I'm so happy that you solved this one! Out of all the puzzles I've helped set, none of them consistently have me giggling to myself as much as this one does when I'm watching someone solve it! When Flinty suggested Zippers as the major constraint other than Copycat Cells, the very first thing I drew in the grid was the "trap" and almost the entire setting process was us trying to build the puzzle in a way that would allow that trap to work. Gdc suggested the Odd Lots rule and it was a perfect way to disambiguate the digits on so many zippers. Ratfinkz, palpot, and juggler all helped a lot with the placement of the lines and collectively understanding how these rulesets could interact and work with each other. I will take the blame for calling the puzzle 3 stars difficulty on Logic Masters. I've been chastised a few times for that... Thank you for solving this and thank you for falling into that trap! I can tell you that Ratfinkz and I at least were giddy with anticipation at seeing your reaction to that!
Wow, I love the fact you started with the trap and worked backwards towards it. Even more remarkable! That is a really great way of setting, to think of a fun and fiendish idea and then try and engineer it. lovely, i'm gonna go watch the setting stream now
I hope this becomes more and more of a thing. As someone that watches a TON of Mario Maker 2 Troll level content I am just waiting for the day that sudokus head in that direction.
Simon's ability to see joy in puzzles where we only see frustration astounds me. Besides, I have learned much new about the English language from him and him alone.
His ability to see complex interactions of sums and substitutions across the puzzle, while also not being able to see that he put three 6's next to each other, is also astounding :) All in jest, I love watching Simon. This channel has reawoken my love of Sudoku puzzles.
My new favourite CTC quote of all time! At 43:20, "Well but ya but ummm... Sorry, that is the most inarticulate exclamation. No. Ok well yes. Uh. No and yes. Hang on. No. The. Right." hahaha! Love you Simon! Don't ever change...
@@mononautHe literally says what we're all thinking. 😅 That's the quality of our own inner monologue while we're solving these puzzles ourselves, 100%.
Just coming back to reasonably normal life after a stroke some six weeks ago. Watching Simon solving one of the great puzzles of all time is exactly the sort of "Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden..." moment I needed. CtC is one of the brightest spots in a mad confused and dangerous world rapidly descending into insanity.
The break in for me was understanding that there can oinly be 2 numbers in the middle of a zipper squares, 8 or 9. And 8 requires a copycatted 4 over a 9, which can only be done once. Which means all the others required a normal 9. And there was only 1 square that would break multiple other cells if there was a 9 in the middle. That and all the 9-centered zipper squares couldn't contain doubled values, so they'd have to be copycatting themselves.
Loved watching you solve this! Was waiting all puzzle for the b3 zipper deduction and you did not disappoint! LOVE this puzzle so much! Thank you for solving ❤
54:53 "...if it's green, it's taking that digit, which would have to be a two, and that won't work ... for different reasons ... that would break the zipper." Somewhere, I imagine a constructor to be laughing evily. ”MUAHAHAHA!!!” Edit: 1:13:12 "Can't write two here" Evil laughing intensifies. "MUAHAHAHA!!!"
Yes. I don't know how exactly he miscanned the fact there was a 6 right next to it, but he definitely meant to enter a second 6, right next to the existing 6 in r3c8.
I think if Simon had kept track of the fact that the copycats on 9-length zippers with a 9 in the middle had to reflect their own value there were a couple of deductions that might have sped things up, just from ruling out copycat from cells which could not reflect their own values (he eventually remembers but there are a lot of deductions that were available for a while)...
What's incredible about Simon is that he is soooo deeply down the intricacy of this madness that his eyes do not burn at these two sixes side to side !
Thank you Simon! I get stuck and I watch your logic for something I’ve missed. I got really stuck on trying to figure out how 2 could be in the center of a zipper. ❤
Simon, I strongly encourage you to do this puzzle again someday for fun, but instead of solving it with mostly sudoku try to figure out the naughty digits first. I had a lot of fun doing it that way, and I suspect you would too.
Truly brutal puzzle that I kept making mistakes in. Fortunately I was able to deduce the mistakes and unravel the tapestry each time. Just shy of 140 min solve time.
Although I purely watch videos for the hard ones, I pride myself on finding the trap very early on! As soon as I saw the 2 grey cells and a 2 pencil mark, I immediately thought of the 1s! Probably my favorite thing in the sudoku world, other than fog puzzles!
