Thank you for doing my little puzzle, love the channel.. also crazy to see 4500+ people having solved my puzzle in 2 days!

@walidability

19 күн бұрын

A light weight one but very enjoyable especially with the negative constraint

I always love to see "All [constraint] are given."

These negative constraint puzzles are so impressive!

I did not try this puzzle - a 6x6 as part of a 30 minute video from you, Mark, is going to be beyond me, I think. I appreciate the logical rigor that you use, I always learn something, such as how to avoid jumping over an option because something looks promising. Thanks for the video!

Managed to do this somehow in just over 9 minutes. Really pleased with myself

Watching you do the first 10-15 mins of the puzzle made me feel a lil better. I thought I could handle this one and did just about the same struggling as you before conceding haha Glad to see you crack it!

27:50 Unless Mark had already worked this through and I had missed it, proving that the small thermo can't be *3-4* doesn't automatically make it 1-2 ... because there's still the option of it being 1-4. True, it doesn't take long to work through the consequences of 1 on the bulb placing 2 in box 2, placing 3 in box 4 to rule that out, but you do need to go through those steps rather than leaping straight to the thermo being 1-2.

@RichSmith77

20 күн бұрын

Although his pencilmarks don't reflect it, he had established the short thermo was one of two possibilities. Either 3-4 or 1-2. (Rewatch from around 24:00 to see him get these two options).

Finished in 13:23. A lot of trial and error was involved, not really thrilled with the solve.

8:09 A beautiful negative constraint snack. Loved it.

Solved in 13:21, but all went when I said to myself "is there a problem with this being a 1-2 Thermo between Boxes 1-4?", and I pencil marked the possibilities and it was just right. Sometimes you go hunting for a contradiction and just don't find one.

@frankthompson9630

21 күн бұрын

Yeah, I think this puzzle was quite hard if you try not to bifurcate, but basically trivial if you're willing to bifurcate a bit. I solved it by bifurcation in 6 minutes and then went back and tried to do it without bifurcation, and I gave up. Very strange puzzle.

@emilywilliams3237

21 күн бұрын

Mark also tested the other case, of course, as he (and Simon) usually do in order to be rigorous in proving the solution.

@57thorns

20 күн бұрын

@@emilywilliams3237 I tried the 1 option but could not find a contradiction, did not consider trying 34 which would have solved the puzzle for me...

@DamienJones-um7cr

20 күн бұрын

Same. I figured making it a 12 thermo was so restricted it must break and instead it solved the puzzle!

@Paolo_De_Leva

20 күн бұрын

It took a lot of time for me to see that the tip of that thermo was only allowed to be *2* or *4.* Then it was easy enough to rule *3* out of its bulb... This allowed me to solve without bifurcation, and I believe my solve path was more straightforward than Mark's (my predictive skills are less powerful, hence I can only see easier eliminations.) See my separate comment if you need more details.

I wished someone would make a puzzle called "the missing x or v" where the puzzle essentially has a lot of XVs where only one is not given. I would make it myself but im no puzzle maker i can barely solve them

I was in the same boat as Mark. I could have probably bisected the puzzle, but decided to just watch the video instead... I would not have found that, that was very clever...

6:57 for me. The break in I found early on was: since the two thermo cells in Box 3 cannot be a 23 pair, there has to be one of 2 and 3 on the thermo in box 6. And that means that R6-C6 is always a 2.

I usually just watch the intros and dip in to the solve if I hit a brick wall, but ended up watching this from start to finish after making sooo little progress! Watching Mark struggle made me feel a bit better 😂

I can't believe that I beat Mark's time! I am very happy if I complete a puzzle in twice as long as it takes him.

Another way of eliminating the 3-4 thermo is if it makes the pencilmarked cells in the first row 123 leaving 456 for the remaining 3 since the two on the left can't be a 46 pair the other one has to be 4 or 6 but it can't because there's a 4 beneath it on the thermo. Not sure if that was intended or your way or the setter saw both. I found this one a bit tedious trying to figure out what you should be looking at to make the breakthrough, but admittedly it is satisfying once you do.

At 27:13 Another way to resolve the thermo starting in box 1 is to consider the possibilities for R2C4. It can't be 2 or 4 as they're both restricted to cells on the thermos in box 2. (Mark hasn't bothered to pencil mark the 4, but it must be in column 6). A 1 there forces a 4 onto the tip of the thermo just below, which isn't allowed. A 3 forces a 2 there, also not allowed, so the cell is a 56 which pairs up with the other 56 in box 2. Consequently R1C4 cannot contain a 6. So 6 is restricted to two places in column 5, both of which are adjacent to R2C4, which therefore cannot be 4. That's how I solved it.

All this and Penfold too! Got to love this channel.

Took me just over 70 minutes to solve this. I persisted because I couldn't believe a 6×6 would defeat me. Then came to watch the video to see what I'd missed, but in fact Mark's solve was very similar to mine (apart from taking less than half the time).

8:10. I've never been so fast before. Funny little puzzle.

