That 7-7 connection was beautiful. Made me realized I had been thinking with a wrong assumption all along then looked back and realized it could never had matter prior to it. Absolutely beautiful.
just wanted to say simon, i’ve been in hospital for a week now and nothing has brought as much comfort as watching your CTC videos every night before i try to get some rest. you underestimate the difference your videos can make, even to someone like me who isn’t very good at actually understanding the puzzles myself without your clever explanations!
Ahh this was a delight to watch. Of the first 7 experiments, this is possibly my favourite one, and once again Simon I feel you really did justice to it. What I loved was how you took a moment at the beginning to consider the whole maze, and why on earth Finkz wouldn't be able to go straight to the cupcake. I agree that intuitively it feels like the path shouldn't be as constrained as it is. When making this, I enjoyed the fact that the more and more the grid became filled in, then the entered digits became more and more constraining by sudoku, meaning that towards the end hardly any walls were needed. I guess this is the case with most of the RAT RUNs, but it felt particularly potent with this line constraint. When I thought of the title Multiple Choice for this, the only pun I could think of involving multiples, I knew I wanted the centre point of the puzzle to be a part where you have to choose between three teleports, A, B and C. I was very happy that this part ended up being quite an involved step rather than trivial to work out whether it was A, B or C. I have actually been quite surprised how many people have been caught out by the 7-7 ending. At first I never really considered this to be a trick... when designing the puzzle I was always thinking that a digit could go next to itself diagonally, potentially. It just turned out that this never transpired in the puzzle until right at the very end, which in hindsight was a perfect ending. Some of the other endings in the series I have very much planned in advance, and built the puzzle around it, working backwards, leading things towards an ending I thought was fun. That wasn't the case here, this was constructed pretty much in the order that Finkz travels, with me just using Sudoku to work out where I should put the walls to direct Finkz in interesting directions. It was a lovely constraint to work with as it felt like it was pretty much setting itself, it always seemed to be just the right amount of constrained, creating the perfect amount of pressure. In this respect it was possibly one of the smoothest setting experiences of the first 10 episodes, with very little in the way of re-jigging needed at the end. Really glad you liked it, thanks again for the feature and to everyone for all the kind comments below ⬇:)
Had to search for your comment Marty, normally it's the most liked one right at the top. This was the most beautiful puzzle out of all the rat races I've solved so far, i actually backtracked a lot thinking i had made some mistake when I reached the 7-7. Cant wait to solve the next adventures of Finkz.
This was absolutely amazing. I was so proud of myself that I worked through 3/4 of the puzzle, when I saw the 7/7. You really scared me there. I decided to finish the puzzle anyway, only to realize moments later that I had nót made a mistake. Thank you very much for the funny puzzle, I admire your puzzle creating skills. Love it!
it was a lovely puzzle and i could really feel that it was constructed in the order that Finkz travels, since it so clearly unlocks step by step along the route. i too got stumped by the 7-7 pair, which was indeed the perfect ending!
Same energy as "if this is 6, the next cell on the path cannot be 4...", not realising that if it was 4, the next cell couldn't be 4 either because they share a row, a box and 4 is not greater than 4...
It's likely that needing to catch up on sleep after a combination of jetlag and his flight tribulations made Simon more prone to not notice things. Which is natural, but he was still able to make great deductions.
Marty: puts an inequality sign into box 1 so that you simply cannot have a low digit above a high one. Simon: uses the teleporter to prove in a complicated way that 9 cannot go on the lower side of an inequality sing. Classic 😂
After solving I watched the video: Simon is so much faster at deducing the path than I was, but I felt a little bit of satisfaction when he made the same mistake as me: Assuming 7 can always only join to a 1.
As soon as he filled in the 3 options in box 4 column 3 I wanted a 7 to go to the 7 from there, and I thought it wouldn't once that teleporter was ruled out. Very satisfying when I realized it would!
The graphic of this puzzle reminded me of something I ALWAYS forget to mention, regarding colors and color blind users. I'm a UI designer and a technique that can be used to ensure proper elements recognition and differentiation is using patterns, like the ones that are used in this grid for teleporter cells. Some common ones are stripes, polka dots, circles, checkerboard... Subtle patterns over the colors, that can be recognized by color blind users due to contrast. So you could have something like blue with horizontal stripes and red with polka dots. So even if a user can't tell blue from red it can recognize the different patterns. Just an idea to make he software more user friendly 😁
I love how in the beginning Simon completely ignored the one way door to place the 9 but instantly used it for 8 and 4. xD Its okay Simon i love seeing your more complicated solutions
It also bothers me when trivial colouring takes the entire-puzzle ride. E.g. for some reason the grey colouring in box seven gets removed after it has done its work (17:13), but the grey in box one stays forever.
