What an honour to see this one on the channel! Almost 2 hours long too, I really hope the amount of pain my puzzle brought wasn't nearly as much as the amount of entertainment :p I think this is the type of puzzle that requires a lot of stamina to solve, especially when you need to explain your thoughts along the way. It doesn't really get easier at any point, and some of the most complex deductions occur towards the end of the solve. So, congrats on getting through it!
Just amazing, it's so intricate. That was a hard battle for me. The ending took me a long time to figure out. I was worn out, but very pleased when I solved it. Well done.
Simon, please you never have to appologize for taking a long time, we love to watch you solve any puzzle, no matter how long it takes. In fact for me I really enjoy the long videos. They are far more interesting than almost any hollywood movie these days. Keep up the outstanding work you and Mark do. As my favorite youtuber likes to say: take a bow. We love you.
I am so glad Simon decided to try this puzzle. It was pretty fantastic for me as well. And I must say, it's the kind of puzzle where Simon's skills absolutely shine the brightest. He didn't miss a single nuance.
Monstrous. Simply monstrous. I hope you're happy, Agent. This has kept us "entertained" for over an hour already and we're not even halfway coloured with the cells. Brings a tear to my eye, and jolly well done! Edit: just over two hours. People did cry, so definitely a job well done, Agent!
I turned this video on at half past midnight, expected to turn it off within an hour or so because sometimes long videos can be too long, but this puzzle was so amazing I powered the whole way through until 2.27AM. Ridiculous. Great video, loved it
I am just now getting to comment on this puzzle after it took me two days to solve, but this puzzle has given me the most satisfaction I’ve ever gotten out of solving a puzzle all on my own. Thank you agent for setting such an excellent puzzle and thank you Simon for teaching us how to solve these wonderful puzzles
What an absolute brute of a puzzle. Major kudos to you Agent for coming up with this masterpiece. Thank you Simon for persevering thru this and featuring it on the channel.
This was really something else in terms of a puzzle! I found the ruleset very interesting, and Simon, you were the best person to take it on! Much beyond my ability, but very fun to watch. I was struck during this video about how much mental energy must be expended to keep at a complex puzzle for this long. You need never apologize, Simon, we will watch what we want to watch (and I watched this over the course of two days, myself). These longer, more complicated puzzles are well worth the effort for both solver and viewer (at least, I hope you agree)! Thanks, as always!
A "favored manacle of fluorescent greenliness" (48:58) sounds like something I would have tortured my players with in my DM days. I know not everyone shares my opinion, but I always love when we get a movie-length video because I can sit back and just watch a brilliant brain work. Thank you for the popcorn puzzle, Agent! It was brilliant to watch. The way the right side of the grid grows upward even feels a bit like skyscrapers being built. Maybe one day I'll be skilled enough to solve one like it on my own.
1:11:49 finish. One thing to think of with box 9, once you have the cages set, is to keep going with it. After asking where 1 and 2 go, then ask where 3 goes. It winds up solving almost the entire box in short order. Very fun puzzle, and quite colorful!
Certainly not Simple Simon! Great solve, as always, thank you for distracting me from my chest bug for 2 hours. Very impressive puzzle - towers above all others! Clearly, you know 'The Secret' Agent!
Amazing solve as always. Simon’s ability to work out complicated logic is superb. Often at the expense of simple logic. Like not noticing that box 9 needed a 1 and 2 which could only go in yellow for a solid 10 minutes. Then never asking where 3 could go except by backing into it through some much more complicated logic using maths. 😂
Amazing puzzle. Looking at the rules and the grid at the beginning, I share Simon's sentiment - it does seem incredible that a solution emerges. I wish I'd tried it now, but as my time on the trickier puzzles is often around 3 times the length of the video I thought I'd just sit back and enjoy watching this one. Thanks Simon and Agent!
Hi Simon and co, just wanted to say a big thank you to you and your channel - as someone who deals with intense anxiety on a daily basis, your calming voice, brilliant logic and gentle humor are such a balm for me, and I'm sure many others, in a pretty crazy world. Your community is super wholesome, you guys should be very proud of what you've created here
Finished in 132:05. Great puzzle that never really felt out of reach. It seemed like every time I was making progress I ran into a skyscraper clue that seemingly was impossible, but upon further inspection, actually. In particular, the row 9 skyscraper logic threw me for a loop. And the epiphany about r9c9 elicited an audible gasp from me. Now I get to watch Simon's solve and anticipate his reaction to some of these bits of brilliance. These are my favorite videos!
Simon, you needn't apologize for "taking so much of our Sunday evening" (or any later date). No one is forcing us to watch (though, I can hardly imagine stopping midway through this, but that's on me as a viewer.) Thank you, Agent, for an amazing puzzle. Thank you, Simon, for a logical solve, which you explained on-the-fly. Thank you, Cracking the Cryptic, for years of wonderful, mind-expanding entertainment.
I better be able to stop midway through. I've only just started watching, but I need to be at work in a hour and a half (and fit both travel and my morning ablutions in there as well).
I got so engrossed in the puzzle I forgot to get up and make popcorn. Guess I’ll have to watch again - there goes Sunday evening…. Wow what a great puzzle!
