Thanks for the feature! Lovely solve!

@bobblebardsley

Жыл бұрын

I love this puzzle, it's visually beautiful and I think it's the best use I've seen of the Phistomefel Ring as a core element in the solve path. Also a truly excellent title :D

@emilywilliams3237

Жыл бұрын

This was a fascinating puzzle to watch Simon solve - I am so glad you made it and he found it!

@Anne_Mahoney

Жыл бұрын

"Honk" and the initial image made me think of a gridlocked city block. Nice puzzle.

@jaega4247

Жыл бұрын

Lovely puzzle! Just like Simon, I constantly had that gut feeling for what should work and not, but found it difficult to prove how and why I was right. And the name of the puzzle made me think of clowns, which really threw me off, as it made me think that I would be the clown in the end when my gut feeling was proven to be horribly wrong!

@morganandreason

Жыл бұрын

I think the title deserves an explanation. Is it the repeated squeezes that the greens put on the ring?

Please don't feel bad about including proofs for theories within your videos. Sometimes I like to watch the proofs again because it takes a lot of explanations to understand and remember it. After this round through the Phistomefel proof, I finally understand it fully and feel ready to share it with others. So, cheers! Next time if I don't feel like watching it again, I'll just skip forward in the video until the end of the explanation. Nothing to lose, only to gain.

@Stettafire

Жыл бұрын

Agreed. Also there may be a viewer who is seeing this theory for the first time and doesn't understand it, so it will have value to someone I'm sure

@st0rmforce

Жыл бұрын

I'm a new subscriber and I'm bingeing CTC at the moment. I think I've heard Simon explain Phistomefel's ring about 4 times in the last few days. I don't mind, because I like listening to Simon explain things

I've seen the explanation for the Phistomefel ring so many times over the last couple years, but I still absolutely love watching it, especially with the scrabble bags!

@chrisg6597

Жыл бұрын

The explanation seems to have become more refined and easier to understand over the years. It took me a more than a couple of times of seeing the original explanation when I first saw it just over 3 years ago to get close to understanding it.

@longwaytotipperary

Жыл бұрын

Same!

@maartenmarien

Жыл бұрын

Honestly I've always been mystified by the scrabble bags. You've got the (finished) grid itself already where the digits are written down, so why in your mind go to the trouble of copying those digits - twice? In fact it's a lot more trouble, because to remove a digit from both sets, you can't just erase it in place, you have to physically find it in both bags. Is it the physicality of these actions that apparently makes Simon's explanation compelling to people?

@davidrattner9

Жыл бұрын

@@longwaytotipperary Ditto ! 😀

@amoswittenbergsmusings

Жыл бұрын

@@maartenmarien Minds are different. Mapping the contents of the scrabble bags to the squares in the grid is an isomorphism. Some people 'see' a mathematical fact earlier if they can somehow use a second picture. That's what isomorphisms are: a second picture. Sometimes things that are not at all obvious in one setting become blindingly obvious in an other, isomorphic, setting. The scrabble bags don't work for me because I map stuff usually to a sort of internal representation floating around in my cortex. Before I write down a proof, I have the theorem inside my brain. It is a real job to translate that back to a formalism that con be communicated. Simon is a great communicator.

I thought "Honk" came from the branched thermometers looking a bit like old-fashioned car horns with a rubber bulb and a brass trumpet!

@longwaytotipperary

Жыл бұрын

Oh… that makes sense!

@bobblebardsley

Жыл бұрын

And the purple lines like hands squeezing the bulbs :)

@Nevir202

Жыл бұрын

Was about to say the same.

@davidrattner9

Жыл бұрын

Agree with you 100% 🙂

@In_42_Space

Жыл бұрын

I saw people playing the game Duck Duck Goose.

