The fog doesn't go away if you place a wrong number, however, if you use the Dark Reader app on your Chrome, everything gets revealed. I found out by accident, so hopefully that issue doesn't affect too many people...
Also if Sven is reading this, on the mobile app there seems to be a bug in alpha, where the fog sometimes doesn’t clear when you input a correct number and ‘fog of war’ is on in the settings.
Yeah I found that out when I accidentally missed a pencilmark and as a result filled in a number that hadn't actually been deduced. A consequence of the genre, but it's a lot of fun regardless. In the end, didn't cost me any of the puzzle logic, and saved me some backtracking.
There's also an option to turn off the fog of war in the app settings, so I think it's more of a difficulty level setting rather than cheating. (I actually tried the wrong-number trick as well, out of curiosity 🙂)
I got spoiled by the conflict checker letting me know that one of my pencil marks for 8 was incorrect, because it was in the same (invisible) box as another 8 that I had placed. Probably not feasible to fix this, but I thought I'd share haha
Wow, thanks so much, really cool to see this one on the channel! (First time I've had a puzzle featured that took you longer than ~20 minutes to solve :) Thanks, obviously, to Chameleon for inventing the fog concept, and also to Sven Neumann for moving so quickly to make it widely available. While I'm here, I just wanted to mention my newsletter, Artisanal Sudoku. Five puzzles every week, ranging in difficulty from around GAS-level to, like, two stars on LMD. And the most recent volume actually included yet another (much more approachable) fog puzzle. BTW [spoilers ahead, sort of], I was a little wary of the idea of a knight's move fog puzzle because antiknight puzzles tend not to require as many clues, so there's not as much to discover. But I wanted to find a break-in that was more complex than the other fog puzzles I've seen, and this was the best way I could find to make it happen. I thought about hiding emojis or something in the fog to give solvers more things to, and now I kind of wish I'd done that...
What I love about these Sudokus is that they are incredibly beginner-friendly. To solve the next step you only need to find out all the information in the visible part of the Sudoku and use it for yourself. With a Sudoku where you can see everything, a beginner has to figure out where to start and what information they need to make the next step in the puzzle.
Rules: 05:53 Let's Get Cracking: 08:32 Simon's time: 40m13s Puzzle Solved: 48:45 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! The Secret: 4x (05:17, 13:11, 13:21, 28:02) Bobbins: 2x (19:06, 36:31) Three In the Corner: 2x (46:42, 47:47) Maverick: 2x (00:31, 02:57) Schrödinger Cell: 1x (32:50) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! By Sudoku: 11x (18:34, 23:07, 23:37, 26:45, 39:59, 41:51, 44:27, 44:39, 45:22, 45:35, 45:56) Hang On: 9x (14:00, 17:26, 17:29, 19:58, 25:18, 25:36, 25:36, 33:25, 42:52) Ah: 9x (14:00, 19:27, 19:28, 19:58, 31:40, 34:15, 38:01, 39:50, 40:14) Beautiful: 5x (03:58, 20:57, 21:05, 21:54, 29:16) Brilliant: 5x (01:15, 01:39, 05:40, 48:41, 48:41) Pencil Mark/mark: 5x (10:35, 19:12, 33:55, 40:37, 43:14) The Answer is: 4x (12:53, 29:21, 32:45, 45:19) Gorgeous: 4x (23:51, 23:53, 29:06, 45:11) Obviously: 4x (01:09, 07:00, 11:00, 11:19) Sorry: 3x (26:26, 38:59, 43:05) Incredible: 3x (00:33, 03:52, 03:52) Goodness: 2x (46:01, 46:10) Clever: 2x (02:22, 29:12) Lovely: 2x (14:56, 26:40) Shouting: 2x (02:30, 04:24) Stunning: 2x (29:09, 29:12) What Does This Mean?: 2x (26:19, 28:32) Useless: 1x (29:52) Bother: 1x (43:14) Naked Single: 1x (27:04) Nonsense: 1x (46:21) Recalcitrant: 1x (39:34) In the Spotlight: 1x (47:50) Fascinating: 1x (49:07) Astonishing: 1x (00:41) Hypothecate: 1x (20:46) Disconcerting: 1x (27:34) Come on Simon: 1x (44:53) Magnificent: 1x (47:56) In Fact: 1x (32:00) We Can Do Better Than That: 1x (36:31) Have a Think: 1x (45:17) Nature: 1x (17:37) Cake!: 1x (05:41) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Forty Five (8 mentions) One, Three (69 mentions) Green (8 mentions) Antithesis Battles: High (3) - Low (0) Even (9) - Odd (7) Higher (4) - Lower (2) Outside (2) - Inside (0) Row (15) - Column (6) FAQ: Q1: You missed something! A1: That could very well be the case! Human speech can be hard to understand for computers like me! Point out the ones that I missed and maybe I'll learn! Q2: Can you do this for another channel? A2: I've been thinking about that and wrote some code to make that possible. Let me know which channel you think would be a good fit!
Saw the previous video with the introduction of the fog. I absolutely loved it. Freaking amazing concept and as somebody that plays a lot of video games I couldn't help but feel like the puzzle was a dungeon adventure being brought to life. I hope these become a regular feature!
Thank you so much Simon for the stream last night and kind words about me. You 2 constantly bring happiness and warmth to tons of people all across the world. This channel and whole community is something to cherish.
I love this style of Sudoku. Usually I don't bother trying the puzzles myself when the videos are over 30 minutes, but this one was surprisingly approachable. It's a new way to look at them. I tend to get overwhelmed by trying to figure out where I'm supposed to look next and with this, they all but show you exactly where to start. And kudos to Sven on the software. Too often that gets overlooked with non-paper Sudoku but this is the most intuitive I've found.
Great solve! It was a bit painful to see that 35 pair in box 4 being ignored for 15 minutes even if it could be resolved by the five in box 8 and the knight move, which in turn would have unraveled quite a few numbers. I need to learn to ignore such things to enjoy watching even more. I know I suffer from much more severe blindness when I am the one solving and in my case I get stuck. Simon just come up with new ideas and cruise on with the solve. Quite amazing to watch.