Around minute 26:00 when you lock in the 8 on the zipper center in box 4, I'm not sure I understand how you deduced that it can't be box 4's zipper center (r6c1) that's a 9, and then both box 5 and 7 with an 8 on the zipper center and the 9 on the zipper copycatting another value. Can anyone fill in this gap for me?
While the Copycat cells all containing a different value is very neat, I'm not certain it's a required rule to solve the puzzle. I think I skipped that in my scan of the rules and still got the correct result.
13:06 is a weird 180 degree symmetry, but I understand the need speaking in general. Regardless of where they are, 8 will have to be the sum (if the 9 is a copycat) so the sums are 4+4(9), 3+5, 2+6, 1+7 and the 49 can only be in r3c3 / r5c5 because of the zipper line layout. If the 9 is not copycatted, we have a problem. If we copy a 1 we will need two 8s in the box (e.g.) and if we copy r3c3/r5c5 we get an even number, which 9 is not.
I saw the 2 on the zipper really early on but still managed to put off filling it in until the end because I didn't quite believe it was possible or intended.
I spent a lot of work on placing the copycats in the bottom boxes and the top left box of the grid, forcing the 2 in box 7 to be a copycat. I placed the 2 in box 2 and then didn't even look at the zipper, just kept doing sudoku. It was only when I had 7 digits left to place that I saw the 8, not the 2. And I thought, if that's a real 8, I'd need a 9 in the middle of the line, can't, so it's a copycat. Then I finally realized the strangeness of the 2 being where I had placed it. It was a good laugh right at the end of the puzzle.
I haven't watched the video yet, but I _have_ solved the (brilliant!) puzzle, and I'm pretty sure I know _exactly_ what trap the video title is referring to. (And yes, I fell into it.)
Finished in 56:49. Made a couple of bad assumptions throughout the puzzle, but fortunately (?) I was always able to trace it back to its root and they were later when I had already established the break-in. Fun puzzle!
You really should have used the circles from the start. On the full-box lines, they have to be 4 (on an 8-line) or 5 (on a 9-line). On the 9-lines, the copycat must copy the same value. In box 4, which has an 8-line, the circle must have a value of 4, so it's either 4 with a copycat 9 in the centre cell (not possible, because the copycat in box 5 has to be in the centre), so it's 9 copying 4 from R6C7, and R5C2=4. Now R6C7 must be a copycat, because there's no way to make the circle work. If the 4 is natural, the other cells must be either 2+2 or 1+3, but 2+2 would require 0 in the circle, and 1+3 would require 2 in the circle. Therefore the 4 is value 9, the circle must be 2, and R6C8 must be 7. Because of where the 4 is in box 5, there's a 5 in the three cells on the other end of the line. There's a circled 5 in box 8. Whether it's real or a copycat, it's on a 9-line, where the copycat copies the same value as the digit, so the digit 5 is in the circle, putting 5 in R5C5 and 4 in R4C6 and R7C5. Now we have a copycat 5, so R8C6 is natural. If you'd done more sudoku, plus greyed out all 4s, 5s, and 9s except the ones we know are copycats, you would never have fallen into the trap. You'd have placed 2 in R2C8, and realised that it is in fact possible. I'm pretty sure that was one of the earliest steps in the setting. You really made this harder than it was. You had three boxes with 9-lines, where you don't have to consider the copycat rule, because whether the cell is natural or not, it still has the same digit. You can just do normal sudoku/zipper logic. Similarly, once the 9 was placed in box 4, the rest of the box was natural and normal rules apply. How on earth could you put 6 in R3C7, right next to another 6? It wasn't a typo, you said "that's a 6", and (possibly for the first time ever) you typed 6 at the first attempt. You then compounded the problem by putting another 6 immediately below that one, neither time did you notice that they were next to a 6. This is why you're rubbish at sudoku - you just don't look. You put a 12 in R1C5 after pencil-marking 2s into C5 in box 5, again, you didn't look. You placed 1s in boxes 3 and 6, and never bothered to look where 1 might go in box 9.
