Mark: Here's a thermo sudoku! Have fun! Simon: The ancient texts must be deciphered and translated from the monks of the astral plane... this will give you the clue on how to solve the cell in r7c4

@Hazedot

4 жыл бұрын

I love the contrast between the videos they make. Mark posts a lot of accessible puzzles that I can try and solve sometimes. SImon posts all the weird and impossible ones, so I just sit back and enjoy.

@rickk9897

4 жыл бұрын

Exactly. Is it just me or are Mark's puzzles consistently under 15 minutes while Simon's are well over 30 minutes. I haven't made through some of Simon's recent videos because they're too damn confusing.

@fantafanta2823

4 жыл бұрын

@@Hazedot Same! As a sudoku novice I know I can always give Mark's puzzles a go before I watch his videos and see where I can improve. With Simon I know I'm going to see some masterful logic that pushes the limits of sudoku (as far as my knowledge goes, at least). And I love watching both!

@stephenbeck7222

4 жыл бұрын

Mark has done mostly easier puzzles recently but there’s no denying that he makes the puzzles look easier than they are if you just watch him solve them. He is also the one who does the monthly super hard cryptic crossword where most of us just sit there and shrug that he can fill even one clue.

Simon: "I'm on cloud 9." Me: *looks for other clouds in the same row, column or box to exclude 9 from*

@Shadow81989

4 жыл бұрын

underrated comment xD

I wish everyone of you finding someone who looks at you in the way as Simon looks at Phistomofel puzzles.. amazing puzzle as always, greets!

@senixahaa

4 жыл бұрын

Haha! So true!!!

Tensed up so much until he figured out he needed a different color for "in cave but not clue"

@Scuuurbs

4 жыл бұрын

I’m so glad it happened as soon as it did.

@HunterJE

4 жыл бұрын

Same, also this doesn't come of "omg how can he not figure out something so obvious," it comes from the empathy of knowing what it feels like to totally dead end yourself on a puzzle by starting out with the wrong approach (which I know for a fact I do with much greater regularity than Simon)

@roybatterham5002

4 жыл бұрын

Yes, I was feeling so anxious till he fixed that

@akosbakonyi5749

4 жыл бұрын

Hunter E 8 minutes in the video, came to the comments to see if it only bothers me...

@PurpleSidewalk1

4 жыл бұрын

I like raised me finger at the screen as if to say no wait you need to stop and then put it down because he couldn't hear me :(

Simon: "I can't recommend this highly enough. Do try it yourself." Me: "Well I pencil marked 5 3's. That's it."

@bitzibaerlie

4 жыл бұрын

I marked a cell as cave that was not cave and did some flawed pencil marks. Could not wrap my head around this disappointingly.

just a small suggestion, since a normal (white) cell turns yellow when highlighted, it's better to use a different color as a given color. i myself changed all yellow cells to blue before starting to solve the puzzle. :)

@riluna3695

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah, the yellow in general is a color I stay away from for that very reason. But there's not much I can do about it, 'cuz recoloring a given color simply mixes those two colors together instead of overwriting the first with the second. Such that recoloring these yellows to blues makes a bluish-green. That said, for some reason gray overrides instead of mixing. So even in this, it's inconsistent.

@riluna3695

4 жыл бұрын

@@tarmil It's a good idea, but it doesn't work. Turning them white doesn't delete coloration, it just paints it over. When you switch to a different color, you once again get a hybridization, same as if you never used white at all. Fun Fact, too: Even coloring a square the SAME color as a pre-colored tile will blend the two colors, making it a bit darker than normal. I've even seen Simon and Mark run into that during their solves once or twice, though they never seem to pay it any attention. Either they've never noticed it themselves, or they've long known it was a thing they couldn't fix, and so just learned to live with it.

Honestly Simon, I truly cannot fathom the rules to even start! It’s not that I am completely daft but this is a different language which you have mastered superbly! What a puzzle, what a solve, what an amazingly ridiculous channel this is! Right, I am going to buy a t-shirt!