Rules: 05:04 Let's Get Cracking: 06:34 Simon's time: 1h0m12s Puzzle Solved: 1:06:46 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Phistomefel: 5x (15:23, 15:30, 29:33, 50:05, 57:35) Bobbins: 1x (45:07) The Secret: 1x (07:37) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! By Sudoku: 12x (19:13, 34:44, 34:48, 41:19, 41:43, 52:48, 54:32, 59:13, 1:01:40, 1:02:18, 1:04:52, 1:05:45) Obviously: 11x (00:28, 08:38, 10:39, 12:54, 16:53, 18:50, 20:44, 22:59, 40:54, 46:27, 1:01:18) Ah: 11x (21:29, 23:13, 37:41, 38:37, 49:49, 54:35, 57:31, 57:31, 59:13, 59:43, 1:06:22) Hang On: 7x (23:49, 40:01, 41:26, 41:26, 51:50, 55:56, 1:02:18) In Fact: 6x (06:53, 41:07, 41:07, 43:50, 43:50, 46:05) Symmetry: 6x (00:59, 01:03, 01:20, 01:26, 05:38, 1:08:17) Scrabble Tiles: 5x (31:09, 31:18, 31:29, 32:21, 1:05:43) Sorry: 4x (13:37, 21:36, 37:27, 57:06) Brilliant: 4x (00:22, 03:05, 1:06:46, 1:06:49) Going Mad: 4x (28:39, 28:42, 28:44, 28:48) What a Puzzle: 3x (1:06:39, 1:08:46, 1:08:46) Naked Single: 3x (18:39, 1:04:01, 1:04:59) The Answer is: 3x (12:43, 53:59, 1:02:51) Nonsense: 2x (29:06, 1:06:58) Clever: 2x (54:38, 1:07:10) Break the Puzzle: 2x (58:20, 1:00:56) Fascinating: 2x (02:00, 28:52) Gorgeous: 2x (54:35, 54:35) Shouting: 2x (04:35, 15:23) Masterpiece: 2x (02:09, 1:08:58) I've Got It!: 2x (1:03:13, 1:03:13) What on Earth: 1x (28:08) Out of Nowhere: 1x (47:04) Horrible Feeling: 1x (1:06:09) Lovely: 1x (1:03:13) Incredible: 1x (1:07:15) Elegant: 1x (58:54) Deadly Pattern: 1x (1:06:11) Flurry of Activity: 1x (53:36) Magnificent: 1x (1:08:53) Proof: 1x (34:12) Progress: 1x (35:00) Let's Take Stock: 1x (1:04:20) Cake!: 1x (03:06) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Sixteen (7 mentions) One (135 mentions) Green (36 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Low (12) - High (7) Even (5) - Odd (0) Lower (7) - Higher (5) Column (13) - Row (12) 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!

‘Let’s get quacking’ and ‘Quacking the Cryptic’ were absolutely necessary for a Honk! puzzle

1:02:17 Simon's absolute refusal to mark that 7 and thus the 8 above it for over 7 minutes nearly killed me! LOL

Very nice, Simon. Such an interesting puzzle and I loved your solve. I happened to glance at a few comments before I started watching and saw people mention the Phistomefel ring, so I was eagerly anticipating when you would explain it! I now can explain it myself, and I think that I can apply it sometimes when it is appropriate! Never stop teaching and explaining, I gain a lot from it every time. And thanks for all that you and Mark do to bring us two sudoku videos every day! Much appreciated!

“And we don’t want to go mad.” I think we might have passed that point a while ago 😅

I haven't solved it (watching the video for more help from Simon) but I have a much easier way of spotting that orange must be low (from about 20:00 to 30:00 in the video). Let x represent the lowest number on any of the green bulbs. (It could be a tie.) This number can't appear on any of the yellow thermo cells because it is = 6 (clearly impossible) the orange cells on the yellow ring must contain 1, 2, 3, 4 not 6, 7, 8, 9.

@johabee

Жыл бұрын

Thanks, this is the best proof I found in the comments. The key is thinking about the smallest bulb digit. As so often: ask the right question, and good things will come to you!

@_-_-Sipita-_-_

Жыл бұрын

6789 would make 1,2 and 3 restricted to the sides of many rows and collumns, would make 4 unable to exist, 4 is restricted, and now 5 cannot be there

Another puzzle that I logged a solve the night before, and another puzzle that I managed to notch a solve time under the video length although I suspect there may be quite a bit of Simon 'splaining in this video! I was quite pleased with my solve of this as Nahileon's puzzles are typically way beyond my skills as a solver.

