Starting a solve with some good memes! This is what I look forward to every evening after a tiring day in the lab ❤ Thank you Simon!

Really fun puzzle! I thought I had a gigantic deadly pattern of 8's and 9's at the very end, with everything else filled in... then I remembered to count the boxes in the R2C1 island and realized the thing I'd wanted for so long, and then completely forgot about, was the disambiguator. Gorgeous!

@Sam_weiqi

9 ай бұрын

Same for me!

@barefootalien

9 ай бұрын

@@Sam_weiqi Heh yeah, I went as far as to bifurcate with A and B, and when I found that it worked perfectly either way I was like, "Well this is too good of a puzzle to actually be unsolvable... what am I missing...? D'oh!"

@pzaan

9 ай бұрын

Same!

What an incredible puzzle this was, great stuff Paletron

Got it in 96:23! I don't often find myself capable of completing many of the sudokus featured on the channel, but I managed this time to see exactly where the opening moves needed to be at the very beginning of the video and felt compelled to give it a shot before watching any of your solve. I also finally understand what you mean, Simon, when you get bemused/miffed at the thought of actually having to do sudoku in a sudoku puzzle; I spent FAR too long not realizing that's what the next move was in completing the solve haha. Now to sit back and watch someone with skills far greater than my own!

Very nice ruleset in general. I did stump on 2 things that weren’t directly intuitive to me. One being the negative constraint of entropy islands, i.e all circles are/aren’t given. I was unsure which was true. Secondly I wasn’t sure if 2 circles could connect and therefor have the same number in them. These were later answered of course as I moved through the puzzle but it might be nice to add for clarity.

@AMFCharles

9 ай бұрын

Same! I wasn’t sure about whether all circles were shown/if a circle wasn’t present that it then COULDN’T be an island of that size… This meant I came unstuck in box 3 thinking that it couldn't be a 2:3 green domino because it didn’t have a circle. Watching through this however, I realised not all circles were shown and we got there in the end!! 😅

@biaberg3448

9 ай бұрын

Agree, I found this a bit naughty.

@stangerrits6712

9 ай бұрын

Totally agree. Interesting to see that Simon doesn’t seem to bother 🤔

@bones7708

9 ай бұрын

I don't know. I kind of liked this style of "State the rules, and nothing but the rules". If anything, there could have been a clarification "Everything not forbidden by these rules, is allowed".

@fredgoodyer4907

9 ай бұрын

I actually feel quite passionately that wording like this is better. The thing that bugs me most is that this community is brought together by logic, and yet if someone made a puzzle as incredible as this and then said ‘digits in a circle indicate …’ and also meant ‘all circles are given’, I think we’d all (rightly) have a fit 😅 I think confusion here has come from the negative constraint being conspicuous by its absence; Simon has mentioned twice that I recall that he finds the ‘all _ are given’ unnecessary. I agree, but I’d love to hear a different view as to why it’s useful to include it 😊

I really enjoyed solving this one, thanks Paletron for a great puzzle. A small deduction around the 50:00 mark does help progress the solve rather easier than the mental gymnastics around r7c1! We can prove that r9c2 can't be purple because r7c1 is using at least two purple cells in box 7, so if r9c2 was purple then there would be no other purple cells available in the box for it to connect to. This means it's green, giving 3 greens in r9, and determining the circle colours in box 8.

@khoozu7802

8 ай бұрын

Yes, but it is a circle, if u ignore deduction on R7C1 and solve for other clues, u still cannot finish the puzzle!

@Malrog

8 ай бұрын

@@khoozu7802My point was that the solve path is a lot smoother once you've identified that r9c2 is green, because you can then continue solving in box 8 (r9c6=4 or 6, r7c6 is 2 or 3 and can't grow up, so r6c6 is pink and is therefore 6, etc, etc.) Any deduction on r7c1 can be done much later on, and is a lot simpler as there's a lot more info in the grid.