@stinchjack

4 жыл бұрын

i agree, some of these puzzles could do with a better explanation of rules

Great puzzle! One thing that really helped me was to turn all the yellow squares green. I was getting the yellow squares and "cursor square" mixed up a lot.

A Phistomefel puzzle : Simon Anthony :: me coming home : my dog

why does it seem that every day Simon gets the puzzle with War and Peace as a rule set and takes him at least 30 minutes to solve, while Mark gets a rule set that can be printed on a business card and takes him 15 minutes to solve.

Battenberg had a nice go, but the winner and still champion: Pentomino.

@mightworth3735

4 жыл бұрын

But what about the snake that is not allowed to touch itself... othogonally

He gets there through similar logic later, but something fun I noticed: The 34 penciled in at 13:41 can be immediately resolved because if it is a 3 there cannot be a 3 in the 9-cell grey region

It's a trifle unfortunate that the yellow "cave clue" color is so close to the yellow "I've highlighted this square" color.

the tip about why the checkerboard pattern will never work in a cave puzzle was really helpful and well-explained. great video and solve as usual! your logic never ceases to amaze me

This is the kind of puzzle that turns me into an excited student eager to learn some logic. Every time I finally understood a rule and when I could make sense of what Simon was actually doing had me thrilled :)

Simon: Good wifi, nice T-shirt. On cloud 9 So humble☺

The example explanation might be useful if it weren’t covered up by the instructions! Still not certain about the rules...

@Shadow81989

4 жыл бұрын

Indeed - the first part of the explanation was completely obstructed! I had to watch the first 5 minutes of the solve to just understand the rules, after that I didn't find it particularly hard to solve, although it was pretty time consuming (45 minutes or so).

I commented this on the puzzle hunt solution video and on the Patreon post but for those who aren't patrons... Tip: An idiosyncrasy of the software. To remove colors correctly after you've highlighted cells. Select the color option on the right, select the cells and click delete. This resets the colors back to the default without affecting pencil marks and doesn't color over anything with white. So any original coloring is still there.

Can't wait to get a Let's Get Cracking t-shirt! The next merch needs to say 'Don't make a battenburg!' 😂 what a beautiful puzzle from Phistomefel as always, I love Simon's giddy excitement upon solving it

@gi0nbecell

4 жыл бұрын

How about „Bobbins!“ on the shirt? I‘d buy several, I suppose...

@moonglum101

4 жыл бұрын

Surely it should say "Avoid Battenbergs!"? Much more catchy?

@moonglum101

4 жыл бұрын

Just to follow-up on this, in my head I think about the Titanic and avoiding icebergs and "don't make an iceberg" just doesn't work. I wasn't trying to be contrary :)

I’ve been watching this channel for a couple of months, and this is the first puzzle where I’m like “Nah. You’ve lost me. No idea what you’re doing.” Head hurts.

Very enjoyable watch, and the puzzle looked excellent, but perhaps needed a bit more experience with cave puzzles to get going than I have - Would definitely be interested in seeing some cave puzzles featured on the channel.

What a nice variant! I enjoyed solving it very muich! But since I haven't done a cave puzzle before, I needed help from this video (until 12:14) to get started.

@7:30 It's strange to say but Pentomino logic is letting me see that r7c7 must also be Cave. Or Snake logic, not isolating Cave cells. No matter which cell(s) above the given 4 are Cave, that cell is involved in helping that Cave orthogonally extend outside that box of ground cells. And, in fact, that entire wall of Cave is very restricted because it takes a minimum of 8 cells which must not repeat to reach the nearest edge of the grid.

