Thanks again for a wonderful solve, Simon! Thrilled to have been featured again for this, and you're right that this was very hard to set :P - I was convinced for a good few days that I would be forced to use an extra constraint or given digits, and I was overjoyed when I discovered this was possible with a clean grid with only cages, and remained fun! *Spoiler Time* 57:37 - You mention this step is really hard, and it's true that it's definitely the hardest point in the puzzle to progress, but figuring out the 25 pair is one of multiple ways to continue at that point. Primarily, the top (pink) cage can be narrowed down through parity, meaning R4C2 must be odd, which means it can only be 3 or 5. If R4C2 is 3, that makes R3C1 9, forcing both the green and pink cages to both be 47, which is impossible, so R4C2 is 5, and can finish from there. :) Also, you could immediately place 6 in R1C3 because 6 could never be used to make up 13 or 19, which you did talk out, but didn't quite follow through with. ;) Glad to see this didn't end up being the marathon I was concerned it might be, and very impressed by your mental arithmetic! Everyone will be pleasantly relieved to know I am not planning on making a 10x10, and I look forward to whomever may create an 8x8, but I have other ideas with similar non-repeating cage totals with stuff other than primes... :P - Mega "Xenonetix" Lamb Logic-Masters Germany ID: 000IGV

@mvanvoorden

27 күн бұрын

Thanks for another great puzzle! In terms of larger grids, if you're ever planning on revisiting it in a far future, I think it would work great as an 11x11 chaos construction :P

@petrie911

27 күн бұрын

Fibonacci numbers, perhaps? The fact that 21 is both Fibonacci and triangular would surely come up. Probably also that 34 has only one representation as 5 distinct digits.

@justinec3294

23 күн бұрын

Thank you for entering the possibilities in the rule set! Great puzzle :)

@noahgolan603

5 күн бұрын

Took me an hour more than simon and had to restart twice due to too-hasty logic (once i forgot 1-3-1 was possible for the 5 cage and put in 2-1-2 which doesn't work, and once I somehow convinced myself that nineteen can't be created without a nine in the bottom right cage, then completely forgot about that logic to proceed with the top left cage), but my final progression was exactly through the 6 at r1c3, then the 3 or 5 in r4c2, then a five because after the 47 in the big cage at the top one can't get to 53 at the big cage at the bottom (didn't even check if you could get to 47 as well). Gotta say, it didn't even occur to me to examine the massive 73 cell to its possible combinations, but it's absolutely brilliant! Firstly i think it's (while still very hard), easier than seeing that the 3 in r4c2 breaks the puzzle, secondly it's astoundingly beautiful you actually know the cumulative sum of all the moving parts in that monstrositiy of a cage, and thirdly i didn't end up using that cage at all - except to check in the end i got a prime number. That way you actually use that part of the puzzle as well. Anyway thank you for a fantastic puzzle @megalamb, and a beautiful way forward i completely missed @Cracking The Cryptic

My favorite Simonism: "I've broken it. Wait. No I haven't."

@hzl1776

27 күн бұрын

need this on a t-shirt

@bbgun061

25 күн бұрын

"I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken."

1:06:45 Simon exclaiming "I am going to actually have to put on my thinking cap" one hour into the puzzle has the same energy as "this isn't even my final form", and I love it.

My favorite statement so far: “I’m being a bit cryptic here” Guess that means we have to crack Simon.

As of about 25 minutes in I'm sitting at the PC very vocally informing Simon why the "3579" pencil mark in the bottom left of box five cannot have a three in it. This is where my wife comes in and started with "You know that...". I'm fully expecting her to say that he cannot hear me but no! Her full sentence: "You know that he does not understand Afrikaans!" Of course yes.. *That's* the problem!

@viggoGodisgreat

17 сағат бұрын

😂😂

I've been watching CTC for around 4 years. I still smile every time Simon says I'm one of his favourite people and shares the secret. The only difference now is that I can see it coming which means I start smiling even before he says it. Thank you

"Let's make this red, cause it will make me feel like I'm doing something" Hahahaah

@estherwestbroek

27 күн бұрын

Feel like procrastinating today, getting out my red marker😈

Determines there must be a 3-4 cage in the middle box - immediately forgets it and tries to figure out how the leftover digit can be a 3!

I was proud to finish this puzzle by myself yesterday in a bit over two hours with extensive note-taking. I then of course tuned in today to watch Simon's solve, in half the time, with nothing but intuition, logic, mental math, and lots of good humor. Simon is truly one of a kind :D

simon forgetting he already proved the 3 would be in the 7 cage :D

Watching this video on a train, call that tracking the cryptic 🚂

@ikepigott

27 күн бұрын

Watching while refinishing furniture, it’s shellacking the cryptic

@longwaytotipperary

27 күн бұрын

As a patreon you could say I’m watching while backing the cryptic.