Clever puzzle and a good solve from Mark. Thank you.

The thing that cracked it for me was the deduction that there were only two *unique* solutions for the double thermo at top right. This guaranteed 4 & 5 in box 1 in c6, and once you eliminate 3 as an option in r5c6, the rest falls into place pretty easily. Luckily I had the intuition to avoid pencil marking too early, which possibly tripped Mark up on this one.

Enjoyed the video. Favorite part "this has to be a 5 to avoid being a 6"!!

5:59. Thought about colouring at first buy then decided to go for it and once a certain digit fell into place, it solved itself

Finished in 21:37. Wonderful logic which constrains the puzzle enough to solve. Fun puzzle!

17.58 for me. Took me some time for the break in, but the reward for that was wonderful.

Solved in 8:59. Guessing is key!

I solved this one on my own first, and when I got to the last little thermo, I solved it but I thought my method was not on the solve path. You also weren't sure, but I can assure you that your method was simpler than how I saw it. Turns out the 4 forces a 123 triple in the box above pointing at the bulb of the thermo. Your path is much more elegant. Great puzzle and Great video!

5 minute solve, got kinda lucky, found the right thing to look at on first try.

That puzzle just made my brain fry! But I gave it try after try. Well the third time's the charm. I got through with no harm. By the way, happy Christmas-in-July!

I found trying 2 on the short thermo seemed to work, and not putting 2 there seemed to break, but it was after so many steps I didn't trust it. Then I found one of the 4 placements in c5 broke the fill after only a few steps... but Mark's discovery that 34 on the short thermo broke rc3c was much more elegant than how I did it - nicely done!

I gave up and solved just by full case analysis, but yes, this R3C3 cell is insane!

Ingenious setting!

6:34 for me. Nice puzzle!

I thought this was a cute fun little puzzle and finished in 13:06. Mark missed the interplay between box 2 and 6 in the 5th and 6th column. Seeing that unlocks the rest.

@RichSmith77

20 күн бұрын

Care to elaborate? What's he missing?

Bit slow to get started, took 21:51. At least I noticed the striping this time! 🤣

You could point the webcam a bit more down, so you don't move out of frame when leaning forward 😊

What a fun little puzzle. 18:45.

"Small, but perfectly formed." That's what she said.

@droopy992001

20 күн бұрын

Actually, she usually stops after the first part.

18:18 for me, the 1-2 thermo was really difficult, but once I disproved it being 3-4 the puzzle was easy

I solved without bifurcation, slowly finding restricted cells, but it was quite challenging. These are my crucial deductions: 🔹️ After center-pencilmarking *2s* and *3s* in _"box jobby,"_ (as Mark did @7:30) I also center-pencilmarked *1s* and *4s* in *box 6.* 🔹️ After pencilmarking the thermo in *box 5,* as Mark did @13:32, I figured out that *r5c3* cannot be *2* (otherwise, 4 would be in *r5c1* and *r6c4,* ruling out *6* from row 6) 🔹️By sudoku, the tip of the small thermo cannot be *1, 3,* and *5,* and if it were *6, 4* would be ruled out of *box 4.* Hence, Tip of small thermo = *2* or *4,* Bulb of small thermo = *1, 2* or *3.* 🔹However,️ *3* can be easily ruled out of the bulb...

@Paolo_De_Leva

20 күн бұрын

Please let me know if you found some more elegant trick.

That was honestly a breeze. Solved in 5m38s. Very fun constraint... now wondering if a 9x9 is possible...

Ended up tabbing forward for the break in and discovered that the puzzle was so constrained that it resolves rapidly once the final deduction was found; 01:07:43 proportedly but It took me to 27:24 on you solve to get what the puzzle was looking for.

27:27 was the key part for me, I managed up to that one....

16:11 for me. Quite nice.

Your eventual way of eliminating 3-4 on the short thermo was possibly more elegant, but I spotted another way that the 3-4 option led to a contradiction, that you almost found when asking what would happen if r1c4 was a 6 (at 25:32). This made r2c4 a 1, which made the short thermo 3-4, which put 4 diagonally opposite a 6 in box 4. So two 6's in column 5. Alternatively, when looking at the chain that led to the 3-4 option on the thermo, from 23:57, you started with 1 in r2c5 giving a 2 in r2c6. So r2c4 saw 123 in the row and 4 below. It couldn't be 6 (next to 4) so would have to be 5, making r1c5 a 6; but r4c5 would be a 6 also, diagonally opposite the 4. I admit though, I bifurcated my way to a solution in 8 minutes, and then took another 2 minutes to find why the alternative broke the puzzle.

nice one 16:07

20:10 very nice puzzle

Took me 9:13 minutes. Surprised with myself

Eventually I did find the logical solution path, but this puzzle was really begging for bifurcation... Solved it in 99:17 at last!

Anyone else having an issue the last few weeks with solving these on iphone / chrome? I’ve had issues with candidate numbers disappearing randomly as I try to solve.