I imagine the setter of the puzzle sitting there for like 3 hours to find a way to put 3 in the corner of the puzzle and still preserving the very cool fog logic 😅
Haha! This is the second time I've gotten Simon to sing (the other being Six Pack, from early this year), and in both cases (a) the 3 in the corner was purely coincidental, and (b) I never imagined the puzzle would be featured. And an added layer of irony: I have close family members who live in and near Athens, at least one of whom is a big REM fan.
I would have placed an odd circle on R9C9 as a joke. Seriously though, what a great puzzle, and a beautiful break-in. Using the fact that the cages have to have their total in the uppermost, leftmost cell to let you build them is such a brilliant idea and I don't think it's something you even could use in a fully revealed puzzle.
25:12 for me. What a fantastic puzzle, I'm so in love with this new variant. I really hope that this fog of war idea is here to stay, it makes the puzzles so much more interesting.
Small bug in the new feature of Sven's software: somehow I ended up with conflict checking switched on and I noticed that it will now check conflicts within cages ... but it does so even if the cage has not yet been revealed from the fog. e.g. put a pencil-mark *8* into *r1c4* after you have filled *r2c7* and it will show red although parts of the cage are obscured, and even if *r1c4* _itself_ is still fog-bound. Hope that's helpful... This _does_ add an interesting new dimension to these puzzles (albeit one that would be almost impossible to replicate on paper).
The pic of the spiral bound book gave me an idea. If the pages were coated with or printed on wipeable plastic for use with whiteboard pens, the book would be an enormously longer value proposition. It could be passed around family, friends and prison blocks indefinitely until someone ruins it with permanent Biro.
A DIY alternative is to get a few sheets of plastic like the ones used with overhead projectors (no jokes about my age, please!) and construct a sleeve to slide the book into. Of course, if it doesn’t cost much to add the coating to the pages themselves, perhaps they could add it as a stretch goal!
When this puzzle showed up in the discord, I had such a great time with it! I had a feeling it would show up here! 22:18 - it's not your glasses! I think it's like the fog of war like in Starcraft 2, where the border of the fog is a bit fuzzy.
I saw this puzzle when it was first posted and didn't watch the video as I intended to solve it myself. I have tried it numerous times since then, all to no avail, until tonight. I ended with a time of 1hr 53. All I can say is that this is an incredible puzzle, and Simon, you are truly a genius because a time of 40 minutes, even knowing the logic now, seems remarkable.
Hands down one of the most enjoyable solves I've done this year. Bravo! Minor note to our friend Sven, my conflict checker on alpha seemed to have revealed a conflict via cage that should have been hidden by the fog. Such is the way of using alpha releases!
As I said on stream last night, Memeristor recorded himself setting one of these, you could play that one (link in his video description ) and then watch how he set it.
I needed a tiny nudge from Simon for the break in but then I was off to the races!! This was a wonderful puzzle, thank you! PS please construct more fog puzzles :D
34:47 for me. What I find really cool about this puzzle is that if I had seen the whole grid from the start, I don't think the solve path would have been much different. The really brilliant part comes from being able to deduce the shape of the cages, and then start coloring into the unknown. It's very familiar logic for anyone who's done knight's move before, but obscuring the grid allows for some completely fresh ideas. Absolutely loved it. Also, MAJOR props to Sven for implementing this so fast!!
I'm so glad this gimmick was used again. I'm 32 minutes in and still not quite close to done, but these two puzzles have been some of the most fun I've had with sudoku. 34 minutes later, finally done. I might've cheesed one deduction a bit when I got really stuck late into the puzzle, not sure, but I had a blast regardless. My favourite part was definitely the long journey it took me to get the first digit and seeing just how much information I could squeeze out of the puzzle with only the middle box illuminated. I regret nothing about using the letter tool to place numerous unknown digits before finally getting one. It also just occurred to me a while later that I never noticed that one cage's total was 42. That definitely would have fixed whatever cursed logic I found late in the puzzle.
It would be nice to think so, although one of the setters did comment that it's hard enough to make a good puzzle without worrying about getting a particular digit in a particular place, and with up to four corner digits in each puzzle, you would get a 3 in the corner about a third of the time just by random chance...
45:00 Wouldn't it be easier to look at where the purple digit goes in row 2? 🤔 That was great fun ... I got off to a good start but didn't think to ask where r5c7 went into the orange cage ... I was colouring cells in box 5 and trying to see where they went elsewhere and missed the reverse logic, but that one hint was all I needed. I do like these Fog Of War puzzles, although one thing to suggest is that the pencil-mark checker may need to be disabled, because it flags up cells that duplicate a number in a cage _even where you can't see that they are both in the same cage_ (or even that the pencil mark is in _any_ cage).
I had a little chuckle, too, when he found the extra long and complicated way to prove that. Obviously the one digit missing to complete the row is identical to the digit in the cage that's not on the row.
It is amazing how Simon makes complex deductions that most of us can’t figure out, because we are seeing the same thing by a very simple means and yelling at the screen. The purple cell was on he one this time. As soon as the cage was revealed, r1c4 had to be the same as r2c1 because of the 9 cell cage and making them a 1. But Simon jumped to box 3 instead of row 2. I got the green and orange cages figured out right away and then got stuck. 😢
Second consecutive day Simon's puzzle has been one I've just done on LMD. This is indeed a beauty, and I also hope the fog doesn't clear as the genre adds a lovely little splash of suspense to doing sudoku.
I've thought for a while that a Fog Of War mechanic for sudoku could be interesting. I'm glad someone else also had the idea and was able to create a compelling puzzle with it. I had a lot of fun solving this.
Sven, I don't know if you read these comments but I play the puzzles with the checker on for pencil marks and the fact that impossible pencil marked digits in killer cages only show up as impossible once the fog is removed to reveal what cage they are in is super clever and I am very impressed!