@davidrattner9

Жыл бұрын

Nahileon is an incredible setter indeed!! If you were able to just get under his time..i guess mere humans, not any cats with special abilities, will go well over it. 🙂

@mkwilson1394

Жыл бұрын

Hello there! This puzzle made me think of you, the deduction with the feedback loop seems similar to what you talked about in your "How I set Sudoku" video on this channel. Very... Tallcatty? Tallcatish? Anyway, thanks for your contributions to the Sudoku world!

@tallcat

Жыл бұрын

@@mkwilson1394 It's funny you say that, because that was also what came to my mind when I was solving it!

Nahelion is such an exceptional setter. Joy to see artistry at work. Brilliant solve Simon with your articulate deductions and use of phistomefel ring.

I LOVE reiterative logic. It’s just so utterly interesting. The way the rulesets combine here, the Phistomefel ring, everything, it’s just wonderful. Great setting and solving!!

I never get tired of seeing the Phistomefel proof because I remember how much it blew my mind when I first saw it, and I enjoy thinking about that happening to someone else watching.

This one was so rewarding to solve. Like Simon, I would not have been able to solve this in 2020. I would not have even been able to know where to start. Now, it was a real challenge, but a beatable one. And that's all thanks to this channel.

What a brilliant application of the ring ...

That was incredible. Just this morning I said to someone who didn't have a clue what I was on about that Phistomefel Rings are old hat now so you hardly ever see them. Then that pops up on the screen. Yes, I wouldn't have solved it in 2020 either. We've all be spoiled by many, not just one, secret being taught to your special friends. I remember trying the first ring you featured. I couldn't do it. Not without having the idea explained first. The same applies to so many things on this channel though.

31:55 ... a lesson in Applied Phistomefelotology, if you will Incredible puzzle!

Does anyone else never skip the explanations of things you've heard before just out of pure respect for Simon or is it just me? I don't have it in me to skip the Phistomofel ring proof explanation even though I know it so well😂

A Master Class in the application of the Phistomefel Ring Theorem

At 41:43 approx "Sudoku a massive relief"! Who are you - where is Simon?

After solving this for myself, I just had to give this video a watch. I was so flabbergasted to find myself at the end of the puzzle having not broken it when I felt like I surely had a dozen times over the course of the solve. I was very relieved to see Simon expressing a similar sentiment. Unbelievable puzzle and great solve!

Nahelions puzzles are absolutely marvelous and mind blowing

The easy way to see that orange is small is because the bulbs must appear in the p-ring and each bulb is smaller than its own thermos. If a bulb was on another thermo in the ring, then that thermo's bulb would be even smaller. There must be a bulb that is smaller than all the other thermo digits in the ring, and it must be on the ring. There are 4 thermos digits in each row or column so therefore orange must contain a digit less than 6.

Nahileon must be the most underrated setter I have seen on the channel. Every one of his work is a stroke of genius. I cannot believe how "clean" the grid is at the start, meaning the logic he created is so steadfast that he did not need to add any last minute adjustment to the grid to make it work. For the whole iterative logic at the start that made Simon go crazy, I was imagining that Yugioh villain that lost by locking himself in an escapable loop.

Really enjoyed this solve and puzzle. It is definitely still out of my league, but one day I’ll be able to take it on!

First noting that the second cell on a thermo is at least 4, gives you "orange is low" a lot quicker.

Masterpiece again with a beautiful breakdown of all the needed logic, repeating yourself is vital not only for new viewers, you are helping yourself stay sharp and witty and my favourite channel ❤️

At 58:55, the elegant way to see that R2C3 can't be a 3 is to note that R3C5 being a 3 forces a 3 onto the renban in box 3. That uses up all the Phistomefel rings 3's.

I bet Simon has seen the wisper configuration before but cannot remember when and where... It must me unmemorable!

@cathybryant5119

Жыл бұрын

😂

Hi Simon, concerning the proof and other things we see repeatedly, I was thinking that maybe you could introduce chapters into your videos. That way if anyone is tired or impatient, they can skip ahead, and if someone needs reminding of anything or if they lose track, they can easily find the right moment. :)

@KyleBaran90

Жыл бұрын

Just play the CTC drinking game, and if he pulls out the scrabble bags, take a shot

This is your best description of the Phistomefels Ring. Thanks and well done.