I finished in 59 minutes. This one was tough. I broke the puzzle near the end and couldn't figure out why, until I saw that the 7 cupcake was capable of going to 7 itself! The play between 5s and 7s against the other digits was fun to play around with in this one. Great Puzzle!
Take a bow, Marty. Great work. The revelation that path can go 7-7 was great and thar fact that missing that point wasn't punished earlier, but just came out when it mattered. Superb.
Simon, I have to say I just love these Rat puzzles...but I have a word of warning for you! If this rat gets any smarter and better at sudoku, both you and Mark may end out of a job!
The gasp I let out (after rechecking my self doubt) when I noticed the 7-7 connection was quite audible. Well done, Marty. Can't wait to see Simon's reaction.
God, I totally tought that I've broken the puzzle when I saw that no ones was available for the seven, but I just push trough with rage until I got that seven is divisible by seven lol
Brilliant! Like all the Finkz puzzles 🙂 I had a heart stopping moment part way through when I realised I had to connect the same digit to itself at the cupcake. All the way up to that point, I simply hadn't considered that the integer multiple rule means you can connect a digit to itself. I thought I'd gone deep into the puzzle with an incorrect assumption, and any one of my previous decisions could therefore be wrong. Fortunately I had only just got to areas where diagonal moves are possible (which is obviously required for a digit to connect to itself) so I got away with it. Really satisfying how tracing the line leads you through the solution on this and the other Finkz puzzles. Lots of fun 🙂
Twice Simon could have used a one way door to explain why a digit couldnt go somewhere but explained it completely differently and twice Simon put the same digit as an option on the far side of a one way door when they are, by definition, not equal, and by sudoku seeing each other.
I was thinking of the fact that a number can divide itself before the puzzle. When I thought of it, I knew it would be on the path! And Marty didn’t disappoint!
I got stuck on the choice in the top right; I figured out really quickly that the path couldn’t go to yellow but then falsely ruled out orange on the grounds that it couldn’t pick up a 1. Where I followed through the path from yellow enough to rule it out I failed to follow the orange path enough to realise it was actually possible. The moment when I realised that the 7 has to connect to another 7 was great. I saw it slightly earlier when considering whether the path had to go straight down then seeing another possibility with the 7 and thinking “that’s great, if I was making this puzzle, I would totally have it do that” and then it did. Glad Simon had that moment too.
Great fun, and clever little Finkz 🐀 Somehow I had a premonition that there were lots of wide open spaces around the boundaries of box 5, and so I did wonder if there was going to be a step on the line where the factor was 1 ... and of course, once you've seen that that is a possibility, you _know_ that Marty will have included it and then it's just a case of waiting to find out where 😉
Finished in 31:41. Got a little stuck at the end, because I thought I had messed something up because the ending digit was a 7 and there was no 1 possible next to it, but after checking my work, realized that the digit still had to be a 7 and there was no 1 around it, and then realized that it could connect to the other 7. I was a little hidebound there though..... Fun puzzle!
More exceptionalism from you Marty!! Running out of superlatives! Love seeing your overwhelming joy when you solve Simon. Constantly giving credit to these out of world geniuses.!
Simon, you make this look too easy! I had quite some trouble with this one because I failed to see some of the logic at the appropriate time. I somehow turned this into a colouring exercise, which was fun but not as neat as your solve. I did love the fact that the "trick" was at the end. Had it been earlier on the path then it would've probably tripped me up (even though I did consider that trick in the very beginning, but then promptly forgot about it) Marty has quickly become one of my favourite setters by the way. Thanks for this amazing series!
Unbelievable. I was sure I made a mistake, only to watch the video as you got closer and closer to my obviously wrong solution, and then I spotted it right before you did! These Rat Runs are fantastically fun! I'd even had the thought early in the puzzle that it was possible for a number to be next to itself as long as it crossed a diagonal.
I love these rat run puzzles, even with a 50 minute im still able to solve them mostly on my own with feels really good. Definitely glad I had Simon to help me solve the silly little mistakes I made.