@khoozu7802

8 ай бұрын

@@Malrog I got R9C6=4,R7C6=2,and R6C6=6. But still cannot finish the puzzle without deduction on R7C1. Someone also commented about u don't need to deduce R7C1=4, u can do sudoku to get R7C1=4, but I think he was wrong

@Malrog

8 ай бұрын

@@khoozu7802Yeah, I never said you didn't have to make a deduction on r7c1, just that it can be made easier by looking elsewhere first. Once you've got the 2 and 3 in box 8, you can do some work in box 7 by considering where 2 and 3 must go in c2, and realising that r9c2 can't be 2 (the green island would have to take a 1 from r8c2, and then would connect to the 3 in r7c2, making a group of size 3). That places 2 in r8c2, and forces r9c2=3. This places a 15 pair in r67c2, so the r7c1 circle must take one cell from that pair. That information, plus the realisation that the circle can take a maximum of 3 cells in box 7, leads to the deduction that the circle must contain a 4, in a relatively simple way compared to how it was demonstrated in the video.

@khoozu7802

8 ай бұрын

@@Malrog Actually u didn't have to explain it so detail because what u have explained I already understood. I never say u were wrong. I was talking about other people's comment misleading us.

58:59 - That was gorgeous. Once you’d worked out the entropy sets being only 3 in columns boxes and rows the logic was really lovely.

To partially answer Simon's thoughts at the end of the video: The only circle cells that rule out some possibilities purely due to their grid position (with no other information) are the 4 corners of the grid, which must be low 123. The explanation is if they were 4 or more they would need to cross a 3x3 box border, and to reach the border is only possible with a straight line of 3, which then prevent you going anywhere else in the box or continuing straight across the border. I'm equally amazed at how puzzles like this are constructed, though I'm also curious about that inequality sign. I think most constructors would rather not add another unrelated rule unless absolutely necessary, for reasons of elegance.

Enjoyed the cat squared twitter photo and the guy holding up card of his own face at game! 😆

@davidrattner9

9 ай бұрын

Love when Simon shares things like that with us. He has a wonderful sense of humor. 😄

@longwaytotipperary

9 ай бұрын

@@davidrattner9 yes, absolutely! 😁

I've been frustrated recently with confusing rule sets but I grokked this one pretty quickly. Thanks Paletron and thanks Simon.

1:05:28 Yes... you did miss a few delineations (along the bottom of the puzzle), and even though they are basically meaningless delineations, yes... I am a bit bothered 😆 Still a wonderful watch though!

@RichSmith77

9 ай бұрын

Not sure there's a delineation between the 2 and 7 in column 5 either. I think it's just a box boundary.

@ETBCOR

9 ай бұрын

​@@RichSmith77ahhh you're right! and that one is actually meaningful!

Hello Simon & Mark. I never posted comments on your video, i'm the lurking kind of viewer, very often even forgetting to like the videos... I just wanted to post one today, hoping you might read it, and i want to apologize if my english is not great, for i'm french + my mind is a little blurry these days. My father, Christophe, gave me his passion for sudokus, and it's with a pain in the heart i embrance fully what he loves, in hope it might bring him back to us. He fell into coma this Saturday, 7th of October, because of a cerebrovascular accident (i don't know the right term). I went to his hospital room today, and told him for the first time of my life i love him, and a few minutes later, he slightly opened his eyes, and a tear went out. So i just feel like keep thinking about him helps him more than my logical brain wants to admit it. I don't know how to end this message, so... keep doing what you do, you are the best. Take care of your loved ones ❤