Incredible puzzle. The break in was quite weird trying to figure it out with polarity plus Phistomefel's Ring and that one of the bulbs had to be a whole unit lower than the all the other bulb ends, etc. But getting that break-in was only the beginning, LOL. What a puzzle. It took me an hour and a quarter, but it was time very well spent.

I enjoy the fact that the deja vu he had at the start hearkens back to the video with the "un-rememberable rule" and also the boromir thumbnail was used exactly 2 years & 1 day ago

I suspect it's called Honk because the thermos look like the old horns with the rubber ball at the end you squeeze to make it honk. these days used by clowns and clown cars in particular but at one point all cars.

@longwaytotipperary

Жыл бұрын

Agree

15:23 Correct me if I’m wrong, but could you not immediately write a 5 into the central square in box 5? That cell sees all 8 whisper line digits which there are no duplicates of, so therefore it must be a 5. Edit : Simon confirmed it at around 19:00

i love when simon misses basic sudoku. it's highly amusing yet also frustrating.

@amoswittenbergsmusings

Жыл бұрын

Two years of watching Simon have taught me the pleasure of pain. The 3 in R3 putting the one available 3 from the ring in the quadrant of box 3 - much earlier than Simon resolved that 3 with a jewel of Simonesque logic when simple sudoku would have given him a clearer audit of the low digits in the Phistomefel quandrants. The 5/6 in the ring at R4C7 would also have been resolved much earlier: the renban logic in the quadrants necessitates *two* 5s in the ring.

@robert-skibelo

Жыл бұрын

Frustrating and not amusing. These lapses mean that Simon's solve path is not that envisaged by the setter, and never better. Frankly, I'd rather see the path the setter intended. It think it rather arrogant of Simon not to try harder to find the intended path. He's perfectly capable of doing so if he'd just apply a bit of self-discipline. Also, since the channel purports to educate people about sudoku, why is it demonstrating less than ideal solutions?

The wonderfully explained Phistomefel ring was very helpful and I could quickly decide which thermo had to start with a very high digit and where 123 were impossible. Great puzzle.

37:01 For puzzles like these I'm sure glad I have Phistomefel ring burnt into my mind like Eye of Sauron

Have you ever concidered trying to set a puzzle for Mark to solve on the channel, and having Mark set a puzzle for you to solve on the channel?

@ConstantinErckenbrecht

Жыл бұрын

Mark solved a puzzle set by Simon not too long ago kzread.info/dash/bejne/i5N208-ffbWsj84.html

@caiodavi9829

Жыл бұрын

he already did this.

@MrJeb123

Жыл бұрын

I think Simon made one involving killer cages and the number 40 or something like that back in December? I could be wrong, but I think that is what it was.

@pianowithrichard

Жыл бұрын

Mark solves Simon - 23rd December 2022: kzread.info/dash/bejne/i5N208-ffbWsj84.html

Such a beautiful puzzle, I thoroughly enjoyed it, thank you! I found this one surprisingly easy, somehow I managed to solve it in 26:47 (even after I made a mistake near the end, backtracked for a couple minutes before spotting it and correcting... with a different mistake that I had to backtrack to again). And on the one hand, for sure, me from 2020 would not be able to find the break-in for this either. Phistomefel Ring is such a neat and powerful theorem, it honestly feels almost like cheating to use it. But on the other hand, after that the puzzle did not require any complicated methods to solve, and I felt like it was almost guiding me at every step where to look next, so I think anyone could enjoy solving this masterpiece.

I think a nice way of articulating the deduction surrounding the phistomephel ring without descending into recursion is as follows: Consider the digit in the smallest thermometer bulb. Where will we find it in the ring? Certainly not on a thermometer with an equal or larger bulb. Ergo, it must be on the whisper line and a small digit.