79:14 for me. What I love the most about this puzzle is that I always feel like I've broken the puzzle, but turns out there is always a beautiful logic path to prevent it. I just enjoy to discover all the logic path in it, and even till the end, the way to tackle the 25, 32, 21, 19 cages is just amazing! Love it!
Great puzzle and video. I am amazed that non-native English speakers can understand Simon at times when he gets excited and starts speaking faster and faster.
Oh my goodness, this was one of the hardest puzzles I've ever done. It took me 3.5 hours and a lot of head scratching. There were multiple times where I thought that I had broken it, but there was always just enough wiggle room to get out of trouble. Absolutely amazing. And a brilliant rule set.
The rule "no two cages can have the same sum" was actually helpful right from the start. I was able to use that rule immediately when thinking about which cells must not be included in any cage.
I am very very very proud to say that (after a miscalculation of 8+5=11......) I have managed to solve the puzzle in 2,5 hours! Cracking the puzzle was so much fun! Step by step new discoveries! I could stop! Very cool!!!!!! This rulesset is more fun than I gave it credit for in the past. Going to find another puzzle right now, haha:)
Quite an amazing puzzle! Took me around 2 hrs to solve, but it’s designed so elegantly that I never felt truly stuck. The only thing that slowed me down was doing all the math in my head and keeping track of the cage totals.
For me, I had to open the puzzle in a 2nd window so that I could use it only to keep track of the # of the skycagers. It amazes me how Simon, and Mark too, are able to keep track of so much in their heads!
Simon, I must say emphatically, any time you declare yourself to be "really, really stupid" after solving 80% of a puzzle that most of us wouldn't even know how to start, not a single person watching would agree with you! As to "wasting our time", this may have been a long video, but just as it flew by for you, it flies by for us as well!
1:28:43, Simon you can fill box 6 with 3 leftover numbers in row 4, (1 is a write in even). Then fill box 5's row 4 digits, and solve the 5,7 pair (there has been that 5 in box 5 for a while too). Then your question on how to simply solve for all leftover numbers being in the 4 cages or not, should be answerable with simplicity, not even ease. Loved the solve sofar btw, great job, you got immersed and it showed, made me happy to see you involved like that.
Another incredible puzzle featured on Cracking The Cryptic. We're truly spoiled by the high quality of puzzle after puzzle. I was pleased to see Simon also thought the 2 clue in row 8 may have been broken, at around 58:15. But whereas it took Simon all of thirty seconds to see why it wasn't broken, after 15 minutes of staring and back tracking, my only recourse to see why it wasn't broken was to take a sneak peek at the latter stages of the video. Of course! r8c9 could hide the red and yellow cages! So obvious, yet I just couldn't see it for myself. 😂 At least that was the only hint I needed.
62:54 for me. What an amazing puzzle!! I'm absolutely delighted that I managed to solve this one on my own, that was one of the most enjoyable puzzles I've ever solved. Fantastic.
109:00 for me. A great puzzle, enjoyed every minute of it. My favorite part is noticing that the 3 cages at the bottom right corner (Simon colored them red, pink and grey) has a minimum of 5+27+34=66, but the maximum is also 24+42=66 (3 cells in the same box + 7 cells in the same box). This immediately resolved everything in those 3 cages. Kudos to Agent for creating such an amazing puzzle.
That was an amazing puzzle, utterly fascinating and very well set. And an enjoyable solve too! My only two disagreements with Simon are that gray was supposed to be the "not in a cage" color (and so the gray cage should have been some other color), and that this didn't really feel like 5 stars of difficulty to me -- although I admit that assessment was from following along rather than trying it myself, and Simon _is_ good at making hard things look easy. I do wish I hadn't been frightened off from trying it myself because of the video length, because it seemed like consistently "tricky but not absurdly tricky" logic that would have been achievable. And _that_ is something absolutely masterful, to pack this _much_ logic of that level of trickiness into a single puzzle.
Great puzzle with some smashing logic. The ending was monstrously difficult, and took me ages to spot (unlike Simon), but it was so clever I can't begrudge Agent for setting it!
Oh boy, what a beautiful sudoku to end the week! Looking forward to the next 2h! :D edit: And I'm also VERY glad how thoughtful and nice this community is ❤
Awesome puzzle awesome solve. Out of the three times I was yelling at my screen I was dead wrong the first time and the second and third your apologies made me laugh so cheers to that. I made several logical errors watching you solve it where I would have made invalid assumptions so I'm glad I didn't try it. That is a puzzle for the history books though.
Alternate logic for 1:17:58. If the red cage in box 9 had a 4,6 in it then 5,7 would have been the only options for all three squares in column 9 box 9
Yes, I was willing Simon to get that while he was going through more complicated logic trying to find a way forward - 4 was a given for r9c6 at that point. It was obviously a day for blind spots with 4s - the one in r2c7 eluded him too later on.
I had done that quite a bit earlier, before putting any digits in the box. It's available in the video @65:00. red + grey = at least 61. So the 3 grey in box 6 add to 22-24, the 3 non-red/grey in box 9 add to 6-8 and are only from 12345. r9c9 sees 1 & 3 in the row, 2 & 4 by the repeated cage sum rule, so it is a 5, that means the sum in box 9 is 8, which forces 12 into yellow (and forces yellow to take another cell), plus fixes the contents of red & grey.