51:29 for me. The 7-7 at the end is so subtle, I assumed 7 is next to 1 (and went down from cupcake) and got stuck in a wrong path. What a brilliant puzzle
I'm not sure where to leave puzzle suggestions, but I just spent all of yesterday afternoon well into the evening solving Pale Fire by Michael Lefkowitz! It's not an incredibly difficult puzzle (I was able to solve it and only had to use brute force once), but it's an incredibly detailed solve that I think anyone who likes huge puzzles will love! (Thank you to Puzzle Pusher on RUclips for showing off the solve as well)
It's great to see that you got your luggage back. That sounded like it was quite an experience getting back home. When you said yesterday about being on hold for all that time, only for them to hang up on you, I've been through that several times, with banks, and other service providers.
I'm going to admit the truth ... this puzzle had a final clock which was 10 minutes shy of 7 hours (in several sittings over several days). I had made it 80% to 90% of the way about 4 times and wound up with a broken puzzle, and tried back-tracking and several times simply starting over without resetting the clock. And I loved it. Totally worth it. Even more rewarding than handling a hard puzzle quickly. Logic + Tenacity FTW.
Nice puzzle. 49:53. Got (wrongly!) frustrated at one point near the end and came back to check the video to find where I'd gone wrong, only to realize that I was still on the right path and just wasn't seeing a possible route.
These rat run puzzles are quite enjoyable. Solved this one (with a minor crisis at the end, as I momentarily forgot digits can be adjacent to themselves on the path if Fitz takes a diagonal step across a box boundary. I had noticed this was possible early on and had an "I bet this is necessary at some point" thought - only to forget it when I actually needed it) in 55:11.
the 7-7 connection really had me stumped! I assumed it had to be a 1 and only discovered later that I had made a mistake. after undoing a while and doing sudoku to see that it couldn't be a 1, I was really confused until I had the epiphany!
Really looking forward to seeing Simon tackle the next Finkz puzzle, it’s a massive jump in difficulty and the only one I haven’t been able to solve in the series.
103:30 for me. I misread the rule on teleports and got stuck for at least 45 minutes. I thought the rule said that only teleports that Finkz uses are the matching teleports and the ones she doesn't use are the teleports that don't match, meaning the teleport pairs she doesn't use had to have different digits between them. That was not the case: both teleports of the same color have the same digit, and each color has a unique digit.
The way the path got to the last cell got me! I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. Turns out i was just stuck in my assumptions. 10/10 snipe by the puzzle creator. Would puzzle again.
As I grow old it is clear as can be, What a terrible rat race I'm in. And what is much worse, I'm beginning to see, It's the rats who are likely to win...
I did everything right and then I thought I broke it too needing a 1 to connect to 7 on the cupcake. I came back to the video and needed Simon to remind me that 7 was divisible by 7. When it was all said and done it took me 59:56 with that little help from Simon.
I've just tried part 8 (the one following this one) and it led me down such a wild goose chase. I had the whole grid filled legally, all the extra modifiers and constraints satisfied, and just had to finish up marking Finkz' path, so I was sure I'd solved it. Then at the very end of the path I just couldn't make it all the way through, there was just one pair of numbers being uncooperative. I arrived at a false solution, and after 2.5h of work for nothing, I just don't have it in me to do the whole thing over. Desperate to see the solution posted here!
This puzzle is honestly just fascinating, definitely one of my favourite puzzles! Also, the 7-7 path was evil! I got stuck trying to figure out where did I make a mistake as I thought the cupcake was unreachable 😀
wow I got stuck and needed help on this one for sure - that end absolutely stumped me because I made a super big logic mistake that sent me down a wrong path and I couldn't unwind it. Super fun puzzle though!
Made 3 errors and had to undo a fair bit because I could not see that one unexpected possibility. Great puzzle, first time I've solved a puzzle after making mistakes and it still felt good.
These are my favourite puzzles - more please! I didn't manage to finish this one (although I did quite well), the main reason being I didn't spot the diagonal 7 to 7 and messed up late stage.
I think Foggy on the details is the second best you've ever featured, only because of Across the Lines. Funny, with both slowly revealing information as you play to great effect, but for opposite reasons.
I was certain the cupcake was going to be a 5 or a 7 joining to itself diagonally. But was worried when I saw Finks couldn't get there directly from the teleporter C. I'm glad my hunch was still correct
33:02 finish. Shout at the screen, shout at the screen (though very quietly, because everyone else is sleeping). Simon explains this convoluted reason why the puzzle has to end with a 7-7 pair, but then takes a minute before he notices the sudoku that led to the conclusion sitting there undone.
The moment I read the rules, I hoped for the hidden possibility of two equal numbers to be on the path. I even reread the rules to make sure it was allowed. I'm so happy it actually happened, I think it's a shame when setters squander opportunities like that.