One interesting thing I noticed in my own solve at around 43:19 was how difficult it was going to be to ration 1s, 2s, 3s, and 4s in the green squares. On the one hand, you really need lots of low numbers in the purple lines in order to have any hope of not running into the maximum constraint imposed by the thermos. At the same time, anything that shows up along the purple lines inside a green box needs to be repeated in the yellow region, but you get a maximum of a single 1, 2, and 3, and a maximum of two 4s in the yellow region (if and only if the top rightmost or bottom rightmost yellow box is 4). There are only 3 purple lines outside of the green boxes as well, so you really have a maximum of around 7 numbers that are able to be either 1, 2, 3, or 4 along the purple lines (4 inside green boxes and 3 outside green boxes). If you do some quick guess and check of the minimum possible numbers along the purple lines, you find they run up to the maximum constraint imposed by the thermos. More specifically, if you try and force the minimum possible values into the three purple lines which have a single square that is not green (i.e. a 1,[2],3 triplet, a 2,[3],4 triplet, and a [3],4,5, triplet, with the numbers in square brackets highlighting the numbers on the purple lines but outside a green colored square), you conclude that the final purple triplet (in the bottom right, with all of its values inside a green box) must be a minimum of 5,6,7; this forces an 8 into the yellow thermo dependent on it and a pair of 9s at the end of its thermo, which happens to be the maximum set of numbers that can fit in the bottom right. Thus, you can conclude that the minimum values you assumed would go along the purple lines are also the maximum, and therefore are in fact their exact values. Working backwards, you also need to come up with two 4s in the yellow region, which can only be accomplished by placing a 4 in the top rightmost yellow box, which also means that the purple triplet in that region must be 1,[2],3. The remaining two purple lines must house the 2,[3],4 triplet and the [3],4,5 triplet. This also happens to give you the exact value of every single number along the purple line but not in a green colored box (as a reminder, they are the values highlighted via square brackets). This helps speed through the remainder of the puzzle more quickly, because you immediately have most of the values along the purple lines right at the start.

After many hours of watching CtC, I am so used to blue for low and orange for high, that using these colors as placeholders on a German whisper feels wrong. Especially when they are not adjusted once the polarity is found 😅

When your sudoku starts to run into stack overflow problems lol

took Simon 18 minutes to get the 5 in the middle diget. your slipping lol

Using the Phistomefel ring to check one on one each low digit helped me reach the end without going trougth the most chalenging bits of logic in Simon's solve. Great puzzle - thanks,

Very nice proof of those two sets being equal. I tried to prove it by assuming any yellow box is not in any of the green box and get a contradiction.

I'd suggest using a clean grid to prove Phistomefel. Having two extra colours thrown in the mix must be quite confusing to new viewers. Amazing puzzle from the genius Nahileon :)

Beautiful construction!

Blue being high and orange being low hurts my brain. I have become accustomed to blue=low, orange=high

@Samhain_III

Жыл бұрын

Me too, and according to the reaction from Zetamath on Simon's solve of his Spiral-Sudoku (the one mentioned as having the same german whisper logic) we are not alone with this ^^'

@emilywilliams3237

Жыл бұрын

Me too. And he is the one who taught me to think the blue=low and orange=high way!!

@Anne_Mahoney

Жыл бұрын

Yeah. Sometimes Mark will use green/purple for "one of these is high and one is low but we don't know yet," and then adjust to blue/orange when it become clear which is which. I find that clearer. Of course, I'm not colorblind so I can tell apart green and purple; YMMV.

(Again, I offer a suggest for proving the Ring-Make a clip that you can attach in the description field for when you need it. Those wanting to see it can pause the video to do so.)

56:53 for me. Nice puzzle, although I'm not really a fan of puzzles that require advanced theorems to solve. I used a different line of reasoning to determine that the corners of the green German whispers diamond had to be the low digits: Consider the smallest digit that's on any of the four bulbs. That digit is in a corner 2x2, so it must be in the Phistomefel ring as well. But where? All of the digits on thermos that aren't in bulbs are strictly greater than the smallest digit on any of the bulbs, so the smallest digit on any of the bulbs must be on a corner of the whisper diamond. But what is that digit? It can't be 6, 7, 8, or 9, because then the entire Phistomefel ring would contain only 6, 7, 8, and 9, and then rows 3 and 7 and columns 3 and 7 would have to contain at least five of those four digits, which very much doesn't work. It can't be 5, because that would break the whisper line immediately. So the smallest of the four bulb digits must be 1, 2, 3, or 4, and that digit must appear on one of the corners of the whisper diamond. Because of that and alternating polarity, all of the digits on the corners of the whisper diamond must be low. QED.