Not going to lie, I had to google the word orthogonally and after reading about it and watching this video I literally don't understand the rules. Sometimes Simon talks about a straight run, other times he takes turns with the yellow, I have no idea what's going on Edit: I think I finally understand the yellow square digits

There’s this really beautiful piece of logic at 27:44 that I’m really proud of noticing, considering the fact that I am a really bad at sudoku. There’s no four yet in the 9-cell gray region, and the 4s in r7c5 and r9c7 put a 4 in either r6c4 or r6c6. This and the 4 in r3c3 put 4 in either r4c2 or r5c2. (You’ll see why this helps later.) The 4s in columns 7 and 8 forces a 4 into either r4c9 or r6c9, but since the 4 in row 6 is in box 5 and not box 6, the 4 goes into r4c9. Because the 4 is in row 4, the 4 in box 4 (sorry for so many 4s) goes in r5c2. I just thought that was a beautiful piece of logic, and thanks for reading my upcoming Ted Talk script.

@RichSmith77

4 жыл бұрын

Snap! I used this exact piece of logic to place those 4s at this point in the puzzle too, imgur.com/a/x3CR8MY (Not sure why I picked green for non-clue cave, but it worked for me 😀)

01:48:06 // Some prior knowledge of cave puzzle logic (e.g. checkerboard pattern) would have been REALLY helpful, in retrospect...

Another over 30 min video, love it!

Can’t see example grid at the beginning!

@CrackingTheCryptic

4 жыл бұрын

It is in the video (and also now linked in the video description)

@euanmcdougall1917

4 жыл бұрын

@@CrackingTheCryptic I think he means the instructions are covering the right-hand side of the grid (but not a huge deal)

@nathanialblower9216

4 жыл бұрын

Euan McDougall indeed, but the link solves it!

Oh man, understanding the rules as a non-native english speaker is really hard :D

@awilliams1701

3 жыл бұрын

I speak english and I really didn't understand them either.

Simon you're a brilliant man. Thank you for the content.

Nice to see your back on your computer!

Because this puzzle necessitates two different colours within the cave to differentiate markers from non markers, and yet another colour (grey) for walls, it’s really hard to visualize as you’re working through it. Suggestion to both Simon/Mark and to Phistomefel for future puzzles of this kind: instead of yellow marked cells, put a dotted box within that cell or a grey circle or something to allow it to stand out, but still allow the same colour to be used for all cells within the cave.

@mhatty2

4 жыл бұрын

Great idea: I was thinking similarly. I would love to try more of this type, but the notation, as it is, is not as clear and intuitive as the other variants.

Me: oh look a new CTC video! I'll watch it in a bit. Also me: Wait is that a devil picture? Is this a phistomefel puzzle? Oh I guess I watch now.

Tried this thing five times before looking back at Phistomefel's example and realizing I got the rules wrong: I thought *every* cell in the cage, not just the yellows, had to indicate by their numbers how many cave cells they see.

I want to see more classic sudoku. These fancy variants are above my pay grade.

What a great puzzle! Definitely worth the wait!

First cave sudoku I've seen, very cool puzzle

Great puzzle. Took me over one hour, but solved it! One thing - this is a brand new puzzle (I have not seen it yet on this channel). Can you next time do an example before you start of wall rules? You normally do this, just this time I had to watched beginning of the solve to fully understand all the rules. I had a good fun, thanks :)

Simon and Mark. Please start a podcast. About puzzles, guitar, anything.

Brilliant... Simply brilliant

added 1 min ago! joy!!! let's get cracking - ooo it's Phisto's!

Simon’s exuberance is starting to make me a little uncomfortable, lol... watching these videos feels tantamount to voyeurism!

@dustysparks

4 жыл бұрын

He's definitely getting a "runner's high" from solving :D

@Trias805

4 жыл бұрын

I wish I was that enthusiastic about anything

That was a great puzzle and I learned a new word today. The word checkered shall henceforth be replaced with Battenberg in my home.

@RichSmith77

4 жыл бұрын

Google "Battenburg cake" If you want to understand why the pattern is being referred to as Battenburg.

Great puzzle as always :) If I had to give any constructive feedback for your online sudoku app it would be to build some kind of mechanism to switch colors easily. Let's say you have a star battle sudoku and first you want to do all the coloring. More contrasting colors are great for this step. So you either choose a very intens color or check a box "coloring" . then when this is done you either deactivate the box or whatever and the colors are toned down so you can fill in the numbers more easily. But maybe this is on me, and noone else experiences the colors as somewhat blurred.