Hmm, now I'm feeling proud about getting the 7-7 thing on my own (after needing Simon's help too many times earlier in the puzzle). In fact, as soon as I got the 17 in that box, I thought "interesting, either of those would work"
The end of this puzzle BLEW MY F#^^@#$% MIND!!! *ahem* I worked my way through this and was absolutely thrilled to see how the final leg solved. I got really nervous once I saw that 7 on the cupcake and then I had my eureka moment and bam. The dominos fell in the most glorious way. Thanks so much for setting this!
I was aware that two numbers can be on the path next to each other on the diagonal. Then I forgot about it and thought I had broken the puzzle when I reached the pair 7-7. I started laboriously checking where I had made a mistake until I realized there was no mistake.
Had a tough time with this one - I got to a point of having the 3-9 deadly pattern down the bottom, couldn't see any way for it to be resolved, and undid and redid my work to that point a few times before realising how it worked. Then at the end forgot to allow for diagonal moves, and even when I remembered that, didn't allow for them early enough and still got it wrong. But eventually I got there!
Amazing that the first and only time the same digit was used as its own multiple was the diagonal 7s at the end, the least productive path number. Wild!
That 7-7 connection was beautiful. Made me realized I had been thinking with a wrong assumption all along then looked back and realized it could never had matter prior to it. Absolutely beautiful.
just wanted to say simon, i’ve been in hospital for a week now and nothing has brought as much comfort as watching your CTC videos every night before i try to get some rest. you underestimate the difference your videos can make, even to someone like me who isn’t very good at actually understanding the puzzles myself without your clever explanations!
Get well soon!
I hope your hospital visit isn't for too much longer and you can have some lovely chocolate cake soon
Continue to get better and hope you get out soon!!
Get better!
I hope you get well soon!!
Ahh this was a delight to watch. Of the first 7 experiments, this is possibly my favourite one, and once again Simon I feel you really did justice to it. What I loved was how you took a moment at the beginning to consider the whole maze, and why on earth Finkz wouldn't be able to go straight to the cupcake. I agree that intuitively it feels like the path shouldn't be as constrained as it is. When making this, I enjoyed the fact that the more and more the grid became filled in, then the entered digits became more and more constraining by sudoku, meaning that towards the end hardly any walls were needed. I guess this is the case with most of the RAT RUNs, but it felt particularly potent with this line constraint.
When I thought of the title Multiple Choice for this, the only pun I could think of involving multiples, I knew I wanted the centre point of the puzzle to be a part where you have to choose between three teleports, A, B and C. I was very happy that this part ended up being quite an involved step rather than trivial to work out whether it was A, B or C.
I have actually been quite surprised how many people have been caught out by the 7-7 ending. At first I never really considered this to be a trick... when designing the puzzle I was always thinking that a digit could go next to itself diagonally, potentially. It just turned out that this never transpired in the puzzle until right at the very end, which in hindsight was a perfect ending. Some of the other endings in the series I have very much planned in advance, and built the puzzle around it, working backwards, leading things towards an ending I thought was fun. That wasn't the case here, this was constructed pretty much in the order that Finkz travels, with me just using Sudoku to work out where I should put the walls to direct Finkz in interesting directions. It was a lovely constraint to work with as it felt like it was pretty much setting itself, it always seemed to be just the right amount of constrained, creating the perfect amount of pressure. In this respect it was possibly one of the smoothest setting experiences of the first 10 episodes, with very little in the way of re-jigging needed at the end.
Really glad you liked it, thanks again for the feature and to everyone for all the kind comments below ⬇:)
Once again, thanks for this great puzzle and for your comment. A mazing setting!
Had to search for your comment Marty, normally it's the most liked one right at the top. This was the most beautiful puzzle out of all the rat races I've solved so far, i actually backtracked a lot thinking i had made some mistake when I reached the 7-7. Cant wait to solve the next adventures of Finkz.
Genius setting to make it so fun... I gave up at the 7 7 juncture 3 times since I thought I had made mistake... should have read the rules again...!
This was absolutely amazing. I was so proud of myself that I worked through 3/4 of the puzzle, when I saw the 7/7. You really scared me there. I decided to finish the puzzle anyway, only to realize moments later that I had nót made a mistake. Thank you very much for the funny puzzle, I admire your puzzle creating skills. Love it!
it was a lovely puzzle and i could really feel that it was constructed in the order that Finkz travels, since it so clearly unlocks step by step along the route. i too got stumped by the 7-7 pair, which was indeed the perfect ending!