At 1:16:30, another way to make progress would be to ask where 3 is in box 9. It must be in the 27-cage, which already contains an 8 and a 9, so it must be 3+7+8+9, therefore putting a 5 in the corner, a 6 on top of it, and a 4 on top. Which means gray is a 34-cage, with digits 4+6+7+8+9, where 789 are on box 6. I'm not sure how this connects to Simon's path (haven't watched the video further), but that's what I saw there.
This was an amazingly fun puzzle to solve. I struggled hard on the bottom row. Not realising i could increase to the max before hitting the 27 (i tried putting a cage between the 22 and the 27, but i just couldn't find one)
Can anyone explain why the 1 in r1c3 doesn’t count as a building for the 1 clue on top of the puzzle, but the 2 (r3c1) and the 4 (r3c2) count as buildings for the 4 clue? I noticed this at the end of the solve and can’t quite understand.
Because, in general, cells don't have to be in cages. The solver has to determine whether they are in cages or not. The 1 in c3 cannot be in a cage, otherwise the 1 clue is broken. So we determine that it is uncaged. (It just happens to be the only one). The 2 and the 4 count as buildings in r3 because we need them to, to satisfy the 4 clue in the row.
Just over 8.5 HOURS!!!! I felt so sure I was going to be able to do it, and in the end, the only reason I didn’t was not remembering the cage numbers not repeating in R9C9. I’m so disappointed I didn’t spot that as I managed all the rest.
Around 1:05 Simon deduced that the grey cage - it shouldn't be grey, because grey was uncaged in box 1 - in boxes 8 and 9 is either a 34 or a 35. So the sum of the red and grey cells in box 9 is at least 37 (27 + 4 + 6). The sum of the three purple and yellow cages in box 9 is eight at most. Since purple can only be 5 or 7 it must be 5, yellow is 1 and 2 and red is 3, 7, 8 and 9.
I think there were a few ways to see box 9. I found it easiest to first ask where 1 and 2 could go (yellow), then where 3 had to go (red), and finally what had to partner 3 in that cage (789).
Can someone explain to me how R1C3 isn’t considered a cage and therefore can’t be seen from a skyscraper perspective? But R9C9 is considered a cage and counts?
I contend this puzzle was designed specifically to prank Simon. It requires brilliant leaps of logic, inextricably intertwined with vanilla sudoku logic. Simon truly excels at the brilliant leaps of logic 😀
The corner-touching green cages in the top left have just triggered something I didn’t know I had, why do that then 2 minutes later make the bottom one blue for the reason ‘it’s far away’! Jokes aside I’m 28 minutes in and already love this, when I saw the 2 hour time stamp I licked my lips
Love the long videos! I think Simon could have used the 3x3 box sudoku logic to find more digits easier. I think it was the use of black pen tool to denote cages, rather than say green, which made the 3x3 boxes harder to pick up for the eye; even with Superman glasses
I think this was actually much more approachable than a lot of the brutal puzzles we see on here. The 45 cage is such a clear signal of where to start that it flows pretty smoothly, kind of like a Fog of War puzzle. You obviously start with the 45, work down the left side , briefly nip up to the top for the 26 cage, and then work down toward the southeast, eventually coming around to finish in the top right. I'm not entirely sure why it took Simon two hours, even after watching, as he was never really stuck and pretty much found everything he should have found other than some snags due to the usual Simon things like not pencil marking the last 2-3 cells in a box when all the others are filled or marked. (Particularly in the lower right where the placement of the 1-2-3 should have been much quicker. The actual hardest part is probably the end, when you get down to the last 4 cages, where it would be very easy to guess a couple times and figure out which things work and don't work but finding the logical path to work everything out without bifurcating is pretty tricky. I thought this was fantastic and skyscraper cages feels like such an obvious idea it's incredible if no one has thought of it before.
When Simon pauses and ponders deeply which color to use, as he did at 18:35, i can guess his choice correctly about 80% of the time. I think I may have watched too much CtC.
I've done this one twice now, and had to stop and let Simon show me the logic on the right side. I just can't keep all those variables straight to get there on my own, even though I can follow his logic.
@26:11 (Simon using his "Fluorescent green.") How come I can't find "florescent green?!" [All the "greens" are different -- but *no* florescent] Why?! Lol 🤔🤔😂👍
Can somebody please explain to me how the "1" clue above column 3 works? It sees the "1" in R1C3 and it sees the "45" building in R2C3. So how can the clue be "1" and not "2"?
I realise I'm a year late, but that's an empty cell, not in any cage, so the skyscraper clue doesn't care about it. :) It's a bit odd that there's only one in the entire grid!
1:48:10: Isn't it possible to make a purple T-pentomino of 19, than the orange 21 and than a non-caged 3/8 cell which doesn't count as a skyscraper? I'm sure that doesn't work somewhere else along the way, but didn't Simon make a logical error here?
You feel bad for your video taking two hours of my Sunday evening? What about the six hours of my Sunday afternoon it took to do the puzzle! I actually made "quick" steady progress on the first three columns and then broke it repeatedly on row nine. Great (time-consuming) puzzle!