It occurs to me that the setting of these (in regards to Simon's statements near the end), as well as the solving of them, is very reminiscent of the Wrogn puzzles we've seen. I look forward to seeing more of these, this was my favorite solve in quite some time.
Incredible puzzle - especially the opening. It reminds me of Lt. Columbo seeking out seemingly useless clues but then suddenly they coalesce into an amazing conclusion.
Bug report for Sven: Look at the state of Simon's puzzle at 32:11. Then, pencil mark 8s into box 2. You get corner marks of 8s for cells R1C4 and R1C6. The R1C4 cell is hidden by the fog, but the conflict checker marks it red. I haven't finished the puzzle yet, but I'm sure this is because R1C4 is in the same box as the 8 in R2C7. But, there should be no way to know this at this point. For now, I've turned off the checker to avoid learning something I shouldn't. I think the simple solution is to skip conflict checking of killer cages for any cell still covered by fog.
I finished in 49:55 minutes. I really enjoyed this puzzle. The geometry between the separate cages and cells between them was fantastic. It took me some time to get the first digit, but once I did, I started zooming. Great Puzzle!
Excellent puzzle! 50:45 for me. Loving the changes that Sven has made to the software. Only change I might suggest is (at least on the version I see) is when you have a pencil mark (let's say a 2) and there is a 2 in the row/column/cage, that pencil mark will highlight red. While this is great for most puzzles, in the "fog" ones, it will "red" cages that haven't been proven yet. (I tend to pencil almost as much as Mark does, hence how I found this out). Edit: While scrolling through comments, I realized there is a "conflict checker" option that you can disable :)
When you talked about nr2 in blue cage I saw the 2 in box8 wich would clear alot of fog. But nr5 in box 1 did get that satisfying big chunk of fog cleared at once haha. Great puzzle and solve! Thanks
This is one of those lovely puzzles that makes me feel clever =D. Great work! Really enjoy these fog of war puzzles but I'm scared how difficult they're going to become!
I absolutely loved this one! Simon’s solving and commentary were wonderful, James’s setting was wonderful, the ruleset was wonderful, Sven’s fog of war software was wonderful, just lovely. It’s a shame puzzles like this can’t really be put in one of the CTC best of books. Way to spot the 3 in the corner! And thanks for correcting the coloring of the 1 at the end lol
Ok, so that took me 9 seconds short of 100 minutes but I loved (just about) every minute of it. Thank you James for an excellent and entertaining puzzle.
I enjoyed every minute of this future. I saw this on LMG yesterday and managed to solve it pretty much the same way as Simon tonight. Well done to Sven for getting the fog of war into his sudoku web app in extra quick time. The app is amazing now, what a difference to 2 years ago!
At 45:27, Simon looks at the "purple" digit in box 2. A much simpler solution (and I think, the _intended_ solution) is to consider where it goes in row 2, as there is only one possibility, which is R2C1 which we already know is a 1 or 2, and box 2 already includes a 2, so it's a 1.
I love the concept of the fog sudokus because it forces me to look for logic exactly where the setter wants me to. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by a whole grid of variant sudoku-ness and the fog is perfect. Though not "easier" just more focused. I especially noticed the beauty in the first one by Chameleon, that you were forced along this lantern-lit tour of the grid. Amazing.
This video and puzzle had me conflicted. This puzzle type was phenomenally beautiful with the logic train and Simons Solve, but aggravating as it had me yelling at my phone on some of the stuff Simon was overlooking. There is no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t have been able to solve this, or many others showcased on this wonderful channel. But I can and do solve vicariously though Simons efforts. For with his mind and wit pulling 90% of the weight, I am able to focus on the small restrictions that get momentarily overlooked or temporarily lost in the “fog of war” on a difficult puzzle such as this. Keep on bringing these beautiful mental masterpieces to the world Simon, it is a better place with you, this channel, and this community in it.
I can see a way to extend this mechanic to paper sudoku. Imagine there was a book, and in this book, one puzzle had a grid with only partially filled clues, a “puzzle hunt” of sorts, where the correct digits in the puzzle could point to another puzzle in the book and the solver were to copy mechanics/hints from that puzzle into the “Puzzle hunt” grid.
Super fun solve. That was one of the sneakiest (and best) break-ins I've encountered. At first I thought maybe the software wasn't displaying the cage totals correctly. 🙂
93:56 may be a horrible time, but I'm still proud to have done it regardless !! thank you for always showing me such awesome and fun puzzles, this was one of my favorites
Wow! Absolutely loved this puzzle - maybe my all time favourite 🙌. Took just shy of 2 hours, but was some of the funnest and most satisfying deduction I’ve ever done.
Intresting way to deal with that top cell in the uppermost 45 cage. Most people would simply say law of leftovers it had to be C1 in R2. But not our Simon, and that is why we love him
Without the limited number of life, it is a nice future for Sudoku. About the filling random numbers, it is up to the player to not cheat, one could also jump to the end of your video to revel the solution, but there is no use in playing then. So, yes, with no limit on the typos, it is a very nice evolution.
“Sudoku with fog of war” is an objectively absurd idea, and also a brilliant one. (Well…not at first. It’s actually quite dark and frightening until enough digits are put in. I hid under the covers for the first half of the solve.) Kudos to whoever came up with it.
The advantage I see with this kind of puzzle is that it greatly narrows the solution path to what you can see. As such you're more likely to follow the "intended" solve which will typically contain the most interesting logic, as opposed to going and finding some strange obscure path using bifurcation or the like.
Not sure where to comment on Sven's amazing software, but I discovered that if you have conflict checker on it can spoil where the cage goes. I had filled in the 8 on the arrow in r2c7 and pencil marked an 8 in r1c4 which was still in fog and it turned red. Not a huge deal, but less than Ideal. Thank you to James Sinclair for crafting an amazing puzzle. Sven for amazing software to make playing it so enjoyable, and Simon for brining it to my attention and struggling along with me (and helping me when I get stuck or make a logic error). I love fog of war puzzles, especially when you are able to reveal a digit deep in the fog. It feel like opening a present.
