they can refer to that as a "tipped-over intact tower". 😅

@JohnRandomness105

2 ай бұрын

@@BradJames878 I think that "tower" refers specifically to the vertical version, with a different name ("band"? "belt"?) referring to the horizontal version. As for "block"/"box", I've used both. On the other hand, "skyscrapers" are in all orientations. Fan of consistency? We all seem to be consistently inconsistent. Silly names? I think that I'm coming close to remembering the name "squirmbag".