I am basically a native speaker of English. Simon, however, has got me with a dictionary on standby, because of his incredibly rich vocabulary of niche words and expressions 😅
I saw the example of the skyscraper puzzle in the beginning, and I'm counting using that method the finished solution, and I don't see how some of them are correct. The 4 clue on line 3 for example, it sees 2 4 and 9 and that's it, where's the fourth digit? Been watching over a couple of days so I may have missed an explanation!
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
What an honour to see this one on the channel! Almost 2 hours long too, I really hope the amount of pain my puzzle brought wasn't nearly as much as the amount of entertainment :p
I think this is the type of puzzle that requires a lot of stamina to solve, especially when you need to explain your thoughts along the way. It doesn't really get easier at any point, and some of the most complex deductions occur towards the end of the solve. So, congrats on getting through it!
brilliant puzzle mate
Please pin this comment of the puzzle setter.
Just another absolute brilliant puzzle from you agent. Don't know how you come up with these.
Just amazing, it's so intricate. That was a hard battle for me. The ending took me a long time to figure out. I was worn out, but very pleased when I solved it. Well done.
i wish there’s a video with simon explaining how this puzzle is set - because that’s the REAL puzzle
Simon, please you never have to appologize for taking a long time, we love to watch you solve any puzzle, no matter how long it takes. In fact for me I really enjoy the long videos. They are far more interesting than almost any hollywood movie these days. Keep up the outstanding work you and Mark do. As my favorite youtuber likes to say: take a bow. We love you.
"More interesting than almost any hollywood movie these days" is a rather low bar ;-)
"We love you": a thousand voices shout "Yes we do!"
i love how he remembers the 25 cage after 20 minutes, uses it for one cage and ignores the other cage right away.
Yeah wouldn't the orange cage be a 3. since it can't be a 4, no two cages may be the same. (47:25) is where I am.
I am so glad Simon decided to try this puzzle. It was pretty fantastic for me as well. And I must say, it's the kind of puzzle where Simon's skills absolutely shine the brightest. He didn't miss a single nuance.
Monstrous. Simply monstrous. I hope you're happy, Agent. This has kept us "entertained" for over an hour already and we're not even halfway coloured with the cells. Brings a tear to my eye, and jolly well done! Edit: just over two hours. People did cry, so definitely a job well done, Agent!
I love Simon’s cute little contemplation of colour. the way he smirks when he says how important it is.
Sven adds 18 colors
Simon uses only fluorescent green
@@PotmosHetoimos he also used to call it “garish green” and refused to use it and now he loved it aha.
Color is important. It's the one thing I can always get right.
Rules: 05:34
Let's Get Cracking: 10:12
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Three In the Corner: 5x (53:14, 53:19, 53:21, 1:50:48, 1:52:09)
The Secret: 4x (10:22, 10:24, 10:29, 10:41)
Bobbins: 3x (1:39:29, 1:39:29, 1:39:29)
Phistomefel: 1x (04:28)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Ah: 24x (12:53, 16:19, 16:59, 31:19, 32:34, 35:50, 36:22, 44:00, 46:25, 48:53, 59:53, 1:01:13, 1:06:32, 1:13:34, 1:13:34, 1:22:12, 1:25:51, 1:30:21, 1:33:51, 1:35:06, 1:37:29, 1:38:49, 1:39:02, 1:39:40)
Hang On: 20x (13:01, 16:19, 17:44, 17:44, 22:17, 32:34, 44:26, 57:05, 57:22, 58:17, 59:46, 59:46, 1:01:09, 1:02:23, 1:17:29, 1:20:42, 1:33:51, 1:35:53, 1:42:49, 1:48:01)
Sorry: 15x (00:18, 02:32, 23:14, 36:06, 42:22, 42:23, 43:29, 47:30, 50:50, 1:09:28, 1:26:56, 1:35:00, 1:42:49, 1:48:19, 1:54:01)
By Sudoku: 12x (28:41, 44:24, 44:41, 44:59, 1:06:18, 1:06:27, 1:06:55, 1:18:42, 1:20:15, 1:24:47, 1:34:56, 1:37:04)
In Fact: 11x (03:47, 07:37, 25:20, 27:28, 36:13, 56:19, 56:56, 1:03:45, 1:15:57, 1:50:17, 1:51:42)
Clever: 10x (34:46, 34:49, 40:20, 48:44, 1:01:34, 1:48:10, 1:48:12, 1:49:43, 1:49:43, 1:52:57)
Naked Single: 7x (1:22:42, 1:22:52, 1:23:51, 1:38:01, 1:38:47, 1:39:36, 1:42:56)
Beautiful: 7x (19:32, 19:32, 40:27, 43:39, 1:04:03, 1:18:07, 1:36:58)
Goodness: 6x (42:36, 43:29, 57:44, 1:17:52, 1:48:19, 1:49:40)
Lovely: 6x (01:59, 53:01, 1:10:18, 1:40:20, 1:48:30, 1:53:23)
Wow: 6x (16:19, 18:27, 40:20, 1:08:13, 1:39:49, 1:49:16)
Hypothecate: 4x (19:09, 26:18, 46:18, 46:20)
Obviously: 4x (09:27, 33:25, 59:02, 1:10:07)
What Does This Mean?: 4x (23:41, 35:50, 1:08:20, 1:37:29)
Pencil Mark/mark: 4x (29:40, 39:58, 48:09, 1:41:39)
Stuck: 3x (39:29, 48:41, 48:41)
Brilliant: 3x (02:30, 1:46:08, 1:54:08)
Shouting: 3x (03:25, 04:33, 1:52:46)
Approachable: 3x (03:33, 03:37, 03:39)
Fascinating: 2x (10:03, 55:53)
Elegant: 2x (1:40:04, 1:45:25)
Gorgeous: 2x (44:00, 57:05)
Surely: 2x (33:14, 49:36)
I've Got It!: 2x (36:37, 1:06:08)
Cake!: 2x (03:12, 03:15)
Unique: 2x (1:53:05, 1:53:16)
Good Grief: 1x (1:52:17)
What on Earth: 1x (36:37)
Eyes are Drawn: 1x (10:16)
Naughty: 1x (02:42)
Break the Puzzle: 1x (1:22:24)
Come on Simon: 1x (1:21:44)
Whoopsie: 1x (46:20)
Next Trick: 1x (27:01)
Chuntering: 1x (57:54)
That's Huge: 1x (1:48:53)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Twenty Five (32 mentions)
Eight (107 mentions)
Green (54 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
Low (5) - High (2)
Even (4) - Odd (0)
Higher (9) - Lower (4)
Outside (4) - Inside (0)
Black (2) - White (1)
Column (39) - Row (30)
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!