I'm amused at Simon looking at a "1 > 57" pattern and explaining it's not possible with a reason unrelated to 1 not being bigger than 5 or 7.
shortly followed by x > 9
@@markheisler5118 And then immediately followed by using the > sign to order the 84 pair, without realizing he didn't see it earlier.
That's the most Simon thing that Simon could do
Same energy as "if this is 6, the next cell on the path cannot be 4...", not realising that if it was 4, the next cell couldn't be 4 either because they share a row, a box and 4 is not greater than 4...
It's likely that needing to catch up on sleep after a combination of jetlag and his flight tribulations made Simon more prone to not notice things. Which is natural, but he was still able to make great deductions.
Marty: puts an inequality sign into box 1 so that you simply cannot have a low digit above a high one.
Simon: uses the teleporter to prove in a complicated way that 9 cannot go on the lower side of an inequality sing. Classic 😂
The 7 joining the 7 was sneaky and love that Simon thought so too!
After solving I watched the video: Simon is so much faster at deducing the path than I was, but I felt a little bit of satisfaction when he made the same mistake as me: Assuming 7 can always only join to a 1.
It took me also a while to realize, that 7 can go with 7.
As soon as he filled in the 3 options in box 4 column 3 I wanted a 7 to go to the 7 from there, and I thought it wouldn't once that teleporter was ruled out. Very satisfying when I realized it would!
Finkz was so close to the cupcake before she entered the first teleporter! Seems like a classic movie trope.
The graphic of this puzzle reminded me of something I ALWAYS forget to mention, regarding colors and color blind users. I'm a UI designer and a technique that can be used to ensure proper elements recognition and differentiation is using patterns, like the ones that are used in this grid for teleporter cells. Some common ones are stripes, polka dots, circles, checkerboard... Subtle patterns over the colors, that can be recognized by color blind users due to contrast. So you could have something like blue with horizontal stripes and red with polka dots. So even if a user can't tell blue from red it can recognize the different patterns. Just an idea to make he software more user friendly 😁
It's actually a good idea to use pattern in combination to letters, because the latters are hidden once you fill the grid! ^^
And before colours were widely available, that's how we did it. In a black and white graph for example.
Probably a good point to raise on Sven's site.
However it would bring up the absurdity of not allowing chequerboard chequerboards in ying Yang. 😮
14:47 “Have I missed anything there?” Yes - the greater than / less than symbol. 😮
I love how in the beginning Simon completely ignored the one way door to place the 9 but instantly used it for 8 and 4. xD
Its okay Simon i love seeing your more complicated solutions
Was gonna say the same thing. These are the things that keep me coming back 😂
Also with 1 earlier when he was considering it on r1c3. :)
It also bothers me when trivial colouring takes the entire-puzzle ride. E.g. for some reason the grey colouring in box seven gets removed after it has done its work (17:13), but the grey in box one stays forever.
@@AndrewJensEvery. Single. Time…
That was peak Simon, wow 😁
I finished in 59 minutes. This one was tough. I broke the puzzle near the end and couldn't figure out why, until I saw that the 7 cupcake was capable of going to 7 itself! The play between 5s and 7s against the other digits was fun to play around with in this one. Great Puzzle!
Take a bow, Marty. Great work. The revelation that path can go 7-7 was great and thar fact that missing that point wasn't punished earlier, but just came out when it mattered. Superb.
Simon, I have to say I just love these Rat puzzles...but I have a word of warning for you! If this rat gets any smarter and better at sudoku, both you and Mark may end out of a job!
Love these!! So glad Simon’s luggage is back!! I ❤ hearing the young people’s laughter in the background!! Always makes me smile!
Laughter is the best medicine. 😁 Marty continues to amaze us!
@@davidrattner9 yes! Yes! Yes! 😄
I feel like that teleporter anomaly is some form of dark foreshadowing...
The gasp I let out (after rechecking my self doubt) when I noticed the 7-7 connection was quite audible. Well done, Marty. Can't wait to see Simon's reaction.
God, I totally tought that I've broken the puzzle when I saw that no ones was available for the seven, but I just push trough with rage until I got that seven is divisible by seven lol
Yeah... I reset the puzzle when it happened to me. Figured it out on the second attempt :)
Brilliant! Like all the Finkz puzzles 🙂
I had a heart stopping moment part way through when I realised I had to connect the same digit to itself at the cupcake. All the way up to that point, I simply hadn't considered that the integer multiple rule means you can connect a digit to itself. I thought I'd gone deep into the puzzle with an incorrect assumption, and any one of my previous decisions could therefore be wrong.