Great puzzle, managed to do it in 2h. There is a bug though in fog: when your smaller numbers (sorry, don't know the term) turn red to hint mistake - they do so even with rules hidden in fog. For example I was able to get information about hidden cage in the fog, when I marked some cells.
I don't really know why, but when you corner-mark digits in the fog the "incorrect" placements are highlighted in red, even if you have no possible way of knowing why. I noticed it by accident, because when I got the arrow in box 3 I attempted to corner-mark 8s in box 2 row 1 and the left one got highlighted, announcing that the mark is wrong and giving me an idea about the top cage, seeing as nothing else would explain why that mark was an error at that point. - Sven please fix? Edit. It appears that conflict checker is more powerful than previously, since it can see through fog and knows how both knight's move and cage restrictions work! The bug disappeared after turning conflict checker off.
I had the same issue. It kind of gave away that a cell was part of a cage if that digit was already entered somewhere in the cage Fortunately there weren't too many instances of me pencilmarking possibilities that were ruled impossible by the cage rule.
@@Kyufoxy There is a bug. In the situation described by Roteki, they have an 8 entered in r2c7 that is in the same cage as cell r1c4, only you're not supposed to know yet that r1c4 is in the same cage, as it's still in fog. The pencilmark conflict checker ignores the fog though, and marks the pencilmark in red due to the conflict in the cage. I normally have the pencilmark conflict checker disabled, as I feel it gives too much artificial help. But since this software is only test software (alpha), it wasn't keeping my usual settings and had enabled this feature. I had to go into settings and turn it off.
@@RichSmith77 Okay, with the cage that makes sense. I only saw the bit about the knight's move and it sounded like the cage was only meant to make it more clear where exactly the 8 was. Now with the edited text and explanation that makes sense. I'll remove my previous comment and like the original ^^ Thank you for your response :3 However, that's still not a "bug" per se, that's how the checker works and is coded to work. A bug would be behavior that is different to the intended code and in this case I assume it's just not implemented into the conflict checker at all. So more like a "missing feature". Either way. Needs fixing for the full release.
This is a very nice puzzle. Not too difficult. I got it in about 2 hours without any help from the video. Often these things take me 4+ hours. And I just really enjoy this whole fog system.
29:30 the 1/5 cell in blue has an arguably more elegant deduction for why it isn't 5. If it was a 5, it makes the 5/6 turn into a 6, and the arrow sum would be forced to be 6 as well, repeating 6 in blue.
This was a brilliant puzzle. Took me 90 minutes, mostly because the break-in proved difficult for me to spot. I hope we see a lot more of these fog of war sudoku.
45:41 oh my gosh, Simon, what a crazy way to overcomplicate the process! All you had to do was ask where the purple digits goes in ROW 2, and you would have gotten it instantly. Thinking about Box 3 then Box 1 was so unnecessary.
@22:22 This *is* exciting. I had to pause here to make this comment. At this point, there's enough visible to get every (numbered, not the 3 a's over there) pencil marked cell in the grid plus r2c7.
This was a touch too hard for me - I started the same way as Simon and drew the cages the way he did, but then I ground to a blinding halt. But very enjoyable to watch Simon solve it. I never get tired of his joy at great puzzles.
I just want to shout out to Sven for his amazing work. Within about a week, he added new, customizable color palettes AND the fog of war to the CTC web app. Does anyone know his channel?
The fog doesn't go away if you place a wrong number, however, if you use the Dark Reader app on your Chrome, everything gets revealed. I found out by accident, so hopefully that issue doesn't affect too many people...
Also if Sven is reading this, on the mobile app there seems to be a bug in alpha, where the fog sometimes doesn’t clear when you input a correct number and ‘fog of war’ is on in the settings.
Yeah I found that out when I accidentally missed a pencilmark and as a result filled in a number that hadn't actually been deduced. A consequence of the genre, but it's a lot of fun regardless. In the end, didn't cost me any of the puzzle logic, and saved me some backtracking.
Yep, found that out accidentally that the fog doesn't get revealed on a wrong number when I put a wrong number in.
There's also an option to turn off the fog of war in the app settings, so I think it's more of a difficulty level setting rather than cheating.
(I actually tried the wrong-number trick as well, out of curiosity 🙂)
I got spoiled by the conflict checker letting me know that one of my pencil marks for 8 was incorrect, because it was in the same (invisible) box as another 8 that I had placed. Probably not feasible to fix this, but I thought I'd share haha
Wow, thanks so much, really cool to see this one on the channel! (First time I've had a puzzle featured that took you longer than ~20 minutes to solve :) Thanks, obviously, to Chameleon for inventing the fog concept, and also to Sven Neumann for moving so quickly to make it widely available.
While I'm here, I just wanted to mention my newsletter, Artisanal Sudoku. Five puzzles every week, ranging in difficulty from around GAS-level to, like, two stars on LMD. And the most recent volume actually included yet another (much more approachable) fog puzzle.
BTW [spoilers ahead, sort of], I was a little wary of the idea of a knight's move fog puzzle because antiknight puzzles tend not to require as many clues, so there's not as much to discover. But I wanted to find a break-in that was more complex than the other fog puzzles I've seen, and this was the best way I could find to make it happen. I thought about hiding emojis or something in the fog to give solvers more things to, and now I kind of wish I'd done that...
This was really fun to solve!
was very fun! hope to see more :)
Emojidoku new concept i like it.
It melts my brain thinking about how you would go about creating something like this. well played sir
Thank you for the excellent puzzle, It was great fun to solve!
What I love about these Sudokus is that they are incredibly beginner-friendly. To solve the next step you only need to find out all the information in the visible part of the Sudoku and use it for yourself. With a Sudoku where you can see everything, a beginner has to figure out where to start and what information they need to make the next step in the puzzle.
Precisely this.
As soon as Simon marked the B in box 4, I went "That's B in the corner." You got me hooked on that now, Simon!
I'm glad I'm not the only person who thought that!
Me too!