Thank you so much for this!
I turned this video on at half past midnight, expected to turn it off within an hour or so because sometimes long videos can be too long, but this puzzle was so amazing I powered the whole way through until 2.27AM. Ridiculous. Great video, loved it
Love the long ones. No way I would ever be able to solve one of these so it's so satisfying to watch someone work through it.
Chain Bear and Cracking the Cryptic was the crossover I never expected and somehow made my day.
I am just now getting to comment on this puzzle after it took me two days to solve, but this puzzle has given me the most satisfaction I’ve ever gotten out of solving a puzzle all on my own. Thank you agent for setting such an excellent puzzle and thank you Simon for teaching us how to solve these wonderful puzzles
Just got through working on it myself, it took me just a little more than 7 hrs over the course of 3 days! My roommate thought I'd finally gone mad!
What an absolute brute of a puzzle. Major kudos to you Agent for coming up with this masterpiece. Thank you Simon for persevering thru this and featuring it on the channel.
Thank you so much, Simon! Love this community. ❤
This was really something else in terms of a puzzle! I found the ruleset very interesting, and Simon, you were the best person to take it on! Much beyond my ability, but very fun to watch. I was struck during this video about how much mental energy must be expended to keep at a complex puzzle for this long. You need never apologize, Simon, we will watch what we want to watch (and I watched this over the course of two days, myself). These longer, more complicated puzzles are well worth the effort for both solver and viewer (at least, I hope you agree)! Thanks, as always!
Let me just say that the 3 in row 9 was one of the most beautiful pieces of logic I've seen in all the years watching this channel. Just incredible.
A "favored manacle of fluorescent greenliness" (48:58) sounds like something I would have tortured my players with in my DM days.
I know not everyone shares my opinion, but I always love when we get a movie-length video because I can sit back and just watch a brilliant brain work. Thank you for the popcorn puzzle, Agent! It was brilliant to watch. The way the right side of the grid grows upward even feels a bit like skyscrapers being built. Maybe one day I'll be skilled enough to solve one like it on my own.
1:11:49 finish. One thing to think of with box 9, once you have the cages set, is to keep going with it. After asking where 1 and 2 go, then ask where 3 goes. It winds up solving almost the entire box in short order. Very fun puzzle, and quite colorful!
Certainly not Simple Simon! Great solve, as always, thank you for distracting me from my chest bug for 2 hours.
Very impressive puzzle - towers above all others! Clearly, you know 'The Secret' Agent!
Amazing solve as always. Simon’s ability to work out complicated logic is superb.
Often at the expense of simple logic. Like not noticing that box 9 needed a 1 and 2 which could only go in yellow for a solid 10 minutes. Then never asking where 3 could go except by backing into it through some much more complicated logic using maths. 😂
Wow, this was incredible... a sigh of relief that I finished it. Kept thinking: I hope I didn't make a mistake... Great fresh logic all around.
This was an amazing puzzle! I feel like it clearly has an opening, middle game, and endgame to it too, each of which is simply fantastic.
Amazing puzzle. Looking at the rules and the grid at the beginning, I share Simon's sentiment - it does seem incredible that a solution emerges. I wish I'd tried it now, but as my time on the trickier puzzles is often around 3 times the length of the video I thought I'd just sit back and enjoy watching this one. Thanks Simon and Agent!
1:16:00 I've been screaming "where is it 3 in box 9?" for at least 10 min... that's one of the things I love about this channel.
Hi Simon and co, just wanted to say a big thank you to you and your channel - as someone who deals with intense anxiety on a daily basis, your calming voice, brilliant logic and gentle humor are such a balm for me, and I'm sure many others, in a pretty crazy world. Your community is super wholesome, you guys should be very proud of what you've created here
Finished in 132:05. Great puzzle that never really felt out of reach. It seemed like every time I was making progress I ran into a skyscraper clue that seemingly was impossible, but upon further inspection, actually. In particular, the row 9 skyscraper logic threw me for a loop. And the epiphany about r9c9 elicited an audible gasp from me.