Rules: 05:12 Let's Get Cracking: 07:22 Simon's time: 58m34s Puzzle Solved: 1:05:56 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Bobbins: 2x (36:16, 41:55) Three In the Corner: 2x (08:49, 31:38) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Ah: 17x (12:16, 13:13, 24:51, 26:24, 26:53, 28:33, 28:56, 29:33, 30:03, 39:32, 42:23, 47:33, 55:18, 55:41, 58:45, 1:02:06, 1:03:44) Hang On: 15x (11:40, 15:03, 16:32, 17:52, 18:52, 18:52, 18:52, 18:52, 26:53, 27:19, 43:22, 47:59, 54:20, 57:31, 1:02:56) By Sudoku: 7x (41:36, 45:04, 47:15, 56:35, 56:40, 56:44, 59:40) Brilliant: 6x (04:16, 24:08, 24:10, 30:08, 1:05:58, 1:06:01) In Fact: 6x (16:23, 22:55, 34:53, 43:05, 49:46, 54:51) Sorry: 5x (25:03, 45:14, 50:04, 58:39, 1:01:19) Clever: 3x (10:21, 31:27, 1:04:55) Fascinating: 3x (30:10, 1:07:10, 1:07:12) Snake: 3x (16:41, 17:01, 29:09) That's Huge: 3x (29:05, 41:12, 58:45) Cake!: 3x (03:35, 04:28, 04:39) Bother: 2x (57:14, 1:02:01) Nonsense: 2x (16:41, 16:44) Naughty: 2x (16:36, 49:01) Stunning: 2x (1:06:26, 1:06:30) Obviously: 2x (06:39, 35:20) Goodness: 1x (37:51) Naked Single: 1x (44:53) Stuck: 1x (12:16) Lovely: 1x (13:17) Bizarre: 1x (00:35) Phone is Buzzing: 1x (06:08) Progress: 1x (28:22) Wow: 1x (1:05:58) What Does This Mean?: 1x (26:20) Pencil Mark/mark: 1x (18:04) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Seventy Eight (5 mentions) Three (90 mentions) Blue (102 mentions) Antithesis Battles: High (8) - Low (3) Even (4) - Odd (0) Black (2) - White (0) Row (29) - Column (18) 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!

Wonderful solution. To color the 3 entropy groups make it really clear. I enjoy to relax looking when you solve the puzzles, listening to your fascinating logical explanations. But I think, it's not the end of the puzzle. The rules are saying, that only the "cages" with circles are entropy islands, so the rest has to be the wide ocean. In my opinion, the last step has to be 1. a complete decolorization of the grid 2. the colorization of the circled entropy islands (wonderful in pink?) 3. the complete deliniation of the "ocean" 4. the colorization of the deliniated ocean (of course in blue) I think, this will be the final picture Paletron has drawn for us. Greetings from the Canary Islands, Spain

These videos are incredibly relaxing.

Your solve filled us all with elation. I just loved your deliniation. Now I feel inspired Next time I get tired To take an entropic vacation! (Leaves a virtual cupcake with a candy bobbin on top)

I liked this very much, and actually feel that it may be a puzzle that I can do. I will have to put it on my list to try. Thanks, Simon, for this video - very enjoyable.

Great fun to watch, and a very enjoyable way to unwind. 🙂Thank you.

This was my first time trying to solve it before watching your solution and I'm quite proud of myself for succeeding. I only started really doing sudokus like a week ago after watching some of your videos and now i can solve a puzzle like this on my own! :D

Thanks to CTC for helping me with SAT stress (I absolutely adore this channel and rn it’s a life saver)

@fredgoodyer4907

9 ай бұрын

Good choice of life saver ❤️ Best of luck!

@nataslia2490

9 ай бұрын

If you need another resource to help with SAT prep I found out that you can link your college board account to khan academy and it’ll link your psat score if you took the psat and it’ll give you practice problems based on what you missed on the psat :). It helped me study a lot, but anyway good luck and try not to stress too much about it ❤

I think that in this case, the thick black walls of the delineations impeded Simon's scanning greatly. Given how he remarked stuff would probably get resolved through sudoku, with the mouse pointer hovering over the place that was a 14-pair by sudoku (resolved by a 4 at the top) only to proceed with doing entropy things kind of pushing me towards that conclusion. Still great solve though. Perhaps the board would have looked better by greying out the things that were not part of a "real" island. Real islands have circles on them.