Fortunately I had only just got to areas where diagonal moves are possible (which is obviously required for a digit to connect to itself) so I got away with it.
Really satisfying how tracing the line leads you through the solution on this and the other Finkz puzzles. Lots of fun 🙂
This is bonkers fun. And I always enjoy Simon having a close call with a broken puzzle
Yesterday's sudoku is the first one in which I actually laughed out loud at Simon's puzzlement for several seconds.
Until yesterday, I never thought a sudoku could be *funny*. Then "Foggy on the Details" proved they can be *hillarious*.
I did the sudoku first and I was giggling in anticipation the whole video, laughing out loud at the bamboozle moments. It was great stuff, wasn't it!
Always strange, that I fail the puzzle on my own, but I can follow Simon logic 1 step ahead of him ! You are a magician ^_^
The double 7 on the path is genius!
Twice Simon could have used a one way door to explain why a digit couldnt go somewhere but explained it completely differently and twice Simon put the same digit as an option on the far side of a one way door when they are, by definition, not equal, and by sudoku seeing each other.
Fog puzzles are my favorites, but rat maze puzzles have very quickly become my favorite
I have good news for you, you'll get both of your favourites at the same time when you get to Rat Run 10.
@@davidenas I was wondering if/when we would get a mix.
“Can we deduce anything else about anything? Let me think about that.”
Bless.
I was thinking of the fact that a number can divide itself before the puzzle. When I thought of it, I knew it would be on the path! And Marty didn’t disappoint!
I got stuck on the choice in the top right; I figured out really quickly that the path couldn’t go to yellow but then falsely ruled out orange on the grounds that it couldn’t pick up a 1. Where I followed through the path from yellow enough to rule it out I failed to follow the orange path enough to realise it was actually possible.
The moment when I realised that the 7 has to connect to another 7 was great. I saw it slightly earlier when considering whether the path had to go straight down then seeing another possibility with the 7 and thinking “that’s great, if I was making this puzzle, I would totally have it do that” and then it did. Glad Simon had that moment too.
I simply love the rat run series, have solved all the puzzles so far and am looking forward to next riddles... What an ingenious idea!
Great fun, and clever little Finkz 🐀
Somehow I had a premonition that there were lots of wide open spaces around the boundaries of box 5, and so I did wonder if there was going to be a step on the line where the factor was 1 ... and of course, once you've seen that that is a possibility, you _know_ that Marty will have included it and then it's just a case of waiting to find out where 😉
Glad you saw the 7-7 connection.
I have been running in so many errors until you pointed that out and I was finally able to solve this beauty
What a brilliant and exciting puzzle. Now - after 80 minutes - I can relax and watch Simon's way of solution.
Finished in 31:41. Got a little stuck at the end, because I thought I had messed something up because the ending digit was a 7 and there was no 1 possible next to it, but after checking my work, realized that the digit still had to be a 7 and there was no 1 around it, and then realized that it could connect to the other 7. I was a little hidebound there though.....
Fun puzzle!
Yeah, the 7s at the end shocked me.
Absolutely lovely to watch and a fantastic way to spend an hour. Thanks for your joy as always Simon, hope you're well :)
More exceptionalism from you Marty!! Running out of superlatives! Love seeing your overwhelming joy when you solve Simon. Constantly giving credit to these out of world geniuses.!
112:56! I love how approachable these rat run puzzles are. They are very difficult but very rewarding.
The most fun yet challenging sudoku I've ever done. Well made!
I loved that puzzle yesterday, it was so hilarious, I was snorting with laughter with every new rule adaptation.
definitely my favorite rat puzzle you’ve done. following along i was more focused on figuring out the path than the actual sudoku
Simon, you make this look too easy! I had quite some trouble with this one because I failed to see some of the logic at the appropriate time. I somehow turned this into a colouring exercise, which was fun but not as neat as your solve.
I did love the fact that the "trick" was at the end. Had it been earlier on the path then it would've probably tripped me up (even though I did consider that trick in the very beginning, but then promptly forgot about it)
Marty has quickly become one of my favourite setters by the way. Thanks for this amazing series!
Unbelievable. I was sure I made a mistake, only to watch the video as you got closer and closer to my obviously wrong solution, and then I spotted it right before you did! These Rat Runs are fantastically fun!
I'd even had the thought early in the puzzle that it was possible for a number to be next to itself as long as it crossed a diagonal.