I'm still at 1/3 of the video but I just realised, couldn't box 4 have 7 in the middle of the zipper line? With 9 being a copycat and 8 in an odd circle. Hence making in terms of values 7=1+6=2+5=3+4=2(9)+5(8) . Anyway, cheers for the video. Bye
At 1:00:57, the reasoning is wrong. R7c4 would have to have a *value* of 7, not actually be 7, which it could easily do by means of being a Copycat Cell. The reason that this, in turn, fails immediately is that now there's no way of putting a 7 into the box anymore without using a second Copycat Cell...
He's already established that the copycat cell in box 8 has to copy its own value for the zipper sum of 9 to work. I believe he's just using that fact.
Umm green and blue in the center are 90 degrees not 180. Also by definition you can’t have 2 copycat cells in the same box. The center of the center box must be the copycat cell, no?
The cell that a copycat cell rotates to doesn't itself have to be a copycat cell, so in theory the copycat cell in box 5 doesn't have to be the centre cell. (It does once you work out the zipper sums to 9, but then it's due to maths reasons.)
Box 3 and the 2 on the center of the zipper is one of the funniest things I have seen in a puzzle maybe ever. Amazing puzzle. I will say that it is something that I would not enjoy solving, and I was worried that I would not enjoy watching you, Simon, but it turned out to be just the sort of intellectual entertainment that I come to CtC for - along with your excellent and thorough explanations. Thanks, Simon, for the video!
It would be funny if all copycat digits copied the same value as their digit. And in box 5 the copycat digit was the center one. Probably the zippers would have been different 😊
I fell in the same R2C8 trap. Once the puzzle broke I decided to watch the video to see where I went wrong and that only served to confuse me more... because I happened to watch right after Simon made the exact same error. Wonderful puzzle!
I've never seen Simon so confused during a solve, though totally understandably. Copycats are mindbending buggers, and this is among your highest achievment
This one definitely falls into the "evil genius" bracket! Slightly regretting that I gave up too quickly on this one ... I was able to make a few small deductions like the nipple of the zipper having a value of 8 or 9 (and if it's an 8 then the 9 is a copycat 4), but I was worried that the nipple could itself be a copycat cell without thinking carefully and logically through the implications of that. Well done to Simon for a great solve, despite falling into their traps!
I had to give up. Zippers plus the yellow circles would be fine, and other types of modifier cell rules I can deal with but the copycat was just madness.
At 1:15:30 I now suspect that the whole puzzle was constructed just to have a 2 as the center of a zipper line of length greater than three 😂 And I just read the comment by one of the setters more or less confirming that.
I finished in 113 minutes. This might have been the most I have ever been trolled in a puzzle. Every time I saw something ridiculous that could happen, it did. I thought I was losing my mind and that I had to have broken something. This especially came to point when I put a 2 into r2c8. That is an insane zipper line that works out beautifully. Hats off to Scojo and chat for coming up with this insane piece of art. Great Puzzle!
Very tough, very exacting! You want to pencil mark the actual cell numbers, but also want to track the possible cell VALUES if it ends up being one of the funny cells. Takes some precise tracking…
I thought I followed along and then you put a 5 and said it had to be a 5 and I started to lose it. I still can't follow the lack of copycat until that R2C8 deduction and it all got back on track. So.. luck or skill? Knowing Simon, skill, but just could not follow.
This was fun! 😅 I did not fell for the trap, I stopped the video and almost commented that Simon is wrong, those can be 1s, but then I watched till the end.
36:50 for me. i made so many mistakes that it is not even funny. i kept thinking the center of the line was the average in stead of a sum all the time.
I mean r5c5 would just be itself. And if you had both r1c1 and r9c9 as Copycat cells, they would just be the other one, wouldn't they? So r1c1 would have the value of the digit in r9c9 and r9c9 would have the value of the digit in r1c1.