This one is in my top 5 favorite puzzles on this channel in the last year! Even if it took me 20 min to get going and 30 more to finish because I didnt know about the cake 😭

Just getting started, so haven't watched most of video yet. The mention of 2x2 blocks in rules seems confusing, as it's a non restriction. I was about to make a HUGE mistake by applying the 2x2 restriction I half remembered. Just came back to check if it applied to walls or cave or both, and found it was neither, so why mention it? Are 2x3 or 3x3 allowed? I can't see any restriction that made it worth taking up space in the rules to mention it?

Could we get the link to the sample solution? It's hard to see in the video, it's covered by the rules

I've been watching religiously during lockdown, and this is the first video I've got half way through and I still have no clue what is going on

@JonathanCorwin

4 жыл бұрын

Getting towards the end, I'm beginning to understand now!

avoid battenburgs, precedes to make a pink and yellow cake

What a fun puzzle, wasn't too hard either once I fully understood the rules.

Is there also a rule about the maximum size of a grey region or distance from the wall? Why can a grey cell be no more than 9 cells away from an edge? EDIT: Never mind, it's because each digit in the grey areas must be different!

@SimonSideburns

4 жыл бұрын

It says in the rules that a grey region cannot contain duplicates (it's the last but one sentence), therefore it must be a maximum of 9 cells in size. I had to stop and read the rules again when he started to decide where that grey region went.

I'm curious if there are any Seattle-area NHL fans around. . "Let's Get Kraken", anyone?

@Rubrickety

4 жыл бұрын

Everyone should throw their weight behind Mike Selinker's suggestion to make the mascot "Elise the Kraken".

Oof, I found this really, really tough. I think having played cave puzzles before is needed before attempting this one (at least for me).

Hi Simon, just tried ordering a hoodie from the tee website but it insists I have provided an invalid postcode which it wasn’t! Can you help? I will try the website for CTC

Let's get... watching you crack this one

This was a very tough puzzle, but I really enjoyed solving it. I did have to restart after 2 hours because of what turned out to be a foolish logic mistake, but got it in an hour and a half on the second try. I thought building the cave was fun, but the actual Sudoku turned out to be even better. I definitely wasn't as efficient at doing either as the video. Especially in boxes 8 and 9. Even after figuring out that the there had to be a 3 in gray squares in box 7, it didn't occur to me that it resolved 3-4 in the yellow box. I think I kept thinking about that 9 run of cave cells as it's own box. But I'm to keep getting new variations of puzzles that I have never seen before, so I guess there are bound to be some bumps in the road. At least for us mortal solvers.

The demon in the chair is such an iconic thing that I only had to see that to know it was Phistomefel. Despite Phistomefel being written quite plainly above it. I didn’t even see it written there at first

So the given yellow cells are, lights, lanterns, sconces, torches? Lights that have written on them how many cells they shine in a straight direction?

I don't see the link to the example mentioned in the ruleset?

You should have a featured day like once a week or something where you always feature a new creator that has never been featured before, to allow for some variety of creators!

I don’t follow the reasoning at 9:00. Can’t the cave go from R5:C7,R4:C7 to R4:C9 and leave R5:C9 gray and satisfy the requirements? EDIT : Also, the rules in the description don’t say that the numbers in the gray must be unique to that gray region. And I don’t read German. :) EDIT: Because all cave squares must be connected to each other?

@jaeusa160

4 жыл бұрын

The next to last sentence says cells in connected grey Cave regions cannot repeat. The given yellow Ground cells very much over-block the cave's ability to bend north in that part of the grid. And the rules do cover ALL the Ground (non-grey) cells must connect orthogonally which is why he applied the "no checkerboard" restriction since such a pattern would take too many cells to work.

first... to give up on trying this puzzle.

So, not understanding.. does the yellow numbers have to see yellow squares.. or any squares that are yellow or orange?