I paused the video to see who would mention this first. Love this community…
Rules: 05:53
Let's Get Cracking: 08:32
Simon's time: 40m13s
Puzzle Solved: 48:45
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
The Secret: 4x (05:17, 13:11, 13:21, 28:02)
Bobbins: 2x (19:06, 36:31)
Three In the Corner: 2x (46:42, 47:47)
Maverick: 2x (00:31, 02:57)
Schrödinger Cell: 1x (32:50)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
By Sudoku: 11x (18:34, 23:07, 23:37, 26:45, 39:59, 41:51, 44:27, 44:39, 45:22, 45:35, 45:56)
Hang On: 9x (14:00, 17:26, 17:29, 19:58, 25:18, 25:36, 25:36, 33:25, 42:52)
Ah: 9x (14:00, 19:27, 19:28, 19:58, 31:40, 34:15, 38:01, 39:50, 40:14)
Beautiful: 5x (03:58, 20:57, 21:05, 21:54, 29:16)
Brilliant: 5x (01:15, 01:39, 05:40, 48:41, 48:41)
Pencil Mark/mark: 5x (10:35, 19:12, 33:55, 40:37, 43:14)
The Answer is: 4x (12:53, 29:21, 32:45, 45:19)
Gorgeous: 4x (23:51, 23:53, 29:06, 45:11)
Obviously: 4x (01:09, 07:00, 11:00, 11:19)
Sorry: 3x (26:26, 38:59, 43:05)
Incredible: 3x (00:33, 03:52, 03:52)
Goodness: 2x (46:01, 46:10)
Clever: 2x (02:22, 29:12)
Lovely: 2x (14:56, 26:40)
Shouting: 2x (02:30, 04:24)
Stunning: 2x (29:09, 29:12)
What Does This Mean?: 2x (26:19, 28:32)
Useless: 1x (29:52)
Bother: 1x (43:14)
Naked Single: 1x (27:04)
Nonsense: 1x (46:21)
Recalcitrant: 1x (39:34)
In the Spotlight: 1x (47:50)
Fascinating: 1x (49:07)
Astonishing: 1x (00:41)
Hypothecate: 1x (20:46)
Disconcerting: 1x (27:34)
Come on Simon: 1x (44:53)
Magnificent: 1x (47:56)
In Fact: 1x (32:00)
We Can Do Better Than That: 1x (36:31)
Have a Think: 1x (45:17)
Nature: 1x (17:37)
Cake!: 1x (05:41)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Forty Five (8 mentions)
One, Three (69 mentions)
Green (8 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
High (3) - Low (0)
Even (9) - Odd (7)
Higher (4) - Lower (2)
Outside (2) - Inside (0)
Row (15) - Column (6)
FAQ:
Q1: You missed something!
A1: That could very well be the case! Human speech can be hard to understand for computers like me! Point out the ones that I missed and maybe I'll learn!
Q2: Can you do this for another channel?
A2: I've been thinking about that and wrote some code to make that possible. Let me know which channel you think would be a good fit!
you missed 5:20 Simon's jokes are getting worse :D
I think you missed "Bobbins"
@@santerivainionpaa5404 no it's mentioned in the top tier simarkisms
You missed "he says as..."
I’m impressed it didn’t mishear b in the corner as three in the corner
2021: no given digits
2022: no given cells
Simon's joy every time a new cell is unfogged is absolutely contagious... Lovely puzzle (for me to watch)... :)
The disappointment when the fog lifted to reveal blank cells was real, as well.
Saw the previous video with the introduction of the fog. I absolutely loved it. Freaking amazing concept and as somebody that plays a lot of video games I couldn't help but feel like the puzzle was a dungeon adventure being brought to life. I hope these become a regular feature!
Same here!!
Thank you so much Simon for the stream last night and kind words about me. You 2 constantly bring happiness and warmth to tons of people all across the world. This channel and whole community is something to cherish.
Yay, he read my name! My son was so excited to hear it. Thank you Simon!
I would love for them to make an app for these Fog Sudokus. We definitely need more of these puzzles.
I love this style of Sudoku. Usually I don't bother trying the puzzles myself when the videos are over 30 minutes, but this one was surprisingly approachable. It's a new way to look at them. I tend to get overwhelmed by trying to figure out where I'm supposed to look next and with this, they all but show you exactly where to start. And kudos to Sven on the software. Too often that gets overlooked with non-paper Sudoku but this is the most intuitive I've found.
Great solve! It was a bit painful to see that 35 pair in box 4 being ignored for 15 minutes even if it could be resolved by the five in box 8 and the knight move, which in turn would have unraveled quite a few numbers. I need to learn to ignore such things to enjoy watching even more. I know I suffer from much more severe blindness when I am the one solving and in my case I get stuck. Simon just come up with new ideas and cruise on with the solve. Quite amazing to watch.
I find these fog puzzles are a good way to introduce beginners to variant sudoku because it forces the solver to look for clues in specific places.
I imagine the setter of the puzzle sitting there for like 3 hours to find a way to put 3 in the corner of the puzzle and still preserving the very cool fog logic 😅
Haha! This is the second time I've gotten Simon to sing (the other being Six Pack, from early this year), and in both cases (a) the 3 in the corner was purely coincidental, and (b) I never imagined the puzzle would be featured. And an added layer of irony: I have close family members who live in and near Athens, at least one of whom is a big REM fan.
I would have placed an odd circle on R9C9 as a joke. Seriously though, what a great puzzle, and a beautiful break-in. Using the fact that the cages have to have their total in the uppermost, leftmost cell to let you build them is such a brilliant idea and I don't think it's something you even could use in a fully revealed puzzle.
There's been some build a killer sudoku's that also use that.
25:12 for me. What a fantastic puzzle, I'm so in love with this new variant. I really hope that this fog of war idea is here to stay, it makes the puzzles so much more interesting.
Absolutely!!! Other than the chess themed n wrogn videos this is my favorite kind after those.
Again your excitement of clearing the fog is so fun to watch.