At the very beginning I found, that the zipper centers can only be 8 or 9. The reason for this is „the secret“.: For a nine-cell zipper lines with center A the total of all nine values has to be 5A. When their copycat cell is „transplonded“ to the same value, 5A = 45 and A is 9. If it is „transplonded“ to another value, 45 must be reduced to another value-sum which is a multiple of 5. 40 is the only one reachable. So A=8 is the only possibility in this case. That gave me a good start, but later on I needed -as usual- much more time than Simon. The difference between „values“ and the numbers in the cells is quite confusing, but forces concentration. So I was prepared to the trap in the end :)
I love the fact that this puzzle has Simon saying nonsense like that IS 4, so it IS 9. I think the logical mathematical part of Simon's brain fights with the precise linguistic part. One day we will witness an onscreen logical implosion. The equivalent of the blue screen you used to get when you asked just a little too much of a 1990s PC.😂
85:11, I figured the zipper line in box 4 had to sum to 9 by copycating the 9 into r6c4 and broke the puzzle, thus figured it had to sum to 8, which made two other cells in the puzzle have to copycat the 9, which made me feel stuck and go to the video to see what I was doing wrong, only to figure out r5c5 had to be the copycat before I could hit play. Slowly solved from there, took too long to think about how the circled digits were affecting everything.
this was brutal! For the life of me i could not figure out the 2 in box 3! X-D Had to watch Simon until the moment he first considered the possibility! Of course! :D
15:00 The other way to think about the problem here is to think about here is if the green cell has the same value as blue, their respective zipper partners will have to be of like value to reach the same sum, and since the copycat's already used in the box there's no way to do this without breaking sudoku rules...
The words we use are interesting. Simon uses "transplanted off" which to my ear is going in the wrong direction. I was thinking "copycatted in" and/or "copycatted over" to describe the other digit coming in from the other side and covering the digit in the copycatted cell. I wonder how much that directionality causes confusion in the mind about the gymnastics of the digits and values.
I'm so happy that you solved this one! Out of all the puzzles I've helped set, none of them consistently have me giggling to myself as much as this one does when I'm watching someone solve it! When Flinty suggested Zippers as the major constraint other than Copycat Cells, the very first thing I drew in the grid was the "trap" and almost the entire setting process was us trying to build the puzzle in a way that would allow that trap to work. Gdc suggested the Odd Lots rule and it was a perfect way to disambiguate the digits on so many zippers. Ratfinkz, palpot, and juggler all helped a lot with the placement of the lines and collectively understanding how these rulesets could interact and work with each other. I will take the blame for calling the puzzle 3 stars difficulty on Logic Masters. I've been chastised a few times for that... Thank you for solving this and thank you for falling into that trap! I can tell you that Ratfinkz and I at least were giddy with anticipation at seeing your reaction to that!
Wow, I love the fact you started with the trap and worked backwards towards it. Even more remarkable! That is a really great way of setting, to think of a fun and fiendish idea and then try and engineer it. lovely, i'm gonna go watch the setting stream now
This is just fascinating and incredible from all you!! Exquisite minds working and setting at its finest. Thank you for sharing some insight into it!!
That trap is the devil’s work. A masterstroke! 👏👏
I fell into the trap much earlier than Simon, marking R8C2 as a non-copycat cell, since R2C8 couldn't possibly be a two.
I hope this becomes more and more of a thing. As someone that watches a TON of Mario Maker 2 Troll level content I am just waiting for the day that sudokus head in that direction.
Simon's ability to see joy in puzzles where we only see frustration astounds me. Besides, I have learned much new about the English language from him and him alone.
Large part of enjoy the channel is how honest his enjoyment of puzzles is
His ability to see complex interactions of sums and substitutions across the puzzle, while also not being able to see that he put three 6's next to each other, is also astounding :) All in jest, I love watching Simon. This channel has reawoken my love of Sudoku puzzles.
My new favourite CTC quote of all time! At 43:20, "Well but ya but ummm... Sorry, that is the most inarticulate exclamation. No. Ok well yes. Uh. No and yes. Hang on. No. The. Right."
hahaha! Love you Simon! Don't ever change...
I think mine would have to be "that's 6," as he places it right next to another 6. 😁
Love that he's just trying to keep us up to date on the processing in his brain in real time, as best he can ❤
@@mononaut Agreed! Simon is completely genuine and I love that about him... :)
can we fit that onto a t-shirt??
@@mononautHe literally says what we're all thinking. 😅 That's the quality of our own inner monologue while we're solving these puzzles ourselves, 100%.
Just coming back to reasonably normal life after a stroke some six weeks ago. Watching Simon solving one of the great puzzles of all time is exactly the sort of "Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden..." moment I needed. CtC is one of the brightest spots in a mad confused and dangerous world rapidly descending into insanity.