@stangerrits6712

9 ай бұрын

Good chance he would have overlooked some basic sudoku anyway, but he should indeed have used another colour for delineating the islands.

@stevieinselby

9 ай бұрын

When using the pen tool to delineate clusters of cells like this within a normal grid, I often find it hard to scan the 3×3 boxes once I've drawn too many lines in ... it helps a little bit to use a colour other than black, but even then it's tricky.

It took a lot of staring to find the next deduction each time, but eventually I completed it in just under an hour. Lovely idea and execution.

36:09 The open made it seem like this was going to be easy, but after the first three rows I ground to a bit of a halt for a while before finally finding my way through box 6 and things got going again. Very nice puzzle with some clever tricks hidden away.

Enjoyed "solving" this - I kept having to come back to the video many times where I got stuck, but it was satisfying when I got a deduction myself :)

thank you for sharing these moments.

49:35 finish. I needed to rewind a bit after I mistakenly closed off a possible line, but picked things back up again quickly. It turns out I was right in the first place, but since I wasn't sure... back I went. What an interesting puzzle, excellent!

Solved using colours - really nice, simple & unique (for me) rule set. The only trickiness was the 'double 7' in circles.

Working this puzzle, there's some ambiguity: are all cells parts of appropriate entropy islands? Are they all labelled? I'm guessing "no" to both. Not sure yet, still solving. Edit to add: yes, have proved there are non-valid islands, so only the marked islands are required to meet the entropy count

@jimdavis2683

9 ай бұрын

I'm afraid I have to agree that the rules are poorly written. Does every island have a circle associated with it? Can one island have multiple circles? "Orthogonally connected cells of the same entropy are entropic islands" seems to imply islands are > 1 cell but we know right off the bat a size 1 island works ("1" in a circle).

@HunterJE

9 ай бұрын

Per the rules as written, all cells are part of islands (since all cells are going to be part of "entropy" groups and islands are simply defined as contiguous areas of like group) but only islands with circle clues in them are in any way constrained as to their size or any other characteristic. Could be a bit more cleanly worded around the "groups of orthogonally connected cells" to make clear a single lone cell counts as a "group" of one (though that one's pretty quickly self-evident since the top left immediately breaks) but otherwise there's no ambiguity in the ruleset.

@RichSmith77

9 ай бұрын

​@@HunterJEIslands are not defined as being "groups" of orthogonally connected cells, though. Just that orthogonally connected cells, of the same entropy, are entropic islands. I'd still consider a single cell as being "orthogonally connected".

@HunterJE

9 ай бұрын

@@RichSmith77 I myself would agree, but in past I've seen enough people complain about similar wording re: different interpretations of the word "connected" (from an "a lone cell isn't connected to anything" reading) or from the plural on "cells" that probably best to word it to avoid any doubt

@RossReedstrom

9 ай бұрын

@@HunterJE Right, that's what I meant by an "appropriate entropy island" an entropy island that contains its size. In which case, the answer is "no" - many high numbers are on much too small of islands. After solving, a quick scan indicates that there is at least one unlabelled island that could have been labelled, as well. The ambiguity in my mind comes from the common phrasing (for kropki dots, for example) explicitly declaring that not all of some mark are given.

Full 3 hours to solve this for me, including several resets after a mistake. More than good for my first puzzle of this caliber, imo.

Thank you for my birthday wish Simon!!

Wonderful!

Simon got a bit lost in the end in box7 which was very straight forward. First of all r9c2 can never be purple (it’s easy to see that once you ask this question), and secondly the moment he made r8c1 a 4 it was just sudoku, instead he went through some very complicated logic to figure it out

@khoozu7802

8 ай бұрын

Yes, but it is a circle, if u ignore deduction on R7C1 and solve for other clues, u still cannot finish the puzzle!

wow... this was a hard one but i'm proud of solving it. those big-ass islands where kinda hard to fit

Got it in 46:50. Very fun puzzle. I do enjoy these colouring focused ones!