I wanted to comment that from the moment Simon put the Phistomefel Ring in the puzzle I instantly saw that Orange could not be the high numbers. However, I could not for the life of me explain why it was so or how I knew what I knew. And yes Simon, I too felt like I was going mad.

@SirJefferE

Жыл бұрын

I started the puzzle and within 30 seconds I *knew* those digits had to be 1 to 4 and in those locations... And then I spent a full 20 minutes proving it. It's weird how that works. Haven't watched Simon's solve yet but I'll be entertained if he does the exact same thing.

@pthemenace

Жыл бұрын

Steve Hutton wrote a nice proof of the break in

1:02:43 for me - Could've gotten it under an hour but I forgot the branching thermos could have repeat digits, put a six in R4C7 by mistake.

I love the proofs! Keep them coming!

50:13 for me. i am very happy with the time. i had many times where i could not believe i would solve it.

Nothing short of brilliant!!!

45 min…I just somehow got on the right track from the start. And yes! Including spotting the infamous ring 😊

A Zetamath diamond on a Phistomefel ring. Just in time for Valentine's! Nahileon, honking love at other setters?

A slightly easier proof for the digits in the corners of the green line is to notice that the purple lines are sort of acting like “mega bulbs”. Supposing that a purple line contains 4,5,6, we notice that no matter which digit is on the bulb of the thermometer, the others are in the same region, which means that it’s equivalent to the largest digit in the triplet being on the bulb. You end up proving that the minimum possible digit in the thermometer tips are pairs of 5&6, which means the green corners are forced to be low polarity.

73:46 for me. Marvelous puzzle!

Terrific!

Should have called this puzzle "Saps At Sea" after the Laurel and Hardy film where Ollie has a nervous breakdown working in a horn factory! "Horns to the left of me! Horns to the right of me! Horns! Horns!!!"

As a thought/suggestion/extra.. could y'all do a video just doing explaining these advanced theories. In that way, you could pin it, and when they come up, you could reference that video...

Great timing! Just got home and enough time to solve one! 7:05 yes she did and it was delicious! I put that 5 in the middle upon opening this.

53:07 At this point there's a lovely sequence of logic available that skips a good amount of the sudoku that Simon ends up doing. There's a pencil mark to clear up in R3C9 - this can't be a 3. Seems minor but... A 3 is now forced into the top right green square. This is the only 3 we have to play with. There are a 56 pair in column 3, which each limit the renban in their box. No matter what we use (123, 234, 345) we need a 3. Thus, R1C3 and R7C1 are both 3. We can't use the sequence 123 in either renban (boxes 1 and 7) as we'll have too many of those digits in green. (ie 4 total digits picked from 1, 2 and 3) So the renbans must be 234 paired with a 5, and 345 paired with the 6 in some order. We still need a 2. Can only get this by 'hiding' the 2 in box 3 in R3C9. We've got 2 4s to place in green so there's none left for box 9. We now know this renban is 567! I enjoyed it anyway. Lovely puzzle, and pretty too!

That 7 in row 7 got unnoticed for such a long time!

Very beautiful puzzle ❤

Beautiful logics!

I think it's called "Honk!" because the thermos look like clown horns, where the bulb is the rubber squeeze bit.

I like when Simon's says out of the blue : oh I got a digit

Honk! The thermos were definitely reminiscent of the gag horn that Harpo Max used to carry.

it's kinda amazing how quickly we (the CTC / Sudoku community) went from "Holy wow the Phistomefel theorem is an incredible discovery" to "This puzzle requires the common knowledge of Phistomefel" :-)

22:36 for me. Very interesting puzzle!!

@CrackingTheCryptic

Жыл бұрын

That is another of your amazing times🥹🥹🥹!!

Top tier thumbnail and title lmao

That took me 40 minutes but what a very clever puzzle. I enjoyed it a lot.

34:30 I really dont think you need to invoke Phistomefel to prove that the orange cells on the german whispers line are low polarity. You can just see that they're in line with the high temperature ends of the bulbs and therefore must be low polarity from basic sudoku. You also know that the bulbs cant be 1's because theyre in the middle of a set of consecutive digits on the purple lines, and the bulbs are also in line with each other so they could be, at minimum, 2, 3, 2, and 3 which means the one high temp end of a thermo will always contain at least a 6, forcing the orange german whisper cells must be low.