Now I get to watch Simon's solve and anticipate his reaction to some of these bits of brilliance. These are my favorite videos!
Looks like I need a second bowl of popcorn today 😊
Simon, stop apologizing for long videos. You should know by now we love them. ❤This one in particular was excellent.
Simon, you needn't apologize for "taking so much of our Sunday evening" (or any later date). No one is forcing us to watch (though, I can hardly imagine stopping midway through this, but that's on me as a viewer.)
Thank you, Agent, for an amazing puzzle.
Thank you, Simon, for a logical solve, which you explained on-the-fly.
Thank you, Cracking the Cryptic, for years of wonderful, mind-expanding entertainment.
I better be able to stop midway through. I've only just started watching, but I need to be at work in a hour and a half (and fit both travel and my morning ablutions in there as well).
What else is Sunday evening for? Pour a glass of wine, settle the grey cat in my lap, and purr right along with him.
I got so engrossed in the puzzle I forgot to get up and make popcorn. Guess I’ll have to watch again - there goes Sunday evening…. Wow what a great puzzle!
Make some popcorn for me. Hope u having a better day today with this monster of an absolute sublime puzzle from agent.
79:14 for me. What I love the most about this puzzle is that I always feel like I've broken the puzzle, but turns out there is always a beautiful logic path to prevent it. I just enjoy to discover all the logic path in it, and even till the end, the way to tackle the 25, 32, 21, 19 cages is just amazing! Love it!
Great puzzle and video. I am amazed that non-native English speakers can understand Simon at times when he gets excited and starts speaking faster and faster.
Oh my goodness, this was one of the hardest puzzles I've ever done. It took me 3.5 hours and a lot of head scratching. There were multiple times where I thought that I had broken it, but there was always just enough wiggle room to get out of trouble. Absolutely amazing. And a brilliant rule set.
The rule "no two cages can have the same sum" was actually helpful right from the start. I was able to use that rule immediately when thinking about which cells must not be included in any cage.
I am very very very proud to say that (after a miscalculation of 8+5=11......) I have managed to solve the puzzle in 2,5 hours! Cracking the puzzle was so much fun! Step by step new discoveries! I could stop! Very cool!!!!!! This rulesset is more fun than I gave it credit for in the past. Going to find another puzzle right now, haha:)
Quite an amazing puzzle! Took me around 2 hrs to solve, but it’s designed so elegantly that I never felt truly stuck. The only thing that slowed me down was doing all the math in my head and keeping track of the cage totals.
Simon is our brave leader doing sudoku even though he is sick. If he ever doesn't upload, I think I would go into a panic of worry about him.
There would have to be, at the least, a community post to reassure us that he's ok.
@@kathyjohnson2043 Yes, I hope Simon or Mark would do that! :)
For me, I had to open the puzzle in a 2nd window so that I could use it only to keep track of the # of the skycagers. It amazes me how Simon, and Mark too, are able to keep track of so much in their heads!
That was an absolutely delightful puzzle
Simon, I must say emphatically, any time you declare yourself to be "really, really stupid" after solving 80% of a puzzle that most of us wouldn't even know how to start, not a single person watching would agree with you! As to "wasting our time", this may have been a long video, but just as it flew by for you, it flies by for us as well!
I remember I did this puzzle on discord. Just a fantastic construction from Agent. I am glad you did this puzzle Simon.
1:28:43, Simon you can fill box 6 with 3 leftover numbers in row 4, (1 is a write in even). Then fill box 5's row 4 digits, and solve the 5,7 pair (there has been that 5 in box 5 for a while too).
Then your question on how to simply solve for all leftover numbers being in the 4 cages or not, should be answerable with simplicity, not even ease.
Loved the solve sofar btw, great job, you got immersed and it showed, made me happy to see you involved like that.
When Simon placed the first digit (1) I somehow expected a fog to reveal :)
I love how Simon is so assertive lately about how much it's not his fault that he keeps missing birthdays 🎂 it's happened several times recently
Another incredible puzzle featured on Cracking The Cryptic. We're truly spoiled by the high quality of puzzle after puzzle.
I was pleased to see Simon also thought the 2 clue in row 8 may have been broken, at around 58:15. But whereas it took Simon all of thirty seconds to see why it wasn't broken, after 15 minutes of staring and back tracking, my only recourse to see why it wasn't broken was to take a sneak peek at the latter stages of the video. Of course! r8c9 could hide the red and yellow cages! So obvious, yet I just couldn't see it for myself. 😂
At least that was the only hint I needed.
Me too ✋
You didn’t take MY Sunday evening, because I watched it all Sunday morning. The wonders of living on a spherical planet...
62:54 for me. What an amazing puzzle!! I'm absolutely delighted that I managed to solve this one on my own, that was one of the most enjoyable puzzles I've ever solved. Fantastic.
109:00 for me. A great puzzle, enjoyed every minute of it. My favorite part is noticing that the 3 cages at the bottom right corner (Simon colored them red, pink and grey) has a minimum of 5+27+34=66, but the maximum is also 24+42=66 (3 cells in the same box + 7 cells in the same box). This immediately resolved everything in those 3 cages. Kudos to Agent for creating such an amazing puzzle.