Best wishes for a full recovery, your comment suggests you are well on the way 💕
@@janeflett4971 Yup! Brain plasticity should do the trick...
Welcome back, Amos! Wishing you a full recovery.
Row 2 column 8 was one of the best misdirections in sudoku i have seen 😂
Not to mention the possible values were 2 and 8.
A David Copperfield-esque Magic Trick! Loved it
The break in for me was understanding that there can oinly be 2 numbers in the middle of a zipper squares, 8 or 9. And 8 requires a copycatted 4 over a 9, which can only be done once. Which means all the others required a normal 9. And there was only 1 square that would break multiple other cells if there was a 9 in the middle. That and all the 9-centered zipper squares couldn't contain doubled values, so they'd have to be copycatting themselves.
Loved watching you solve this! Was waiting all puzzle for the b3 zipper deduction and you did not disappoint!
LOVE this puzzle so much!
Thank you for solving ❤
I was giggling to myself as usual whenever that cell gets mentioned in a solve, and the sheer disbelief that it can be what it is.
@@Scojo486 I was too....and even more so thinking about you laughing about it 🤣
@sarahnash7174 just absolutely incredible collaboration between you all!! What a puzzle /setting and trap. Amazing job.!!!
Not Simon hovering his triple 6 with his mouse at 1:21:18 .
It was the devil’s work
Just breathtaking solving from you Simon!! Your passion is extraordinary!!! Fully committed!
36:18 was a missed opportunity for "therefore, there four!"
Take a shot every time Simon says “transplorted”
this was such a fun puzzle! i loved the deviousness of the copycat cells, not just their idea but their implementation was devilish!
54:53 "...if it's green, it's taking that digit, which would have to be a two, and that won't work ... for different reasons ... that would break the zipper."
Somewhere, I imagine a constructor to be laughing evily. ”MUAHAHAHA!!!”
Edit: 1:13:12 "Can't write two here"
Evil laughing intensifies.
"MUAHAHAHA!!!"
It was more than just a typing error putting the 6 in R3C7, he even said "that's 6" as he did it!
Yes.
I don't know how exactly he miscanned the fact there was a 6 right next to it, but he definitely meant to enter a second 6, right next to the existing 6 in r3c8.
I think the copycat rule warped his brain. That 6 was actually a second 1 so it needed a real 6 to offset the fake 6.
@@RichSmith77 For all his brilliance, simply scanning for Sudoku is definitely Simon's Achilles' Heel, as he freely admits on several videos.
I think if Simon had kept track of the fact that the copycats on 9-length zippers with a 9 in the middle had to reflect their own value there were a couple of deductions that might have sped things up, just from ruling out copycat from cells which could not reflect their own values (he eventually remembers but there are a lot of deductions that were available for a while)...
What's incredible about Simon is that he is soooo deeply down the intricacy of this madness that his eyes do not burn at these two sixes side to side !
I was yelling at my phone for what seemed like forever “you have two 6s in box 3” 😂 That puzzle was confusing and fun to watch!
It took me quite a long time to really understand the rule.... but after that it finally worked with a little brain acrobatics. Great puzzle.
Thank you Simon! I get stuck and I watch your logic for something I’ve missed. I got really stuck on trying to figure out how 2 could be in the center of a zipper. ❤
Hi Simon! Another wonderful video! I would love to watch you livestream the Riven remake that came out last week.
Simon, I strongly encourage you to do this puzzle again someday for fun, but instead of solving it with mostly sudoku try to figure out the naughty digits first. I had a lot of fun doing it that way, and I suspect you would too.
Truly brutal puzzle that I kept making mistakes in. Fortunately I was able to deduce the mistakes and unravel the tapestry each time. Just shy of 140 min solve time.
Although I purely watch videos for the hard ones, I pride myself on finding the trap very early on! As soon as I saw the 2 grey cells and a 2 pencil mark, I immediately thought of the 1s! Probably my favorite thing in the sudoku world, other than fog puzzles!
I like it how the devil possesses Simon's essence and makes him put 666 into the grid, breaking all the heavenly rules of sudoku in the process.
I made the same mistake as you with the 2 in the top right, I was like that's just not possible at all XD
Around minute 26:00 when you lock in the 8 on the zipper center in box 4, I'm not sure I understand how you deduced that it can't be box 4's zipper center (r6c1) that's a 9, and then both box 5 and 7 with an 8 on the zipper center and the 9 on the zipper copycatting another value. Can anyone fill in this gap for me?