I love these rat run puzzles, even with a 50 minute im still able to solve them mostly on my own with feels really good. Definitely glad I had Simon to help me solve the silly little mistakes I made.
Live this! Thank you Simon, Marty and Finks!
Simon and Marty - simply amazing. :-) Thank you.
51:29 for me. The 7-7 at the end is so subtle, I assumed 7 is next to 1 (and went down from cupcake) and got stuck in a wrong path. What a brilliant puzzle
I'm not sure where to leave puzzle suggestions, but I just spent all of yesterday afternoon well into the evening solving Pale Fire by Michael Lefkowitz! It's not an incredibly difficult puzzle (I was able to solve it and only had to use brute force once), but it's an incredibly detailed solve that I think anyone who likes huge puzzles will love!
(Thank you to Puzzle Pusher on RUclips for showing off the solve as well)
OMG. I loved yesterday’s puzzle and thought it was genius, but this rat just blew my mind. Brilliant. Loved this puzzle.
It's great to see that you got your luggage back. That sounded like it was quite an experience getting back home. When you said yesterday about being on hold for all that time, only for them to hang up on you, I've been through that several times, with banks, and other service providers.
So frustrating isn’t it. 😢
I'm going to admit the truth ... this puzzle had a final clock which was 10 minutes shy of 7 hours (in several sittings over several days). I had made it 80% to 90% of the way about 4 times and wound up with a broken puzzle, and tried back-tracking and several times simply starting over without resetting the clock. And I loved it. Totally worth it. Even more rewarding than handling a hard puzzle quickly. Logic + Tenacity FTW.
Nice puzzle. 49:53. Got (wrongly!) frustrated at one point near the end and came back to check the video to find where I'd gone wrong, only to realize that I was still on the right path and just wasn't seeing a possible route.
These rat run puzzles are quite enjoyable. Solved this one (with a minor crisis at the end, as I momentarily forgot digits can be adjacent to themselves on the path if Fitz takes a diagonal step across a box boundary. I had noticed this was possible early on and had an "I bet this is necessary at some point" thought - only to forget it when I actually needed it) in 55:11.
Love the continued adventures of Finkz and seeing Simon unravel the unparalleled logic from Marty.
the 7-7 connection really had me stumped! I assumed it had to be a 1 and only discovered later that I had made a mistake. after undoing a while and doing sudoku to see that it couldn't be a 1, I was really confused until I had the epiphany!
Really looking forward to seeing Simon tackle the next Finkz puzzle, it’s a massive jump in difficulty and the only one I haven’t been able to solve in the series.
yes, episode 8 is the first 4-star puzzle of the series! I can understand why a lot of people might get stuck on it
just over 80min for me. Fun puzzle. Well done Marty
I'm glad I'm not the only one who had an "oh shit I've broken the puzzle" moment with the 7-7.
27:27 'If this was 6, this couldn't be a 4' He says, pretending like there could be a 4 next to a 4 in the same box while on the line.
Absolutely unbelievable. This rat series is truly amazing 🎉
I love these rat puzzles, and it's also been a great week for puzzles. (don't get me wrong all the instructors are incredible)
103:30 for me. I misread the rule on teleports and got stuck for at least 45 minutes. I thought the rule said that only teleports that Finkz uses are the matching teleports and the ones she doesn't use are the teleports that don't match, meaning the teleport pairs she doesn't use had to have different digits between them. That was not the case: both teleports of the same color have the same digit, and each color has a unique digit.
The way the path got to the last cell got me! I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. Turns out i was just stuck in my assumptions.
10/10 snipe by the puzzle creator. Would puzzle again.
As I grow old it is clear as can be,
What a terrible rat race I'm in.
And what is much worse, I'm beginning to see,
It's the rats who are likely to win...
Simon really said "if this is 6, this can't be 4" without realizing that if it was 4 it also couldn't be 4.
sudo solving with big brain insights such as "3 is not a multiple of 2" and "1 is smaller than both 5 and 7"
I did everything right and then I thought I broke it too needing a 1 to connect to 7 on the cupcake. I came back to the video and needed Simon to remind me that 7 was divisible by 7. When it was all said and done it took me 59:56 with that little help from Simon.
I've just tried part 8 (the one following this one) and it led me down such a wild goose chase. I had the whole grid filled legally, all the extra modifiers and constraints satisfied, and just had to finish up marking Finkz' path, so I was sure I'd solved it. Then at the very end of the path I just couldn't make it all the way through, there was just one pair of numbers being uncooperative. I arrived at a false solution, and after 2.5h of work for nothing, I just don't have it in me to do the whole thing over. Desperate to see the solution posted here!