A birthday shoutout! Thanks to my GF Jo , and of course Thank you Simon for these wonderful videos - Lee from NJ

1:02:20 I can see how to get that six in R4C3 by the fact that R7C2 is forced to be five, but Mark obviously got it some other way and I don't see that

52:43 for me. Very intuitive puzzle, very pleasant to solve.

Happy birthday Seamus. From another Limerick man.

Finished in 40:14, about half from following along with the video and half on my own.

1:02:13 I wonder how many people were screaming about the 4 in box 4 until Simon saw that 😅

Hi, Simon. I would like to notice that purple near blue is not a perfect match. OK, I see a slight difference, but I struggle.

@CrackingTheCryptic

9 ай бұрын

Aghh, sorry about that. When we have three colours I'll need to give more thought to the best combination.

@mse326

9 ай бұрын

@@CrackingTheCryptic I'm not colorblind so maybe I'm not the best to ask, but black and yellow are the best colors in general to be next to each other, and I think even color blind individuals can generally tell things apart if they are far enough apart on a darkness scale, so something in between like the purple should probably work

@RichSmith77

9 ай бұрын

​@@mse326Black is horrible for reading digits and pencilmarks on, though.

@JohnBlackburn

9 ай бұрын

@@CrackingTheCryptic as a color deficient person. i stick with the 3 colors in the lower right hand corner. 6, 8, and 9. I don't know if that works for all colorblind, but blue and purple are just too similar to be useful.

@mse326

9 ай бұрын

@@RichSmith77 The black on here seems pretty decent at the numbers coming through. I know he's used it in the past

Also why does Simon never outline the whole grid at the start? You don't have to wait until you have a region for this.

1:06:24 I zoned out toward the end and I couldn't figure out how you got an island of nothing but five 3s... but it looks like you just clicked something toward the end lol

Simon, your black outlines are so difficult to see, especially with the thick sudoku region lines. Red outlines would have been so much nicer! cheers.

@DennisvanRosendaal

9 ай бұрын

Also why does Simon never outline the whole grid at the start? You don't have to wait until you have a region for this.

34:17 for me. Very fun puzzle!!

"In a moment or twos time." Oh, get over it It's already grating (It could be the hour though - 5am and all)

1:02:41 It is a sad day in the EnTropic Islands, as we realize the impending doom of our favorite song

The 968 and 1/2 at the bottom don't have the edge line. C'est la vie.

Blue and Purple were hard for me to differentiate, but maybe I'm the only one. Yellow or Orange would have been a good alternative to blue or purple IMO

Finished in 163:15. A tough one, but very cool.

It should be in the rules that circles can join each other. Cause my interpretation of islands was that they dont touch. So each circle is a seperate island with different entropies. So ik spend een hour trying to solve this with the wrong ruleset in mind

58:24 Oh, yeah. We just need a 4 in the column, this cell is a 4 or a 5, there is no other place to put a 4 in the column, and there is already a 5 in the column, *what could it possibly be?* Seeing that sooner would have indicated that the island of r9c6 couldn't grow leftward.

Wow, weird puzzle I felt like I solved half of it in 15min and then it took me another 30 to find the next step.. where I made small errors along the way, rewound, and ended up solving the whole thing in almost 1.5h 😮

70:19 for me. Beautiful puzzle!

57:46 for me. got stuck a couple of times. was really hard for me.

32:30 for me. weird, why isnt there "each region has a maximum of 1 circle" until...

* Valve Game Studio has entered the discussion

I love the videos, but purple and blue are horrible for my colorblindness Might I suggest blue, red and yellow if you need 3 colors?

Blue and purple? Oh no. I'm fortunately not colourblind, but I do know that blue and purple are the two colour choices that seem to be complained about the most by Cracking The Cryptic viewers. Have been for years.