@angec9908

27 күн бұрын

I couldn’t watch this for a few hours. I was lacking the cryptic.

@OUdarling

27 күн бұрын

I watched this across three monitors, it’s cracking the triptych

@timch5227

27 күн бұрын

I watched this while i was coding, its hacking the cryptic

Simon, your birthday greeting to me was mind-blowing - thank you so much for your kindness. I have had a wonderful birthday visiting my relatives and Mount Rainier and other wonderful sites and sights in Washington State, but your greeting is very special. Now to watch the video - it might be tomorrow or the next day before I get back to it, though, because of travel.

@myacky5887

27 күн бұрын

Happy Birthday Emily!! I hope it was a great one 🎉

@emilywilliams3237

27 күн бұрын

@@myacky5887 It was great!

@runnerman8

27 күн бұрын

Happy Birthday Emily! I echo what Simon said. Your comments always put a smile on my face :)

@emilywilliams3237

26 күн бұрын

@@runnerman8 thank you so much!

Simon humming along, flowing his logic, and then suddenly going “wait, am I wrong about everything?” Is such a mood.

i've been obsessed with watching these even though i could never solve one on my own but it's so fascinating to see a genius at work!

@LyuboRyuk

27 күн бұрын

ikr ❤

@The_Omegaman

27 күн бұрын

Get the apps. They are easier and you level up. Felt the same but can solve most. Just not the set theory ones

@_pinkangels

25 күн бұрын

@@The_Omegaman I can do basic sudoku lol but not this

I finished in 79 minutes. I have no idea how you can construct something so simple looking with a minimal ruleset and have it be this beautiful. The break-in was really fun and I was so excited to find that the 5 cage was in a 3 cell cage. This series was so fun and one felt fresh. Great Puzzle!

This is a sudoku discovery to me! When I first solved it few days ago, I just stunned by the fact that this exists. Just a small point, without doing complicated calculation, because a 2-cell cage or a 3-cell cage can never add up to 29 or more, and there are 8 such small cages, we can instantly say that they must add up to the lowest 8 prime number (except 2). Then the 4-cell cage in box 3 can only add up to at most 30, so it must be 29.

One bit of logic I found that eliminated some of the math from the final two cage disambiguations was that r4c2 had to be odd, because the purple cage's total would otherwise be even, since it picks up 24 from boxes 2 and 3, plus two always-even digits and two always-odd digits in box 1. But if it has to be odd, by the time you're disambiguating the final cages the only option by sudoku is 5, which then locks all the other totals in, no math required.

@christophstahl8169

26 күн бұрын

Yes, that is how i did it aswell

@whatsleep17

26 күн бұрын

Me too!

16:01 I love how "take up the slack" (a rope concept) and "degrees of freedom" (a math concept) are 100% compatible concepts.

@jurgnobs1308

27 күн бұрын

yea logical puzzles often have a lot in common with mathematical concepts

I am constantly in awe of how Simon can keep track of all the maths needed to solve puzzles like this in his head. Had I attempted this puzzle, I definitely would have written down the list of primes on a sheet of paper and checked them off as I used them. In this case, that likely would have helped him work out the sums of the last three cages a bit quicker.

This grid has me chuckling and smirking. We found all the primes where they're lurking. When victory we've tasted, Much time I have wasted When I know that I should have been working.

I gave this a shot and ran into an issue on my first and second goes - I assumed, completely incorrectly mind you, that there was only one possible configuration for that 5 cage, and then subsequently could not add to 8, haha. What I adored about this puzzle was the 31 and 37 cages - after figuring out that the 31 cage must have that sum from the 2, 3 and other 4 cell cage, then taking both it and the 5 cell cage and taking the maximums (24, 35 and 9) you get the 68 sum. It's so beautiful and incredibly clever setting!! I'm astonished at the solve and really enjoyed the challenge. On my last reset it took me an hour and 40 minutes, but the logic to get there took me far longer to fully tease out. Incredibly glad to have given the whole series a shot though! Thank you to all the fantastic setters c:

"Do have a go." Sure. *five minutes later* The only thing I know is r6c4 is odd, the four cages in box 5 are all odd/even pairs. Those 4 pairs plus the leftover odd in r6c4 sum to to 45. Also its lunch time in the American Southwest. So I'm just gonna let Simon do it while I eat.