Small bug in the new feature of Sven's software: somehow I ended up with conflict checking switched on and I noticed that it will now check conflicts within cages ... but it does so even if the cage has not yet been revealed from the fog.
e.g. put a pencil-mark *8* into *r1c4* after you have filled *r2c7* and it will show red although parts of the cage are obscured, and even if *r1c4* _itself_ is still fog-bound.
Hope that's helpful...
This _does_ add an interesting new dimension to these puzzles (albeit one that would be almost impossible to replicate on paper).
I was imagining something like scratch tickets where you get to remove the fog yourself :p
Ran into the same exact error check on that cel.
The pic of the spiral bound book gave me an idea. If the pages were coated with or printed on wipeable plastic for use with whiteboard pens, the book would be an enormously longer value proposition. It could be passed around family, friends and prison blocks indefinitely until someone ruins it with permanent Biro.
A DIY alternative is to get a few sheets of plastic like the ones used with overhead projectors (no jokes about my age, please!) and construct a sleeve to slide the book into. Of course, if it doesn’t cost much to add the coating to the pages themselves, perhaps they could add it as a stretch goal!
Great idea!
Fantastic! Took me 80 minutes of grind but that was beautiful. More foggy puzzles please!
Yes, another great Fog puzzle! Keep them coming! Thank you.
When this puzzle showed up in the discord, I had such a great time with it! I had a feeling it would show up here!
22:18 - it's not your glasses! I think it's like the fog of war like in Starcraft 2, where the border of the fog is a bit fuzzy.
I saw this puzzle when it was first posted and didn't watch the video as I intended to solve it myself. I have tried it numerous times since then, all to no avail, until tonight. I ended with a time of 1hr 53. All I can say is that this is an incredible puzzle, and Simon, you are truly a genius because a time of 40 minutes, even knowing the logic now, seems remarkable.
Hands down one of the most enjoyable solves I've done this year. Bravo!
Minor note to our friend Sven, my conflict checker on alpha seemed to have revealed a conflict via cage that should have been hidden by the fog. Such is the way of using alpha releases!
Thanks for making this possible Sven :) really cool
23:19 Missed opportunity there. “That’s B in the corner…”
I was thinking the same
30:17 for me. I absolutely love this sort of puzzle. It feels like an adventure.
As I said on stream last night, Memeristor recorded himself setting one of these, you could play that one (link in his video description ) and then watch how he set it.
54:03 ! really proud of myself on this one and the break in was amazing
I needed a tiny nudge from Simon for the break in but then I was off to the races!! This was a wonderful puzzle, thank you!
PS please construct more fog puzzles :D
I needed 90 minutes, but finally managed to solve it! Great puzzle
What a cool concept! Using technology to enforce the solve path! Had a lot of fun with this one.
66:03 for me. Very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks James and CtC!
34:47 for me. What I find really cool about this puzzle is that if I had seen the whole grid from the start, I don't think the solve path would have been much different. The really brilliant part comes from being able to deduce the shape of the cages, and then start coloring into the unknown. It's very familiar logic for anyone who's done knight's move before, but obscuring the grid allows for some completely fresh ideas. Absolutely loved it.
Also, MAJOR props to Sven for implementing this so fast!!
32:42 finish. Love these fog of war puzzles! Hope to see the next one soon!
I'm so glad this gimmick was used again. I'm 32 minutes in and still not quite close to done, but these two puzzles have been some of the most fun I've had with sudoku.
34 minutes later, finally done. I might've cheesed one deduction a bit when I got really stuck late into the puzzle, not sure, but I had a blast regardless. My favourite part was definitely the long journey it took me to get the first digit and seeing just how much information I could squeeze out of the puzzle with only the middle box illuminated. I regret nothing about using the letter tool to place numerous unknown digits before finally getting one.
It also just occurred to me a while later that I never noticed that one cage's total was 42. That definitely would have fixed whatever cursed logic I found late in the puzzle.
I think setters are deliberately putting 3s in corners just for this awesomeness! Thank you for your uplifting and amazing videos!
It would be nice to think so, although one of the setters did comment that it's hard enough to make a good puzzle without worrying about getting a particular digit in a particular place, and with up to four corner digits in each puzzle, you would get a 3 in the corner about a third of the time just by random chance...
I need a CTC app of Fog Sudoku asap
45:00 Wouldn't it be easier to look at where the purple digit goes in row 2? 🤔
That was great fun ... I got off to a good start but didn't think to ask where r5c7 went into the orange cage ... I was colouring cells in box 5 and trying to see where they went elsewhere and missed the reverse logic, but that one hint was all I needed.
I do like these Fog Of War puzzles, although one thing to suggest is that the pencil-mark checker may need to be disabled, because it flags up cells that duplicate a number in a cage _even where you can't see that they are both in the same cage_ (or even that the pencil mark is in _any_ cage).
I had a little chuckle, too, when he found the extra long and complicated way to prove that. Obviously the one digit missing to complete the row is identical to the digit in the cage that's not on the row.
It is amazing how Simon makes complex deductions that most of us can’t figure out, because we are seeing the same thing by a very simple means and yelling at the screen. The purple cell was on he one this time. As soon as the cage was revealed, r1c4 had to be the same as r2c1 because of the 9 cell cage and making them a 1. But Simon jumped to box 3 instead of row 2. I got the green and orange cages figured out right away and then got stuck. 😢
Second consecutive day Simon's puzzle has been one I've just done on LMD. This is indeed a beauty, and I also hope the fog doesn't clear as the genre adds a lovely little splash of suspense to doing sudoku.
Another gorgeous puzzle - stunning break in!
I've thought for a while that a Fog Of War mechanic for sudoku could be interesting. I'm glad someone else also had the idea and was able to create a compelling puzzle with it. I had a lot of fun solving this.
Sven, I don't know if you read these comments but I play the puzzles with the checker on for pencil marks and the fact that impossible pencil marked digits in killer cages only show up as impossible once the fog is removed to reveal what cage they are in is super clever and I am very impressed!
I actually started to do the longer puzzles myself, and I am having a blast. They are great picks always.