Box 9 is even easier if you ask where the low digits 123 can go.
1,2 in yellow; 3 in red (with 789)
That was an amazing puzzle, utterly fascinating and very well set. And an enjoyable solve too! My only two disagreements with Simon are that gray was supposed to be the "not in a cage" color (and so the gray cage should have been some other color), and that this didn't really feel like 5 stars of difficulty to me -- although I admit that assessment was from following along rather than trying it myself, and Simon _is_ good at making hard things look easy. I do wish I hadn't been frightened off from trying it myself because of the video length, because it seemed like consistently "tricky but not absurdly tricky" logic that would have been achievable. And _that_ is something absolutely masterful, to pack this _much_ logic of that level of trickiness into a single puzzle.
Oh man, that final border on the gray 1 in Row 1 at the end made me happier than it should have.
Well, I actually think the top border of the gray cell shouldn’t be there. After all, it is not a cage.
I find it amusing that there is exactly one cell in the entire grid that isn't caged.
Great puzzle with some smashing logic. The ending was monstrously difficult, and took me ages to spot (unlike Simon), but it was so clever I can't begrudge Agent for setting it!
Heaven forbid Simon actually do some sudoku! (Also, I love all of this community.)
Oh boy, what a beautiful sudoku to end the week! Looking forward to the next 2h! :D
edit: And I'm also VERY glad how thoughtful and nice this community is ❤
Awesome puzzle awesome solve. Out of the three times I was yelling at my screen I was dead wrong the first time and the second and third your apologies made me laugh so cheers to that. I made several logical errors watching you solve it where I would have made invalid assumptions so I'm glad I didn't try it. That is a puzzle for the history books though.
Alternate logic for 1:17:58. If the red cage in box 9 had a 4,6 in it then 5,7 would have been the only options for all three squares in column 9 box 9
Yes, I was willing Simon to get that while he was going through more complicated logic trying to find a way forward - 4 was a given for r9c6 at that point. It was obviously a day for blind spots with 4s - the one in r2c7 eluded him too later on.
I had done that quite a bit earlier, before putting any digits in the box. It's available in the video @65:00. red + grey = at least 61. So the 3 grey in box 6 add to 22-24, the 3 non-red/grey in box 9 add to 6-8 and are only from 12345. r9c9 sees 1 & 3 in the row, 2 & 4 by the repeated cage sum rule, so it is a 5, that means the sum in box 9 is 8, which forces 12 into yellow (and forces yellow to take another cell), plus fixes the contents of red & grey.
@@sanabas1 my time stamp was when the logic became irrelevant
@57:50, well, my only compliment is that I didn't feel like I spent an hour watching you solve this.
...
And there's another hour to go.
Thanks!
Thanks so much!!
Looking forward to Skycages Draped In Fog :D
At 1:16:30, another way to make progress would be to ask where 3 is in box 9. It must be in the 27-cage, which already contains an 8 and a 9, so it must be 3+7+8+9, therefore putting a 5 in the corner, a 6 on top of it, and a 4 on top. Which means gray is a 34-cage, with digits 4+6+7+8+9, where 789 are on box 6. I'm not sure how this connects to Simon's path (haven't watched the video further), but that's what I saw there.
I'm supposed to go to work at 5am CET, but bobbins, I have to watch this...
This was an amazingly fun puzzle to solve. I struggled hard on the bottom row. Not realising i could increase to the max before hitting the 27 (i tried putting a cage between the 22 and the 27, but i just couldn't find one)
Can anyone explain why the 1 in r1c3 doesn’t count as a building for the 1 clue on top of the puzzle, but the 2 (r3c1) and the 4 (r3c2) count as buildings for the 4 clue? I noticed this at the end of the solve and can’t quite understand.
Because, in general, cells don't have to be in cages. The solver has to determine whether they are in cages or not. The 1 in c3 cannot be in a cage, otherwise the 1 clue is broken. So we determine that it is uncaged. (It just happens to be the only one).
The 2 and the 4 count as buildings in r3 because we need them to, to satisfy the 4 clue in the row.
Just over 8.5 HOURS!!!! I felt so sure I was going to be able to do it, and in the end, the only reason I didn’t was not remembering the cage numbers not repeating in R9C9. I’m so disappointed I didn’t spot that as I managed all the rest.
awesome, i had tetris vibes in the middle, the finish was just so cute
I had to pause the video to watch Blackadder Samuel Johnson. Worth it.
Around 1:05 Simon deduced that the grey cage - it shouldn't be grey, because grey was uncaged in box 1 - in boxes 8 and 9 is either a 34 or a 35. So the sum of the red and grey cells in box 9 is at least 37 (27 + 4 + 6). The sum of the three purple and yellow cages in box 9 is eight at most. Since purple can only be 5 or 7 it must be 5, yellow is 1 and 2 and red is 3, 7, 8 and 9.
I think there were a few ways to see box 9. I found it easiest to first ask where 1 and 2 could go (yellow), then where 3 had to go (red), and finally what had to partner 3 in that cage (789).
Can someone explain to me how R1C3 isn’t considered a cage and therefore can’t be seen from a skyscraper perspective? But R9C9 is considered a cage and counts?