@studgerbil9081

27 күн бұрын

that still puts you ahead of Simon who, at 28 minutes in, is wondering if he can put a "3" into r6c4 when he already has a 3-4 cage in box 5. Simon's logic and break-in skills are unmatched, but his sudoku and pencilmarking have me pulling my hair out every time.

You know it's been a good puzzle when it takes half an hour to figure out the first number

Thank you for including a list of primes! It makes it easier for me to follow the logic.

Usually Simon will do ANYTHING to avoid doing Sudoku, over obsessing on the variant rules. Today we see the exact opposite, as he desperately looks for anything to avoid having to face the fact that, sooner or later, he'll have to balance massive square relationships.

I love this. Especially Simon’s declaration of himself as absolutely fabulous company at parties - that made my day 🤣🥰

I'm so proud of myself that I solved this on my own! The puzzle had really nice flow to the logic - I never felt like I didn't know what to do

Out of no where when he say Am I wrong about everything here 😂 Classic

At around 35:00 in the solve, I think it's a little easier to look at the maximums for the two cages occupying the middle of row 7 together. The three cells in row 6 are a max 789, the five cells in row 7 are a max 56789 and the one cell in row 8 is a max 9. Sum these together and you have 24+35+9=68, which just happens to be the sum of the next two lowest primes (31+37). The square 2x2 therefore had to be 31, the Z pentomino 37, and the rows use the maximal digits available. But other than small point, I thought that was a masterful solve!

Minimum for the large cage is at least 62, cutting out two more primes. Box six needing 7 digits is very powerful.

57:10 If the grey cage is 66 or 72, it needs to reach an odd number for it to be prime so the part of grey in box 7 needs an odd digit so 5 is always in that domino.

I ran an exhaustive search for 15-tuples of prime numbers that sum to 405: 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 79 = 405 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 53 + 73 = 405 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 59 + 67 = 405 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 67 = 405 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 43 + 47 + 59 + 61 = 405 Kids, whatever you do, *do not* try nesting fifteen for loops. Just as the top rated industrial safety boots are only good for 200 Joules, which is equivalent (at least on Earth, where a mass of 1kg. has a weight as near to 10 Newtons as damn it is to swearing) to 20kg. falling from a height of 1m. and so you might just as well lift weights in your bare feet for all the good any fancy shoes are going to do you, this is one of those rare occasions where a little gentle recursion might actually be slightly less insane than the "proper" way.

@wokkawicca

17 күн бұрын

I think I'd break a metatarsal if I dropped that extended analogy on my foot, but I sure appreciated the work you put into it and finding the possible solutions.

I made a spreadsheet of primes for the last one. It came in convenient this time too! It let me look at the deltas between primes.

Phistomefel helped a lot in this puzzle. I haven’t seen if Simon used it yet or not but it helped me

@petrie911

27 күн бұрын

As soon as I saw the geometry of the puzzle, I knew Phistomofel would come up.

EMILY!!! Happy birthday!! You are one of my favorite commentators - always positive, insightful and gently humorous!!! Have a wonderful day!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

@David_K_Booth

27 күн бұрын

Seconded! Have a great day, Emily.

@pouletbelette

27 күн бұрын

A very happy birthday to you, Emily. Thank you for your comments. This community wouldn't be the same without you!

@smahoney1212

27 күн бұрын

Happy Birthday Emily

@penningmeestercgkdelft9159

27 күн бұрын

Happy birthday Emily!

i adore simon and his commentary! im so glad to have found this channel :)

Amazing puzzle! If you leave out the list of primes under 100 from the rule set, this got to be sudoku with the shortest rule set and no given digits or other info in the grid. Only the cages and the primes constriction. Really amazing!

Any time round 51 minutes, with only the three biggest primes unknown, it makes sense to add up the 12 known primes, which amount to 169. This drastically reduces the possibilities for the last three, especially after finding that the biggest is 73, leaving 96 to be apportioned between the other two.

OK, coming back to this after watching it in a few parts over the past few days, between travel and sightseeing and the like. This was an amazing puzzle. Although it is far, far longer a video than I would ordinarily think I could solve the puzzle myself, I actually think I might be able to do this one because of the great foundational work in the earlier puzzles of this type. Thanks for working your way through this (and so many others), Simon, with such thoroughness. It truly teaches the way to do these. And thank you again for the birthday greetings. (I confess to having listened to them more than once - is that too much hubris? I hope not - it gives me such pleasure to be part of this CtC community!)