@colleenscottcarmello5103

4 жыл бұрын

ahha nevermind.. he just didn't block the 3 yet as he is still working it out.. thought he was counting diagonals.. I got it now. thanks

Minute 27:00 is where I saw the mistake I made after coming back to the video wondering where I went wrong after working on this one so hard and nearly finishing. Loud expletive ensued, and was enjoyed by all within a city block.

1:17:31 + first 7 min of the video. The rule is very difficult to read for me. Had to see Simon demo to understand. (Plus learning about the checkered pattern is extremely useful)

I don't think I fully understood the rule set. Thought you'd seen something that wasn't in the rules, but now realise I didn't parse them properly.

Missing the link to the sample solution!

@CrackingTheCryptic

4 жыл бұрын

It should be there now.

@mathemitmanger3913

4 жыл бұрын

logic-masters.de/Raetselportal/Raetsel/zeigen.php?chlang=en&id=0003U6

Help, I cannot find a cracking the cryptic website - just an auto app!

This one was tough. I got a decent amount into the puzzle, but had to start over. I got it right the second time.

I stared at this for 20 minutes and made no progress. LOL

am i missing something on the "no 2x2 areas of cave or wall"? it seems he ended with some.

@DavidHsueh

4 жыл бұрын

The rules says it is possible, not impossible

Screaming at monitor "Fiiiiveeee on the left!!" for a minute around 19-20 minute of video )))

I suggest adding rules description either in a description or in the first comment

@adamheywood113

4 жыл бұрын

Rules typically are in the description, right after/below the link to play the puzzle.

@gromaxe

4 жыл бұрын

@@adamheywood113 oh, thanks. Missed this.

Took me 70 minutes to figure out the cave geometry. Another 30 minutes to solve it; unfortunately I made a small number/cell error somewhere and had to fix it by looking into the video. Really beautiful puzzle by the devil :)

Didn't know all the yellow squares needed to be connected to each other :-(

@eurofile416

4 жыл бұрын

Yes, I still have a problem with this. There is nothing self evident from the rules that precludes a naked yellow square with a "1" in it for me.

@eurofile416

4 жыл бұрын

Aah, on my 5th reading of the rules - "all other cells must form an orthogonally connected area". Nothing wrong with the rules description, just my comprehension and eagerness to get cracking I suppose. Great puzzle by the way, but easy to make a mistake whilst constructing the cave.

Great puzzle

This could be called the Bomberman sudoku, because the clues indicate the area of explosion if they were bombs (with maximum range) from that game.

The rules are in tiny print, a mile paragraph long. Not for me.

@gromaxe

4 жыл бұрын

It'd be nice to post rules s first comment

@Kokurorokuko

4 жыл бұрын

They are always in the description

What sudoku software is used in this video?

Took me 2 hours but what a puzzle!

The video overlay obscures the example presented, and i don't see the link to an example that is promised in the description text.

@TheAntibozo

4 жыл бұрын

Ah, after reloading i see the link was added to the description later.

@TheAntibozo

4 жыл бұрын

I'm afraid this treatment is very confusing because Simon keeps talking about "turning squares yellow" but as far as i can tell, what he actually means is that they cannot be grey.

@TheAntibozo

4 жыл бұрын

Another issue: the choice of yellow as the marker color for the special cave cells is unfortunate because this is also the highlight color.

Is it just me or volume is lower than always? Or just my headphones malfunction

@keniangervo8417

4 жыл бұрын

Same problem here

Yeah gonna take a back seat on this one.

Should've coloured all oranges yellow at the end just to have a final look at the cave.

@CrackingTheCryptic

4 жыл бұрын

Yes I should have... my bad!

This cave variant is the one so far that I just cannot follow. I'm sure the solve is amazing, but without understanding, it is impossible to fully appreciate it. Don't know what the nature of my mental block is. 🤷‍♀️

Well, I had to watch a few minutes to figure out how to start, but got it in a couple of hours after that.