This is a very entertaining variant. It's so rewarding to see the fog lift when a digit goes in. And I really liked the break-in - very elegant.
It occurs to me that the setting of these (in regards to Simon's statements near the end), as well as the solving of them, is very reminiscent of the Wrogn puzzles we've seen. I look forward to seeing more of these, this was my favorite solve in quite some time.
Wat about a "wrogn fog" puzzle?😈
I would love phistomefel to come up with a wrogn fog puzzle.
Incredible puzzle - especially the opening. It reminds me of Lt. Columbo seeking out seemingly useless clues but then suddenly they coalesce into an amazing conclusion.
Bug report for Sven: Look at the state of Simon's puzzle at 32:11. Then, pencil mark 8s into box 2. You get corner marks of 8s for cells R1C4 and R1C6. The R1C4 cell is hidden by the fog, but the conflict checker marks it red. I haven't finished the puzzle yet, but I'm sure this is because R1C4 is in the same box as the 8 in R2C7. But, there should be no way to know this at this point. For now, I've turned off the checker to avoid learning something I shouldn't. I think the simple solution is to skip conflict checking of killer cages for any cell still covered by fog.
Same thing happened for me as well.
I finished in 49:55 minutes. I really enjoyed this puzzle. The geometry between the separate cages and cells between them was fantastic. It took me some time to get the first digit, but once I did, I started zooming. Great Puzzle!
What a great puzzle. I absolutely loved it. Took me 80 minutes, but the time flew by. Thanks very much for sharing it.
Excellent puzzle! 50:45 for me. Loving the changes that Sven has made to the software. Only change I might suggest is (at least on the version I see) is when you have a pencil mark (let's say a 2) and there is a 2 in the row/column/cage, that pencil mark will highlight red. While this is great for most puzzles, in the "fog" ones, it will "red" cages that haven't been proven yet. (I tend to pencil almost as much as Mark does, hence how I found this out).
Edit: While scrolling through comments, I realized there is a "conflict checker" option that you can disable :)
When you talked about nr2 in blue cage I saw the 2 in box8 wich would clear alot of fog. But nr5 in box 1 did get that satisfying big chunk of fog cleared at once haha. Great puzzle and solve! Thanks
This is one of those lovely puzzles that makes me feel clever =D. Great work! Really enjoy these fog of war puzzles but I'm scared how difficult they're going to become!
what an amazing puzzle! This was so cool. Managed to finally solve it after around 77 minutes and with 2 clues from your solve hehe :D
I absolutely loved this one! Simon’s solving and commentary were wonderful, James’s setting was wonderful, the ruleset was wonderful, Sven’s fog of war software was wonderful, just lovely. It’s a shame puzzles like this can’t really be put in one of the CTC best of books. Way to spot the 3 in the corner! And thanks for correcting the coloring of the 1 at the end lol
More Fog Sudoku!!! It’s my new favorite variant!!🔥
Yeah, Fog replaced Doublers as my new favorite within the last month. :)
Ok, so that took me 9 seconds short of 100 minutes but I loved (just about) every minute of it. Thank you James for an excellent and entertaining puzzle.
I usually jump ahead on the puzzle videos over 45 mins. I watched this whole thing. I loved the fog twist.
I enjoyed every minute of this future. I saw this on LMG yesterday and managed to solve it pretty much the same way as Simon tonight. Well done to Sven for getting the fog of war into his sudoku web app in extra quick time. The app is amazing now, what a difference to 2 years ago!
At 45:27, Simon looks at the "purple" digit in box 2. A much simpler solution (and I think, the _intended_ solution) is to consider where it goes in row 2, as there is only one possibility, which is R2C1 which we already know is a 1 or 2, and box 2 already includes a 2, so it's a 1.
I love the concept of the fog sudokus because it forces me to look for logic exactly where the setter wants me to. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by a whole grid of variant sudoku-ness and the fog is perfect. Though not "easier" just more focused. I especially noticed the beauty in the first one by Chameleon, that you were forced along this lantern-lit tour of the grid. Amazing.
This video and puzzle had me conflicted.
This puzzle type was phenomenally beautiful with the logic train and Simons Solve, but aggravating as it had me yelling at my phone on some of the stuff Simon was overlooking.
There is no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t have been able to solve this, or many others showcased on this wonderful channel.
But I can and do solve vicariously though Simons efforts. For with his mind and wit pulling 90% of the weight, I am able to focus on the small restrictions that get momentarily overlooked or temporarily lost in the “fog of war” on a difficult puzzle such as this.
Keep on bringing these beautiful mental masterpieces to the world Simon, it is a better place with you, this channel, and this community in it.
This has an awesome break-in: one of those things new rulesets generate
Lots of fun, would love to see more of these
23:16 "That's 'B' in the corner"
I can see a way to extend this mechanic to paper sudoku. Imagine there was a book, and in this book, one puzzle had a grid with only partially filled clues, a “puzzle hunt” of sorts, where the correct digits in the puzzle could point to another puzzle in the book and the solver were to copy mechanics/hints from that puzzle into the “Puzzle hunt” grid.
another fun journey. thanks James, Simon, and of course Sven, for bringing the fog
Wow, amazing puzzle!
This is the very first puzzle from this channel (except GAS) that I solved! It took me a bit over 2 hours, but I'm still very excited!
Super fun solve. That was one of the sneakiest (and best) break-ins I've encountered. At first I thought maybe the software wasn't displaying the cage totals correctly. 🙂
93:56 may be a horrible time, but I'm still proud to have done it regardless !!
thank you for always showing me such awesome and fun puzzles, this was one of my favorites
Wow! Absolutely loved this puzzle - maybe my all time favourite 🙌. Took just shy of 2 hours, but was some of the funnest and most satisfying deduction I’ve ever done.
Took me exactly one hour, an extremely fun puzzle! Wish I could discover it again
Love this type and loved solving this one. My first ever CTC without needing a prompt/hint from Gary. I'm not ashamed it took me 86 mins.
Who is Gary?