This was hard ... 298:30 for me (spread over two nights), solve counter 1876. I figured out relatively quickly roughly which prime numbers are needed (with some wiggle room at the upper end), and which cage-sizes fit to which prime (thanks to the pidgeon hole principle 3, 5, 7, 19, 23, 29, 31 had just one option, 11, 13, 17 had two options for a while, and the larger primes had to share the larger cages). Though I mis-counted the 7-cage as a 6-cage 😕, and also otherwise did some wrong calculations. Finally I took my command line calculator to help me out. Then I spent most of the time on the Sudoku part ... and got stuck. Remembered to re-count the cages and use some parity (the primes here are all odd!), which helped.

@PauxloE

21 күн бұрын

Now watching Simon do it: He managed to get it much more straightforward, going by size of cages and primes. (I had to use the Phistomefel ring at the end to make sure which digits go where exactly, but I see Simon managed it without it.)

40:36 - "Fascinating" is so the right word to use. Absolutely fascinating how, after just putting in the two nines and the 8-9 pair (40:18), he ignores the 9 that would disambiguate it! That's why we all love you Simon.

Wonderful.. Been waiting for this one!

I think this is the most I've ever been faster than him, got it in 55 min 42 sec, I've only ever been faster than him a couple of times. Amazing puzzle

It was great to hear Simon say he is interesting at parties!

Finished in 39:55. What lovely logic for the break-in. I particularly like how 1 of my assumptions was immediately upended from how the center box had to be filled out. Fun puzzle!

Solved in 82:56. I rarely take on these hour plus challenges, but this one seemed like the kind I could handle. I made a little math mistake at one point near the end. When counting the digits in the 53 cage, I missed the 1 in box 3. I immediately noticed something was wrong, as the 13 cage no longer added up, but I had to check the video to see what the mistake was. Other than that, I solved it on my own without guessing.

At around 1:07:00 Simon starts musing about figuring out the value of the remaining cages, but he already had the value of the big cage because all of the digits in all of the boxes it enters are known! You can just count.

22:57 me every second of my life

Thank you Simon you make me smile and you explain so well that then make me feel smart sometimes when you solve it before Simon, do it only because he explains it so well and double/triple check it is right :)

1:03:45 - Let's make this cage red because that will make me feel like I'm doing something. Hilarious!!

39:15 for me. Can't wait for the 10x10 version and the 11x11 version and the 12x12 version...

@mvanvoorden

27 күн бұрын

an 11x11 chaos construction would be lit

while watching i was guesstimating the sum of the larger cages just going by an average value per space of 5, so for the green cage for example there are 10 spaces so the estimated value of the cage should be around 50 so i was quite happy to see how close i was

I somehow got the 6 Box 1 far earlier than you and as all the digits in the pink cage were fixed apart from 4, I busted out the calculator. Turns out every single option pared it down to either a 3 or 5 due to evenness. I then worked out the grey box like you did and finding the top right cage could have both 4 and 8 just unravelled the whole rest of the puzzle. I don't even know what the grey cage actually adds to!

solved it in 63:06 whew! lots of math, mins and maxes, good stuff.

108:41 this one was far more brutal than its predecessors...

Well, this took me about 2 hours and I made a spreadsheet to track the possible box combinations. But I made it!

Great puzzle, I love the ones that involve some maths as well as sudoku

Brilliant puzzle. Absolutely exciting.

I managed to do this puzzle but it needed a crazy amount of math. I think I only managed it because I like colouring in puzzles.

Thank you Simon, a most enjoyable solve.

Happy Father’s Day, Simon!

7:52 - Simon, the channel is 'Cracking the Cryptic'... you are allowed to be cryptic, especially when it's a long way outside the Sabbath lacking one from Paris. (7,3)

"This cage suffers the same indignities..." Best laugh of the day!

My addition is so slow. I got to it, but over 2 hours... It's astonish to see how quickly Simon does it in his head 🤣🤣

"Am I wrong about everything?" top tier youtube

This was fun. Thanks.

"That is ridiculous! If that's what I'm meant to do it's ridiculous!" (59:00) Is suspect so! I ended up following the exact same path (2-5 pair in box seven, then restrict the 19-cage in box one), though I was stuck for over an hour before I found it!

that was a tricky one... took me just over 2 hours but very satisfying

These have been satisfyingly gorgeous

I want to see Simon playing Starcraft II. It may be fun, it may be not. But I am curious what this brilliant mind would create. Maybe in another channel...

Way too hard for me at this stage but I totally loved the solve path, just a beautiful idea, those Prime Cage Puzzles. Hoping to see a 2+ hour 10x10 video some time soon 😁

23:08 Absolutely magnificent feat of construction. As with the previous iterations of this genre the maths breaks down the solution pretty simply, but just building this is incredible in itself.