"… and not every possible clue cell is given..." I get the same solution, but this rule is not solved!!

@diegoolivares8735

4 жыл бұрын

I mean, whit this rule, I hv to found at least one not given clue cell.

@danfretwell2214

4 жыл бұрын

It’s not a rule to be used as such but to stop you from (wrongly) assuming that ONLY the yellow cells have this property.

@diegoolivares8735

4 жыл бұрын

@@danfretwell2214 but only yellow cells hv this property in the solution. I think its as you said, but the sentence needs a "necessary" at the end.

Why is a checkerboard pattern problematic when the cell in question is already on the edge, and it cannot become isolated?

@voorth

4 жыл бұрын

because the grey cell one away from the edge is isolated

@RichSmith77

4 жыл бұрын

When you connect the grey/wall cell that is not on the edge, to the edge somewhere, you're going to be separating the two yellow/cave cells in the checkerboard pattern from ever being able to connect to each other. (All yellow/cave cells have to be connected orthogonally)

Got that one out. Not the cleanest solve, and certainly not the quickest, but it worked out.

Wow, I think I need one of those shirts...

Only on a Simon Sudoku video will you ever hear, "That's a 6 so this square is gray" And somehow this makes sense.

Would doing sudoku along the way have helped him build the wall?

Now I wanted to learn a battenburg sudoku, After I watched this

I got the logic he used at minute 6 all by myself and I'm proud of that. Now I'm going to watch the video after staring at the grid for 45 minutes trying to break in.... Edit: I realize now that I was forgetting that the cave all needs to be connected to each other.

what is intro song?

25:47 I'm curious about the logic you're using here. We've already seen that you can't create a checkered pattern, but this is on the edge of the grid, so shouldn't it be possible here? It turns out to not be possible, because it forces a 3 or a 10 in the corner, which is impossible, but technically the logic is incorrect here.

@Sinrus12

4 жыл бұрын

His logic there is nothing do with the checker pattern - it’s all in the yellow number clues. Unless you’re talking just about turning c3r9 orange, in which case it’s because the rules say all cells of the cave are orthogonally connected, and making that cell part of the wall would cut off the two yellows in the corner.

@magc_csgo7098

4 жыл бұрын

In addition, some cells must be colored grey so that all grey cells are orthogonally connected to the edge and all other cells form AN ORTHOGONALLY CONNECTED AREA... 'Form an area', not 'form areas'. So all cave cells have to be connected to each other, thus it has to 'escape'.

@jeroennouwens9972

4 жыл бұрын

@@Sinrus12 Well, that checkered pattern can't happen because the cave has to escape, but I was just pointing out that that could still have happened, and I'm not sure Simon had enough info to figure it out already. Maybe I'm just missing something, but in theory you could make R1C7 orange, and combine it with R1C8, R3C9 (which was forced already), and either R2C9 or R3C8 and R2C8 (or both, which is basically the same as the first option). However, the first one means that the corner R1C9 has to be a 10, and the other one means that the corner has to be a 3, which is impossible, because of the given 3 in the column. So it's correct, but Simon concluded it too early in my opinion.

@philippa963

4 жыл бұрын

I‘m interested so I will comment here just to get an information on whether this one was logically incorrect or not 😂

@magc_csgo7098

4 жыл бұрын

Jeroen Nouwens R1C7 had to be grey, in order to make the 6 in box 5 work... moments before the given time stamp he unwinds that 6.

Darn for once the rules got the better of me. Didn’t realize cave needed to be connected....numbers on the cave didn’t follow same rules as the initial numbers...bit of a bummer

On Cloud9? Are you a strategy coach or something? :)

Example covered up on the video so started watching your solve and none the wiser (clues too convoluted and small to read, guess means more if done similar puzzles before but otherwise just obtuse)

Definitely not a puzzle that's friendly to people who haven't done cave puzzles before. It took me about three steps of hand-holding before I could do the rest on my own. I"m not sure I'd have gotten anywhere without that. It's fun once you know what you're doing, though.