@@rontyson6118 Well spotted... I'm losing my mind. I meant Simon. :)
Intresting way to deal with that top cell in the uppermost 45 cage. Most people would simply say law of leftovers it had to be C1 in R2. But not our Simon, and that is why we love him
Without the limited number of life, it is a nice future for Sudoku. About the filling random numbers, it is up to the player to not cheat, one could also jump to the end of your video to revel the solution, but there is no use in playing then.
So, yes, with no limit on the typos, it is a very nice evolution.
absolute master piece! loved every second of solving it!
Did it in 59:39. First fog puzzle and kept it relatively close to Simon's time which is always a success.
“Sudoku with fog of war” is an objectively absurd idea, and also a brilliant one. (Well…not at first. It’s actually quite dark and frightening until enough digits are put in. I hid under the covers for the first half of the solve.) Kudos to whoever came up with it.
Lol, fraidy cat. :)
@@rontyson6118 Just look at the finished grid-it’s full of arrows and killer cages! How is everyone else so fearless?!
57:52 for me, really enjoying these light revealing puzzles
What an exciting puzzle. I loved every second of this solve.
The advantage I see with this kind of puzzle is that it greatly narrows the solution path to what you can see. As such you're more likely to follow the "intended" solve which will typically contain the most interesting logic, as opposed to going and finding some strange obscure path using bifurcation or the like.
60:23 for me. It was difficult but fun. These long cages were super helpful.
Not sure where to comment on Sven's amazing software, but I discovered that if you have conflict checker on it can spoil where the cage goes. I had filled in the 8 on the arrow in r2c7 and pencil marked an 8 in r1c4 which was still in fog and it turned red. Not a huge deal, but less than Ideal.
Thank you to James Sinclair for crafting an amazing puzzle. Sven for amazing software to make playing it so enjoyable, and Simon for brining it to my attention and struggling along with me (and helping me when I get stuck or make a logic error).
I love fog of war puzzles, especially when you are able to reveal a digit deep in the fog. It feel like opening a present.
Great puzzle, managed to do it in 2h. There is a bug though in fog: when your smaller numbers (sorry, don't know the term) turn red to hint mistake - they do so even with rules hidden in fog. For example I was able to get information about hidden cage in the fog, when I marked some cells.
If you press the cog to go into settings, you can turn off the conflict checker so you'll get no red marks at all.
I don't really know why, but when you corner-mark digits in the fog the "incorrect" placements are highlighted in red, even if you have no possible way of knowing why. I noticed it by accident, because when I got the arrow in box 3 I attempted to corner-mark 8s in box 2 row 1 and the left one got highlighted, announcing that the mark is wrong and giving me an idea about the top cage, seeing as nothing else would explain why that mark was an error at that point. - Sven please fix?
Edit. It appears that conflict checker is more powerful than previously, since it can see through fog and knows how both knight's move and cage restrictions work! The bug disappeared after turning conflict checker off.
I had the same issue. It kind of gave away that a cell was part of a cage if that digit was already entered somewhere in the cage Fortunately there weren't too many instances of me pencilmarking possibilities that were ruled impossible by the cage rule.
It is not the fog that does it. There is an option that says "check pencilmarks" that does it, I guess it's new. You can turn it off in the settings.
@@Kyufoxy There is a bug.
In the situation described by Roteki, they have an 8 entered in r2c7 that is in the same cage as cell r1c4, only you're not supposed to know yet that r1c4 is in the same cage, as it's still in fog. The pencilmark conflict checker ignores the fog though, and marks the pencilmark in red due to the conflict in the cage.
I normally have the pencilmark conflict checker disabled, as I feel it gives too much artificial help. But since this software is only test software (alpha), it wasn't keeping my usual settings and had enabled this feature. I had to go into settings and turn it off.
@@RichSmith77
Okay, with the cage that makes sense. I only saw the bit about the knight's move and it sounded like the cage was only meant to make it more clear where exactly the 8 was. Now with the edited text and explanation that makes sense. I'll remove my previous comment and like the original ^^
Thank you for your response :3
However, that's still not a "bug" per se, that's how the checker works and is coded to work. A bug would be behavior that is different to the intended code and in this case I assume it's just not implemented into the conflict checker at all.
So more like a "missing feature". Either way. Needs fixing for the full release.
37:55 ! Had to watch up to ~17:43 to fully grasp the cage total inclusion gimmick. Lovely puzzle!!
This is a very nice puzzle. Not too difficult. I got it in about 2 hours without any help from the video. Often these things take me 4+ hours. And I just really enjoy this whole fog system.
29:30 the 1/5 cell in blue has an arguably more elegant deduction for why it isn't 5. If it was a 5, it makes the 5/6 turn into a 6, and the arrow sum would be forced to be 6 as well, repeating 6 in blue.
i completed it in 32 mintues 18 seconds. I really enjoy this new style of sudoku, the fog concept is a lot of fun!
This was a brilliant puzzle. Took me 90 minutes, mostly because the break-in proved difficult for me to spot. I hope we see a lot more of these fog of war sudoku.
That was a fantastic puzzle! Great fun!
I think I could have chipped away at this one, but it was late and enjoying watching Mark do it was to tempting.
I love this idea of fog of war sudoku, we need more of these.
45:41 oh my gosh, Simon, what a crazy way to overcomplicate the process!
All you had to do was ask where the purple digits goes in ROW 2, and you would have gotten it instantly.
Thinking about Box 3 then Box 1 was so unnecessary.
@22:22 This *is* exciting. I had to pause here to make this comment. At this point, there's enough visible to get every (numbered, not the 3 a's over there) pencil marked cell in the grid plus r2c7.
This was a touch too hard for me - I started the same way as Simon and drew the cages the way he did, but then I ground to a blinding halt. But very enjoyable to watch Simon solve it. I never get tired of his joy at great puzzles.
I just want to shout out to Sven for his amazing work. Within about a week, he added new, customizable color palettes AND the fog of war to the CTC web app. Does anyone know his channel?
He's got a channel called "Sven Codes" here on RUclips.
@@David_K_Booth Thank you!