While the Copycat cells all containing a different value is very neat, I'm not certain it's a required rule to solve the puzzle. I think I skipped that in my scan of the rules and still got the correct result.
13:06 is a weird 180 degree symmetry, but I understand the need speaking in general.
Regardless of where they are, 8 will have to be the sum (if the 9 is a copycat) so the sums are 4+4(9), 3+5, 2+6, 1+7 and the 49 can only be in r3c3 / r5c5 because of the zipper line layout.
If the 9 is not copycatted, we have a problem. If we copy a 1 we will need two 8s in the box (e.g.) and if we copy r3c3/r5c5 we get an even number, which 9 is not.
I saw the 2 on the zipper really early on but still managed to put off filling it in until the end because I didn't quite believe it was possible or intended.
I spent a lot of work on placing the copycats in the bottom boxes and the top left box of the grid, forcing the 2 in box 7 to be a copycat. I placed the 2 in box 2 and then didn't even look at the zipper, just kept doing sudoku. It was only when I had 7 digits left to place that I saw the 8, not the 2. And I thought, if that's a real 8, I'd need a 9 in the middle of the line, can't, so it's a copycat. Then I finally realized the strangeness of the 2 being where I had placed it. It was a good laugh right at the end of the puzzle.
I haven't watched the video yet, but I _have_ solved the (brilliant!) puzzle, and I'm pretty sure I know _exactly_ what trap the video title is referring to. (And yes, I fell into it.)
A brutal ruleset, and a mean puzzle given the red 2 was just mean
Lovely puzzle!
Finished in 56:49. Made a couple of bad assumptions throughout the puzzle, but fortunately (?) I was always able to trace it back to its root and they were later when I had already established the break-in.
Fun puzzle!
You really should have used the circles from the start. On the full-box lines, they have to be 4 (on an 8-line) or 5 (on a 9-line). On the 9-lines, the copycat must copy the same value. In box 4, which has an 8-line, the circle must have a value of 4, so it's either 4 with a copycat 9 in the centre cell (not possible, because the copycat in box 5 has to be in the centre), so it's 9 copying 4 from R6C7, and R5C2=4. Now R6C7 must be a copycat, because there's no way to make the circle work. If the 4 is natural, the other cells must be either 2+2 or 1+3, but 2+2 would require 0 in the circle, and 1+3 would require 2 in the circle. Therefore the 4 is value 9, the circle must be 2, and R6C8 must be 7. Because of where the 4 is in box 5, there's a 5 in the three cells on the other end of the line. There's a circled 5 in box 8. Whether it's real or a copycat, it's on a 9-line, where the copycat copies the same value as the digit, so the digit 5 is in the circle, putting 5 in R5C5 and 4 in R4C6 and R7C5. Now we have a copycat 5, so R8C6 is natural.
If you'd done more sudoku, plus greyed out all 4s, 5s, and 9s except the ones we know are copycats, you would never have fallen into the trap. You'd have placed 2 in R2C8, and realised that it is in fact possible. I'm pretty sure that was one of the earliest steps in the setting.
You really made this harder than it was. You had three boxes with 9-lines, where you don't have to consider the copycat rule, because whether the cell is natural or not, it still has the same digit. You can just do normal sudoku/zipper logic. Similarly, once the 9 was placed in box 4, the rest of the box was natural and normal rules apply.
How on earth could you put 6 in R3C7, right next to another 6? It wasn't a typo, you said "that's a 6", and (possibly for the first time ever) you typed 6 at the first attempt. You then compounded the problem by putting another 6 immediately below that one, neither time did you notice that they were next to a 6. This is why you're rubbish at sudoku - you just don't look. You put a 12 in R1C5 after pencil-marking 2s into C5 in box 5, again, you didn't look. You placed 1s in boxes 3 and 6, and never bothered to look where 1 might go in box 9.
All your 6 belong to us.