My daughter is also X to the power of X, so I just had to share that little nugget with her.

@RichSmith77

Жыл бұрын

Since there won't be many one or four year olds who understand powers, I'm guessing she's 27? But I'm enjoying the thought of someone explaining it to a one year old 🙂.

arrgh, i was SO close but i was trying to prove you can't have a ring with only 5~6 digits instead of noticing the iterative effect edit: ah, i found a simpler way to reach your conclusion at 50:28! box 3 must have at least one small (1-4) digit in its corner, because even if you set the middle of the thermo to 6, the best you can do is 4-5 on the renban. either box 1 or box 7 has a 5 on the middle of its thermo, so one of them must have at least two small digits in its corner. that makes three so far. the ring only has room for five such digits: the 1234 we have so far, plus a possible 4 in box 3. so the thermo center in box 9 cannot be 5, or it'll force three more small digits into the corner, which is too many! from here the eliminations lead directly to the 4 in box 3, plus some other small forward progress. the same reason and a bit of sudoku then forces the thermo centers in the other boxes as well, and then the puzzle falls apart

This comment about the age could have been me :D Whenever I get asked what the best age is/was I say 27 because its the last one you can express with x^x And i usually get stupid reactions to that 😅

@poppyholly1759

Жыл бұрын

I like 33 because you can say 21 again - but this time in hex 😀

@Dotoricus

Жыл бұрын

@@poppyholly1759 thats also a good one :D

I got this done in 27 minutes without thinking about Phistomefel at all. I feel like that took Simon down a rabbit hole. I used the renbans to show that the thermo forks needed to be at least 4 and therefore the German whispers outside box 5 were the low numbers. All fell out from there.

you did a nearly complet other solve then me (of course the basic logic and phistomefel stays but I used phistomefel so much more

This is interesting, I watch Simon to contrast algorithmic vs heuristic thinking. This shows algorithmic lockup 10:00 to 35:00. @ the ten minute mark the content of the bulbs is known, so his conclusion at 45:00 is!

You have definitely seen that whispers line before, not that it really helped. Most of the logic around it was really just preparation for the actual break in. Considering you'd seen it before, you took your sweet time getting the 5 in the centre, and working out where the different colours went in R5/C5. The next step was beautiful, to work out which colour was high. The point is that if orange is high, there can be no 1,2,3,4,or 5 on the ring, so the thermo cells on the line are all 6789, and you have five 6789s on each side of the ring. Therefore orange is low. Quite how it took you so long to get there, even after you started thinking along the right lines is beyond me. For the mid-game, leading to R3C7=4, I did much the same as you. I can't help feeling we were both missing a trick there. The puzzle is so nicely set up, I can't believe that there isn't some nifty way of attacking this. Nobody needs to know the proof of the ring in order to use it. Everyone knows, and can use Pythagoras' theorem, but few will have seen the proof, and even fewer will remember it. New viewers, who have probably only been doing newspaper sudokus, would probably be overwhelmed, and old viewers have seen it countless times already. Just state the fact, and point anyone interested in the proof to a previous video (or create a specific video). If you're adamant that the proof MUST be in the video where it's used, add it onto the end, rather than forcing everyone to either endure it, or skip over it. It's got to the point where I dread watching a solve of any puzzle that uses the theorem.

I don't know whether or not to feel either terrible or proud; the second I saw the split-ends on the thermo's I thought Phistomefel...

15:55 for me. Nice GAS level puzzle. Could have done it under 10 minutes if I hadn't miscounted the low digits (4s and 5s) in the corners (phisto corners). Took me a while to realize my mistake.

Typical ring patterns of deductions too - chasing numbers around the grid

didn't expect a sudoku with a proof by induction

I think this might be the first of these videos I’ve ever seen Simon use induction

Simon explaining Phistomefel Ring convinced my goblin that a 1 or 5 can't be in a bulb cuz it would break the green ring and at the same time puts a 5 in the middle cuz literally where else in the center 3x3 could 5 go by sudoku? the ring turned into like... half the numbers by the end of the explanation it was just a matter of where in the ring do they go?