At 50-00 it seemed that whether its 13 or 19, 6 cannot go into the cage. Thinking more about it, if 6 goes into the cage and you sum to 13 you need 16, 25, 34. Neither works. if you then try to sum to 19, you ned 6 + 13 and thats 49, 58, 67, which also doesnt work

Prime number are my favourite type of numbers :)

@ahouyearno

27 күн бұрын

Yes! They are horrifying like a good horror movie you can’t stop watching

One thing at 1:06:10 The way I solved it was that you knew the contents of the purple cage with the exception of the 59 and the cell below by knowing all of the other digits in box 2. To add to a prime it had to either be a 5 over a 3 or a 9 over a 5 but the three in green cage sees it so it has to be a 9 over a 5

Great puzzle !!!!

Does anyone know how he’s able to stream many different puzzles like that? What type of tool or application does he use to be able to do that?

The fact that numbers can repeat would make this impossible for me. I can't wrap my mind around that anymore, I've done too much sudoku and kakuro.

Simon where are the next Braid levels? I am so eager to see you finish it off

At 1:03:26, it _is_ forced, because the gray box's digits are all in boxes where every other cell is filled. Its sum is determined.

I was able to deduce the first 12 primes but I made a bad assumption that spiraled the rest of the puzzle into contradiction. Had to finish the video to see you get the solution.

Never caught one so early.

1:09:03 The easiest way to see this is by summing up the current total discovered cages.

Just so you know, Simon ... I'd bee line for your company at any party should I spot you. 😀

28:38 sums up alot of smaller missed moments of a confusing puzzle given he proved without a dought 7 was made up of 3+4

57:28 Simon not knowing the secret of two adjacent cells with the same three candidates each: their sum can only have three values. In this case the values are 2+4, 2+5 and 4+5. Given the context this was in it must be odd (since if added to either 66 or 72 must give a prime), and not a multiple of three, so it must be a (2,5) pair.

Just finished, won't embarrass myself by posting such a slow time. Now I'm going to watch the video to see how it's done without paper and pen figuring out all the prime combinations that add to 405.

My husband and I got through it, in one go even, but not without a calculator.

at 21:23 you say you almost wish you can tick them off. You can use open source software like OpenBoard" to draw on your screen to mark off the prime numbers you've used. Might also be nice for the viewer.

@EBattousai

27 күн бұрын

Second this! Telestration software is super useful for the streamer/ KZreadr

@jurgnobs1308

27 күн бұрын

so i have been using a sharpie for no reason? damn

I asked my robot friend Whiskers to give me 15 primes summing to 405 without using both 3 and 5. He thought he did okay, but was getting extremely confused. Here's the tail end of our conversation. Whiskers: 3+7+13+17+19+23+29+31+37+41+43+47+53+59+61 = 483 Please correct any overlapping prime, redo properly checking; Sum here matching exactly! Let retry again? Fixing any prime+odd = sum correction! Try next updating soon? Me: Matching exactly? It's off by 78. Well, don't worry about it. I'm watching Simon Anthony solve the same puzzle. He's smart. I'll just do what he does. Whiskers: That sounds like a good plan! Simon Anthony is indeed quite skilled with puzzles. If you have any other questions or need help with anything else, feel free to ask. Aaaaaand I just found the five cage. My bad.

I like it just for rules of sudoku 😅

As predicted - wonderful puzzle

@MarkBennet10001

27 күн бұрын

It is somewhat terrifying to see Simon seeing things (apart, so far, from one) more quickly than I did. And to notice a thing I missed "parity on grey"

@MarkBennet10001

27 күн бұрын

Actually I did it a more complicated way than that, and got the same result

@MarkBennet10001

27 күн бұрын

Yes, and the 25 pair in box 7 was what I found

Ong i was so scared i forgot father's day and then i realised its not in my country yet and then i remembered i already have my gift prepared too 😂

This is insane

In my attempt to solve this, I first proved that both 3 and 5 had to be cage totals, and then I proved that 3 and 5 both can't be totals. So I'm stuck, and very curious how this one can be solved. I guess I'll have to watch the video to find out. *Edit*: never mind, I figured it out: you _can_ have both a 3 and a 5. (The 5 doesn't have to be in a domino.)

23 mins “Am I wrong about everything” was very poignant

Where is the 8x8 version?

@miran248

27 күн бұрын

Wondering the same question..

45 minutes in and I realise my FIRST NUMBER was wrong :(((((

Amazing

At the end . Just pencilmark and count 😁🙃