55:30 YOU HAVE PLACED AN 8 IN BOX 4
I'm still at 1/3 of the video but I just realised, couldn't box 4 have 7 in the middle of the zipper line? With 9 being a copycat and 8 in an odd circle. Hence making in terms of values 7=1+6=2+5=3+4=2(9)+5(8) . Anyway, cheers for the video. Bye
Nevermind I misunderstood the rules, the value in the circle has to also be the value in the square.
Naughty thingy thingys
Ugh, went down a wrong path because I assumed that cells had to copy a different cell. Rather unintuitive for the center to be copying itself.
At 1:00:57, the reasoning is wrong.
R7c4 would have to have a *value* of 7, not actually be 7, which it could easily do by means of being a Copycat Cell.
The reason that this, in turn, fails immediately is that now there's no way of putting a 7 into the box anymore without using a second Copycat Cell...
He's already established that the copycat cell in box 8 has to copy its own value for the zipper sum of 9 to work. I believe he's just using that fact.
118:24 .... my eyes are sore
Crikey, that was a bit brain-bending! All that transplonding!
I wonder where transplOnted comes from
Umm green and blue in the center are 90 degrees not 180. Also by definition you can’t have 2 copycat cells in the same box. The center of the center box must be the copycat cell, no?
The cell that a copycat cell rotates to doesn't itself have to be a copycat cell, so in theory the copycat cell in box 5 doesn't have to be the centre cell. (It does once you work out the zipper sums to 9, but then it's due to maths reasons.)
transplonted
I'm only half an hour into the video, but watching Simon completely ignore the yellow circle rule is killing me.
uwu
genre: Psychological Horror
Made my day this comment 🤣
Box 3 and the 2 on the center of the zipper is one of the funniest things I have seen in a puzzle maybe ever. Amazing puzzle. I will say that it is something that I would not enjoy solving, and I was worried that I would not enjoy watching you, Simon, but it turned out to be just the sort of intellectual entertainment that I come to CtC for - along with your excellent and thorough explanations. Thanks, Simon, for the video!
Absolutely written beautifully ...as only you can.
It would be funny if all copycat digits copied the same value as their digit. And in box 5 the copycat digit was the center one.
Probably the zippers would have been different 😊
The biggest troll would have been to put a "value" of 3 in a corner by copycat :D
But that would have been a 3 in the opposite corner anyway.
But it is *green* in the corner.
Wow what a baffling and thus entertaining puzzle. Congratulations to the setters and to Simon for bringing us this delight of a video 😊😊
I fell in the same R2C8 trap. Once the puzzle broke I decided to watch the video to see where I went wrong and that only served to confuse me more... because I happened to watch right after Simon made the exact same error. Wonderful puzzle!
I've never seen Simon so confused during a solve, though totally understandably. Copycats are mindbending buggers, and this is among your highest achievment
This one definitely falls into the "evil genius" bracket! Slightly regretting that I gave up too quickly on this one ... I was able to make a few small deductions like the nipple of the zipper having a value of 8 or 9 (and if it's an 8 then the 9 is a copycat 4), but I was worried that the nipple could itself be a copycat cell without thinking carefully and logically through the implications of that. Well done to Simon for a great solve, despite falling into their traps!
Not even gonna attempt the hellscape that is this ruleset
I had to give up. Zippers plus the yellow circles would be fine, and other types of modifier cell rules I can deal with but the copycat was just madness.
At 1:15:30 I now suspect that the whole puzzle was constructed just to have a 2 as the center of a zipper line of length greater than three 😂
And I just read the comment by one of the setters more or less confirming that.
😉
Bravo Simon, another enjoyable solve. Thanks also to the setters, a breed apart.
Thx for the shout out, Simon, appreciate you Sir Lunch 👽🖖🏻
What a crazy, wild and wonderful rule set! Can't wait to see this solve!
I got to the point where i put that magic 2 and thought I'd broken it, and backed up almost so the way to the start...
i don't know for certain, but i can take a guess who set the trap mentioned in the title
I finished in 113 minutes. This might have been the most I have ever been trolled in a puzzle. Every time I saw something ridiculous that could happen, it did. I thought I was losing my mind and that I had to have broken something. This especially came to point when I put a 2 into r2c8. That is an insane zipper line that works out beautifully. Hats off to Scojo and chat for coming up with this insane piece of art. Great Puzzle!