I contend this puzzle was designed specifically to prank Simon. It requires brilliant leaps of logic, inextricably intertwined with vanilla sudoku logic. Simon truly excels at the brilliant leaps of logic 😀
I love this puzzle, it reminds me of on of the POG puzzles from the anime Phi Brain where the used skyscrapers to build a single building.
The corner-touching green cages in the top left have just triggered something I didn’t know I had, why do that then 2 minutes later make the bottom one blue for the reason ‘it’s far away’! Jokes aside I’m 28 minutes in and already love this, when I saw the 2 hour time stamp I licked my lips
At 1:03:40 I screamed when Simon used gray (which was used previously for "cells outside cages") to start coloring a new cage 😱
Love the long videos! I think Simon could have used the 3x3 box sudoku logic to find more digits easier. I think it was the use of black pen tool to denote cages, rather than say green, which made the 3x3 boxes harder to pick up for the eye; even with Superman glasses
I think this was actually much more approachable than a lot of the brutal puzzles we see on here. The 45 cage is such a clear signal of where to start that it flows pretty smoothly, kind of like a Fog of War puzzle. You obviously start with the 45, work down the left side , briefly nip up to the top for the 26 cage, and then work down toward the southeast, eventually coming around to finish in the top right. I'm not entirely sure why it took Simon two hours, even after watching, as he was never really stuck and pretty much found everything he should have found other than some snags due to the usual Simon things like not pencil marking the last 2-3 cells in a box when all the others are filled or marked. (Particularly in the lower right where the placement of the 1-2-3 should have been much quicker.
The actual hardest part is probably the end, when you get down to the last 4 cages, where it would be very easy to guess a couple times and figure out which things work and don't work but finding the logical path to work everything out without bifurcating is pretty tricky.
I thought this was fantastic and skyscraper cages feels like such an obvious idea it's incredible if no one has thought of it before.
Would somebody create a 3d model of the solution please!
Very nice 2 hours to spend ❤️❤️
If "Bobbins" is ever deamed to be a curse word, Simon will instantly become the man with the most foul language in the world.
When Simon pauses and ponders deeply which color to use, as he did at 18:35, i can guess his choice correctly about 80% of the time. I think I may have watched too much CtC.
Uhh looks like this day is ending in a very fine way. Thanks for that 😊
Do you or Mark ever take a vacation? You should do a vacation-themed puzzle and then take a week off. 🏝
I know that Simon takes a laptop with him on vacation and records videos from his hotel room
They also took some time off a year or so ago, and on those days released videos that they had recorded in advance.
I've done this one twice now, and had to stop and let Simon show me the logic on the right side. I just can't keep all those variables straight to get there on my own, even though I can follow his logic.
So is that one uncaged cell just a joke?
Brilliant Simon
@26:11
(Simon using his "Fluorescent green.")
How come I can't find "florescent green?!"
[All the "greens" are different -- but *no* florescent]
Why?! Lol 🤔🤔😂👍
Simon: remembers a rule and then immediately forgets to use the rule
Can somebody please explain to me how the "1" clue above column 3 works? It sees the "1" in R1C3 and it sees the "45" building in R2C3. So how can the clue be "1" and not "2"?
I realise I'm a year late, but that's an empty cell, not in any cage, so the skyscraper clue doesn't care about it. :) It's a bit odd that there's only one in the entire grid!
I have beer and snacks, and I'm ready for movie night.
Extremely enjoyable puzzle.
1:48:10: Isn't it possible to make a purple T-pentomino of 19, than the orange 21 and than a non-caged 3/8 cell which doesn't count as a skyscraper?
I'm sure that doesn't work somewhere else along the way, but didn't Simon make a logical error here?
No. All the cells in the top right had to be in a cage (he did the math at about 1:30:20).
Simon showed earlier that all the cells in the top left area have to be caged, by maths.
You feel bad for your video taking two hours of my Sunday evening? What about the six hours of my Sunday afternoon it took to do the puzzle!
I actually made "quick" steady progress on the first three columns and then broke it repeatedly on row nine. Great (time-consuming) puzzle!
I am basically a native speaker of English. Simon, however, has got me with a dictionary on standby, because of his incredibly rich vocabulary of niche words and expressions 😅
As soon as I saw it was by Agent, I knew 2 things. One, it will be a cracker. Two, it’ll be a long video. 🙂
2 hours? Well, there goes my evening :-)
Fantastic solve. Way beyond my capabilities, but I would have clicked 'Check' - I missed the fist pump, Simon.
This puzzle is so interesting.
Oh, God! Two hours for Simon. Do I want to spend 8 hours of my life trying to do a puzzle that I'll very likely have to get help on?!
I saw the example of the skyscraper puzzle in the beginning, and I'm counting using that method the finished solution, and I don't see how some of them are correct. The 4 clue on line 3 for example, it sees 2 4 and 9 and that's it, where's the fourth digit? Been watching over a couple of days so I may have missed an explanation!
What an amazing puzzle. Is there time to get this one in the book? I vote yes
*"You should have a go too."*
Aw haw......
"Something that I hadn't thought about since early purple." 🤔
I am unreasonably bothered that grey was defined as "not a cage" and then it became a might large cage anyway