Neat puzzle. Oddly I made two incorrect assumptions, that there was a negative constraint (only in places) and that two circles could not belong to the same region. Once I'd realised the error of my ways, I was better able to appreciate the joy of three though it was by no means plain sailing. Choppy threes. By the way, why "entropy"? It doesn't seem to have any relevance to the word's usual meaning.

35:57 It's possible color the other circle in box 7 green now as well - it cannot be blue since there are 3 in the column, and if it were pink it'd need to take at least one more to get out of the box and would prevent the other pink in the box from reaching its count.

I’m completely lost on this one

35:59 for me

20:40 I feel like the even more useful deduction here is that the blue island must enter row 3 (even ignoring everything else in the grid it could only ever take six cells in the top two rows), and as soon as it takes one cell there the row is maxed out on high digits so r3c4 (which due to the geometry is not available to be the blue region's single row 3 cell) must be a 2.

Funny rules

I love how you ruined the solution at the end and didn't notice. lol

@RichSmith77

9 ай бұрын

I hadn't noticed. I had to go back and rewatch. (For anyone else wondering, he put five 3s into a highlighted purple island, boxes 3 and 6, at 1:06:16. 🙂)

@awilliams1701

9 ай бұрын

@@RichSmith77 yup that was it. lol

How interesting can it be to count to three? Well, if you're a Valve employee...

Got it in 93:15

When I looked into a 'similar' puzzle, I added all things together and got the sum of all squares in the puzzle. Is it fair to use the same logic here, the sum of all circles being 81?

@Ardalambdion

9 ай бұрын

And I find this channel and these puzzles a necessary distraction from the rest of the world.

@longwaytotipperary

9 ай бұрын

@@Ardalambdionoh, so much here for the distraction! So grateful for Simon and Mark and their dedication to bringing this wonderful entertainment every day!!!!!!! ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

@HunterJE

9 ай бұрын

Since the rules don't specify that every island must have a circle, nor that islands can't have more than one circle, no this would not be a valid deduction...

59 minutes

First to comment! Another Hour-Long Puzzle. Looking forward!

I was confused by this rule set. It didn’t seem like a 1 could ever be circled because the circles were DEFINED as providing the size of an island as an island was DEFINED as a group of orthogonally connected cells. A solo 1 in a circle is therefor defining a group that can’t exist

@RichSmith77

9 ай бұрын

It doesn't say an island is a GROUP of orthogonally connected cells. The word group doesn't appear. Orthogonally connected cells of the same entropy are islands. A single cell is still considered to be an orthogonally connected island.

@Alex_Fahey

9 ай бұрын

​@@RichSmith77I don't think that makes sense as a definition. A lone cell can't be orthogonally connected to anything because it is alone. It requires an outside cell to connect to for orthogonal connection to be possible. It is just an island, not an island of orthogonally connected things.

@RichSmith77

9 ай бұрын

@@Alex_Fahey I guess it's connected in the sense that it's not made up of disconnected units. Every part of the single cell is connected to all the other parts of the single cell. 🙂

@mikew6644

9 ай бұрын

@@RichSmith77 ha! I mean ‘sure’… obviously that’s how the solution works so whatever levels of mental gymnastics we need to do as a justification will always end up ‘correct’… I’m just saying that a simple “(1 cell is a valid island)” parenthetical would have really helped

I really like your videos but lately I don't have enough time to watch even a single video each day

@annek3296

9 ай бұрын

I find it helpful to play the video at 1.5x speed - that way it takes 2/3rds as long, so a 90 min video takes "only" an hour.

@bio-blob

9 ай бұрын

i have gone so far as to put it at 2x speed but im just very busy and cant spare that much time @@annek3296

First! Love from Brazil

Please stop using blue and purple beside each other, it's very difficult for us colour impared folk to see the difference. Thanks. Stephen

7:04 - Go on, pencil Mark it. We know you want to put 23456789 in there...