They are geese. That would be fun as untitled goose game is co-op and it is brilliant. Honk away lol 🦆

78:57 + 10 minutes playing on my phone. I got the logic, but most of my work was guessing which digit wouldn't work and then just doing the work to find an error. I also somehow ruled out 1's from being on any of the purple lines and hit a wall and had to look at the solution to see that was my mistake.

By solving this puzzle I surprised myself, which is nice. It seemed too clever for me.

x^x would be using reals... So 3.1^3.1 is... Um... Well, non-integer, but it would be ~33.3596... And I believe you can get "any" age, though it becomes irrational.

@amoswittenbergsmusings

Жыл бұрын

In my experience *every* age I have ever been was totally irrational. And it does not get better with age ;-)

A bit early for Canada geese, but ...

I've found using letters on German whispers works great as you can replace A with 1 or 9, B with 2 or 8, etc. once you've figured out the polarities. Simplifies the pencil marks and avoids any more polygamy.

@Paolo_De_Leva

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I agree. As usual, Simon from 6:28 to 19:33 walked through two parallel logic paths at the same time, and as a consequence his explanations and pencilmarks were intricate, and this part of his solve was markedly slower than mine (I am a very slow solver). I used *placeholder digits* instead of *letters,* but they are equivalent to your letters. Just easier to use for me. They are symbols. They are used to represent either *N* or *10 -N.* They simplify your notation. They allow you to walk through a single logic path, knowing that the second one is almost identical, until you manage to determine one of the possible configurations of the digits along the *green line,* together with colours representing the high/low pattern in *row 5, column 5,* and *box 5,* and a *5* in the grid center. From that configuration you can easily obtain the other one by applying the transformation *N = 10 - N,* and that's much easier than walking thorugh the second logic path.

You know, we do live in the age of hyperlinks, and you could simply include a link to a video proof of Phistomefel's ring theorem in the video, or even in the credits blurb you post under every video. It's pretty standard usage by now, and you can't keep proving that 1+1=2. It's a bit like talking at length about "the secret", which gets old real fast (no, even faster than that).

Hi Simon, as much as I love listening to your voice and all the amazing logical masterpieces it spews into my ear canal, I do sometimes tire of some of the more involved proofs of theorems that you use every other solve. Such as the Phistomefel ring. Why not make a standard video to reference if people want to see the proof for a well known (by the community of longtime viewers) theorem. Then you can just say "click the link above to see this is correct". Still inclusive, much more concise so the gorgeous logical deduction flow doesn't get interrupted by orange and blue balls every time :) As another plus, the playlist of standard reference proof videos can also function as a central hub of sudoku knowledge!

@David_K_Booth

Жыл бұрын

There are already four short videos covering Snyder notation, the X wing, the Y wing and the Phistomefel theorem. Perhaps Mark and Simon could put them together in a tutorial playlist as you suggest?

@amoswittenbergsmusings

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You mean, you don't want to learn a secret once a day? You have birthday celebrations without chocolate cake? Some things in life are like sunrise every day. I never get tired of those comforting certainties. Seriously, I understand your different view on the matter but, hey, you can use fast forward.

@emilywilliams3237

Жыл бұрын

@@amoswittenbergsmusings I agree - there are certain things that are part of the culture of CtC, and they should continue. Proving the Phistomefel theorem is one of these.

@emilywilliams3237

Жыл бұрын

When I first started watching this channel I was fascinated by all of the logical explanations and learned a lot from their repetition. In addition to the Phistomefel ring are the "secrets" of German whispers lines and similar. Someone who is newer to variant sudoku (and there are still many, many people who only know classic sudoku out in the wild) would probably not want to interrupt the video to click to another video. Also, having it proved in context is much more helpful to me, as a more experienced solver, and certainly made much more sense to me in days gone by when I was newer. I think that those of us who are more experienced have to fast forward until the bags are put out of sight, or the coloring is removed from the grid, in order to go on with the solve, and let Simon and Mark prove the theorem (or explain German whispers, or Dutch whispers, or the law of leftovers) every time. I never fast forward, myself, but I hear that many folks do.

Loved it