Very tough, very exacting! You want to pencil mark the actual cell numbers, but also want to track the possible cell VALUES if it ends up being one of the funny cells. Takes some precise tracking…
I thought I followed along and then you put a 5 and said it had to be a 5 and I started to lose it. I still can't follow the lack of copycat until that R2C8 deduction and it all got back on track. So.. luck or skill? Knowing Simon, skill, but just could not follow.
34:52 for me. that 2 thing was unthinkable, but fortunately after i solved it i did the copycats later
Brilliant puzzle! Laughed out loud when I got the final two copycat cells, a true moment of sudoku joy
This was fun! 😅 I did not fell for the trap, I stopped the video and almost commented that Simon is wrong, those can be 1s, but then I watched till the end.
36:50 for me. i made so many mistakes that it is not even funny. i kept thinking the center of the line was the average in stead of a sum all the time.
Now the difficlty of this puzzle is 4* and still has a rating of 100%
30:55 for me. What a great puzzle, loved it!!
you've already got a green 5, so no others can be green 5's.
if I place 3 of the copycats in r1c1 r5c5 and r9c9, how do these copycats behave?
I mean r5c5 would just be itself. And if you had both r1c1 and r9c9 as Copycat cells, they would just be the other one, wouldn't they? So r1c1 would have the value of the digit in r9c9 and r9c9 would have the value of the digit in r1c1.
@@joschi4306 yes, when I finished the video, I had seen it, but thank you
You get so close and you think you've messed up, then realise the impossible sum in box 3 is actually correct.
🤣 gottem
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I had to come looking as well.
@@CrackingTheCryptic Yes, with the bell on max. And I usually get all notifications, but not the last couple of days.
At the very beginning I found, that the zipper centers can only be 8 or 9. The reason for this is „the secret“.: For a nine-cell zipper lines with center A the total of all nine values has to be 5A. When their copycat cell is „transplonded“ to the same value, 5A = 45 and A is 9. If it is „transplonded“ to another value, 45 must be reduced to another value-sum which is a multiple of 5. 40 is the only one reachable. So A=8 is the only possibility in this case.
That gave me a good start, but later on I needed -as usual- much more time than Simon. The difference between „values“ and the numbers in the cells is quite confusing, but forces concentration.
So I was prepared to the trap in the end :)
I love the fact that this puzzle has Simon saying nonsense like that IS 4, so it IS 9. I think the logical mathematical part of Simon's brain fights with the precise linguistic part. One day we will witness an onscreen logical implosion. The equivalent of the blue screen you used to get when you asked just a little too much of a 1990s PC.😂
85:11, I figured the zipper line in box 4 had to sum to 9 by copycating the 9 into r6c4 and broke the puzzle, thus figured it had to sum to 8, which made two other cells in the puzzle have to copycat the 9, which made me feel stuck and go to the video to see what I was doing wrong, only to figure out r5c5 had to be the copycat before I could hit play. Slowly solved from there, took too long to think about how the circled digits were affecting everything.
this was brutal! For the life of me i could not figure out the 2 in box 3! X-D Had to watch Simon until the moment he first considered the possibility! Of course! :D
15:00 The other way to think about the problem here is to think about here is if the green cell has the same value as blue, their respective zipper partners will have to be of like value to reach the same sum, and since the copycat's already used in the box there's no way to do this without breaking sudoku rules...
43:42
Had a huge unwind after overstepping the logic in box 8, but thankfully found it.
An excellent puzzle and concept.
Almost thought he wasn’t gonna noticed the 6’s next to each other at the end! Whew! What a puzzle, great job!
that triple 6 was like typo is going to troll a Simon as a moment he thinks he failed to solve :D
There’s Maverick. Right on time.
Simon always jinxing himself
WOW the title is not an exaggeration at all!
I have discovered green, my lord!
The words we use are interesting. Simon uses "transplanted off" which to my ear is going in the wrong direction. I was thinking "copycatted in" and/or "copycatted over" to describe the other digit coming in from the other side and covering the digit in the copycatted cell. I wonder how much that directionality causes confusion in the mind about the gymnastics of the digits and values.
Still watching. Now Simon uses "steals its value from" which makes a lot of sense to my ear.
9:57 Wonderful
Hoping for Copy-Cat Shrodinger cells, but 2 out of 3 of them are wrogn.
Oh no, you just opened Pandora´s Box ;-)