This puzzle is honestly just fascinating, definitely one of my favourite puzzles!
Also, the 7-7 path was evil! I got stuck trying to figure out where did I make a mistake as I thought the cupcake was unreachable 😀
48:47 "Alright, who called for Ludacris?"
Enjoyed this one very much. Pure genius!
wow I got stuck and needed help on this one for sure - that end absolutely stumped me because I made a super big logic mistake that sent me down a wrong path and I couldn't unwind it. Super fun puzzle though!
42:39 For some reason, I thought the rules meant that teleporters that Finkz doesn't pass through has different digits. Got stuck for a bit
Made 3 errors and had to undo a fair bit because I could not see that one unexpected possibility. Great puzzle, first time I've solved a puzzle after making mistakes and it still felt good.
These are my favourite puzzles - more please! I didn't manage to finish this one (although I did quite well), the main reason being I didn't spot the diagonal 7 to 7 and messed up late stage.
These run of puzzles have been filled with the plottiest of twists
Love these, easy enough but very interesting. Made a little oopsie when I forgot she can traverse diagonally.
Fanks Finkz - and Simon. A very entertaining puzzle.
12:40 it also can’t work just because of the inequality sign in Box 1, but the 1’s in the portal idea is much more creative 😆
I love these Finkz puzzles!! ^^
I think Foggy on the details is the second best you've ever featured, only because of Across the Lines. Funny, with both slowly revealing information as you play to great effect, but for opposite reasons.
Finished in 33:10, and that was an amazing puzzle! Probably my favourite so far 🙂
25:52 for me 😊 Another Finkz masterpiece 🎉
12:28 Or maybe just look at the inequality to tell that R2C3 can't be a five or seven 😂
EDIT: A minute later Simon does the same thing with the nine
🤣
I was certain the cupcake was going to be a 5 or a 7 joining to itself diagonally. But was worried when I saw Finks couldn't get there directly from the teleporter C. I'm glad my hunch was still correct
What a twist at the end with 7 to 7!!!
33:02 finish. Shout at the screen, shout at the screen (though very quietly, because everyone else is sleeping). Simon explains this convoluted reason why the puzzle has to end with a 7-7 pair, but then takes a minute before he notices the sudoku that led to the conclusion sitting there undone.
The moment I read the rules, I hoped for the hidden possibility of two equal numbers to be on the path. I even reread the rules to make sure it was allowed. I'm so happy it actually happened, I think it's a shame when setters squander opportunities like that.
I made the same mistake of assuming that the cupcake moved to a 1, beautiful puzzle
1:13:13 - Another little gem.
Hmm, now I'm feeling proud about getting the 7-7 thing on my own (after needing Simon's help too many times earlier in the puzzle). In fact, as soon as I got the 17 in that box, I thought "interesting, either of those would work"
Broke it by forgetting about diagonals, restarted and ran into the same issue but resolved it in the end... Just over an hour total for me.
My time 00:57:15. I love these rat run puzzles!
The end of this puzzle BLEW MY F#^^@#$% MIND!!! *ahem* I worked my way through this and was absolutely thrilled to see how the final leg solved. I got really nervous once I saw that 7 on the cupcake and then I had my eureka moment and bam. The dominos fell in the most glorious way. Thanks so much for setting this!
When Simon didn't resolve the inequality in box 2 (i.e. that R2C6=5), my head was exploding. At least he didn't make me wait _too_ long. :)
50:40 had me scared for a minute, Simon picked up 12 from the column and I picked up 23 from the row. But we were both correct.
I lost about 20 minutes checking where I made my mistake when I noticed that 7*1=7. My brain couldn't handle that.
What a wonderful puzzle!
I was aware that two numbers can be on the path next to each other on the diagonal. Then I forgot about it and thought I had broken the puzzle when I reached the pair 7-7. I started laboriously checking where I had made a mistake until I realized there was no mistake.
Had a tough time with this one - I got to a point of having the 3-9 deadly pattern down the bottom, couldn't see any way for it to be resolved, and undid and redid my work to that point a few times before realising how it worked. Then at the end forgot to allow for diagonal moves, and even when I remembered that, didn't allow for them early enough and still got it wrong. But eventually I got there!
40:46 ... more and more, I get concerned about Finkz's well-being
NIce puzzle!
35:14
Finkz is upping the ante now!
Amazing that the first and only time the same digit was used as its own multiple was the diagonal 7s at the end, the least productive path number. Wild!