50:10 probably didn't solve it the most efficient way

21:11 without much logic, just went what if this cell is x and got lucky that it was correct.

Can Xs and Vs connect diagonal cells? "cells connected" is a little vague

@RecreationalCynic

20 күн бұрын

In standard X and V rules the X or V sits on the middle of an edge between two cells which share the edge, so no diagonally adjacent cells will be X'ed or V'ed together.

@RichSmith77

20 күн бұрын

It's also easy to see that such a rule would make the grid impossible to fill. Put a 4 somewhere in c2. Now where are you putting 1 or 6 in the same box as that 4?

Let's Get Cracking: 03:00 Mark's time: 26m35s Puzzle Solved: 29:35 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Three In the Corner: 2x (28:05, 28:09) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Ah: 6x (08:34, 08:39, 16:39, 17:27, 20:26, 22:49) In Fact: 5x (00:49, 16:39, 20:03, 20:24, 27:01) Missing Something: 3x (13:17, 14:56, 20:37) Brilliant: 3x (10:30, 27:53, 30:01) Obviously: 2x (04:30, 13:56) Weird: 2x (08:34, 09:20) Sorry: 1x (04:19) Insane: 1x (27:44) Irritating: 1x (22:11) Wow: 1x (27:49) Most popular number(>9) and digit this video: Thirty Four (5 mentions) Four (91 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Even (3) - Odd (1) Column (7) - Row (1) 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!

This title really spoke to me bc of reasons

woah 4:42 I've never beaten marks time by so much. Now I gotta watch to see what mistake he made or something.

@stevieinselby

20 күн бұрын

I like your assumption that it was _Mark_ who made a mistake or missed something, and not that _you_ might have made a lucky leap 😉

@Nicrstlat

20 күн бұрын

@@stevieinselby yep, got a 4:22 and have never got close to Mark’s time before so checking a what leap I took

I solved this puzzle within 4:23. LoL

At 17:30. Twice now I've taken a guess, reached a paradox, then gone back and put in the opposite choice. Both times I solved the entire right side of the puzzle and broken it at the leftmost thermo. I don't know what I could be doing wrong. I'm starting to pull my fur out, here.

Took me 11:09. I used my old friend bifurcation. 😅

37:44 for me

Not hard for me. Some pencilmark plus colour every cell and that's it. 😅

Yargh. I took me over an hour. 1:08:34@#4163, to be exact. I just could not find any way to break out of the deadlock other than randomly bifurcating numbers. Not my best by a long shot. 🙁

"Perfectly formed" and, more importantly, impressively smart 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Okay, I surprised myself with this one, as usually I usually just get near Mark's solve times, and this one for some reason clicked with me and found the deductions quite quickly to finish in just 7:55 (conflict checker off). What an amazing puzzle, many thanks to NurglesGift for it!

Seemed like a lot of bifurcation to solve this one

Is it just me? But my pencil marks randomly visually disappear. Solving on Chrome on iPhone.

Grammar pedant corner. As Mark will know apostrophes are not used to denote plurals so it should be "All Xs and Vs are given".

@RichSmith77

20 күн бұрын

That's an interesting subject. I wasn't sure I agreed, so I tried researching a bit. (By which I mean I Googled "plural of letters".) There seems to be different views on it, and quite a few articles written about it. The Associated Press Stylebook, for one, recommends using an apostrophe along with the s, so they would recommend X's and V's. One argument being that the plural for the letter I is far more easily read if it's I's rather than Is.

@ericpraline1302

20 күн бұрын

@@RichSmith77 There might be rare cases where omission of an apostrophe causes confusion, but this certainly wasn't one of them and I would have thought Mark would have been a stickler for things like that.

@RichSmith77

20 күн бұрын

@@ericpraline1302 It appears that most style guides recommend the use of apostrophes when pluralising lower case letters. As in "Don't forget to dot your i's and cross your t's." So there are certainly exceptions to the general rule that apostrophes are never used for plurals. And, as I say, the AP style guide extends this to capital letters too. So I don't think it can be held as a grammatical error, if it's good enough for the AP style guide. It's more a matter of stylistic choice.

i just bifurcated on 2s at 7:45, and got done in under 15 min

Lots of roping in this puzzle.

I think you can prove that because of the constraints on 4s, you can never put 1 and 6 directly above one another in the same box in this puzzle. However you arrange it, you end up with one box where you can't place 4.

29:05 for me and solver #3041

69:36 - i had to restart countless times after running into contradiction after contradiction, in the end i just bifurcated and brute forced it, which i understand you geniuses abhor but is necessary for a simpleton like me... thanks for sharing, hoping as ever to learn something from you superstars someday, somehow

13 mins, but bifurcated.

Almost got a complete dualsolve..the other branch only erred in 3 places... 1) 4-4 on the B14 thermo(valid if u treat as slow thermo, which doesn't violate the other thermos 2) 1-4 Vpair in C1(place a V there and it's valid) 3) the last one wrecks the dualsolve as the R1 & C3 123 triple clash... Slow close tho.