What a brilliant solve by a brilliant man. However... having said that... Simon is the only man I know that calculates how many cows there are in a field by counting all of their legs and dividing by four.
When Simon misses something that I happen to notice, I start trying to figure out what it is he is looking at, as I suspect it's a key to why he sees stuff that I don't. What I see might resolve a digit or two or a pencil mark or two, while what he sees moves the puzzle along in bigger strides.
Exactly, I try to do the same. The 9, 6, 7 in row eight (I think it was row 8) was apparent for a long long time before Simon noticed it, and the 9 by itself several minutes before that. But all of the other stuff he did in that span was mostly beyond me.
The key is that there are layers of information. Some more punctual, some looking at a bigger picture. When there are additional rules, these adds different ways of thinking. Due to experience, practice, and overall proficiency, SImon easily spots the layers and switches from bigger picture to details fairly faster. It's like in chess you could be calculating moves based on the bishop and rook, but miss a knight's move because it was on a 'different layer', a different pattern.
@@drainar right? i just scream nine in lower columns because sudoku rule and he just clear half of the puzzle number i don't even know... and now here i'm testing playing sudoku stuck at hard
I think it's courageous to do these live solves and have people comment about the inevitable little things you miss. I'm blown away as always by how quickly you get to the heart of the matter, and explain it too!
Thanks again Simon for another beautiful solve. Please don’t be so harsh on yourself, we hate to see you like that. You’re an absolute genius, and I would have never found that break-in given an entire day and a hint. Don’t listen to the mean people!
Seriously, that was both painful and hilarious to watch. He really has a unique talent of untangling insanely complicated problems and then failing to spot the bleeding obvious.
Yesterday I almost remarked that puzzles with Renban lines seem to come easily to me. I actually finished yesterday's puzzle about as fast as Simon did, and was quite pleased with myself. And then today's Renban puzzle comes along and I'm totally clueless as to how to even start solving it!
Wow, that was BRUTAL. I managed to solve it all by myself and now I'm going to watch Simon do it so I can see how many obvious and smart things I missed along the (excrutiatingly long) path I took. It's a brilliant puzzle, to be sure, but probably the hardest one I've ever solved without any hints or help.
Simon: I know you'll all have got very cross with me about that. No, it was very funny, and you made me chuckle a lot. These videos are very entertaining sometimes :-)
We get amused, and sometimes exasperated, but cross? I certainly don’t get cross with him for not spotting something, and I’ve not seen anyone else say they do.
It's like a weird kind of meta-sudoku, where you treat a 1-2-3-4 quadruple square as a "square" in suokdu, and can' have them appear more than once in a "row" or "column". Likewise for 6-7-8-9. Genius.
This has got to be one of my favorite sudokus ever featured on this channel. The cleverness is mind-blowing indeed. Also, keep these amazing renbans/nabners coming :)
The accidental absolute avoidance of resolving the 9 and then later the 6 in box 8's renban for twenty minutes is precisely why I keep coming back. As a viewer I get to notice these things easily while you spend 20 minutes resolving everything else despite those digits
That was such a crazy, awe-inspiring break-in. I paused the video to marvel at both the setting and the break-in. In my head, Simon was very cross with me* for not seeing it. So good. * not really, he's just too nice and would probably say "That was difficult."
I think the lattice and Box 5 was the key to the break-in of this puzzle. When you figured at least three of the RenBan lines had to have a 1 on it and three had to have at least a 9, Box 5 put a major restriction on how you could set that up. Excluding Box 5 from having a 1 or a 9 in the area where there was no lattice made it restrict the possibilities of how these 1's and 9's could be separated. Finding that break-in was probably one of the most difficultly eligant and unique I have seen on this channel. We have seen many different break-ins to puzzles over the years but for this one to take Simon 30 minutes just to figure out what was going on, is a testament on how difficult and unique this breaking was.
I would never in a million years have got to that point, but even so at 35:00 I just have to shout *WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!* when you try three times to put 4-5-6-7 into a box that already has a cell limited to 567 and no other place for a 3...
Happens a lot with me. If I'm doing a high level sudoku that requires some more advanced logic I'll miss the simple crap often enough. I have to remind myself to go back to actual sudoku sometimes.
35:49 What I love about this is that you are so beyond brilliant that while my simple mind spotted this in an instant, it's just too low and common for you whilst you search for higher, more difficult logic. It reminds me of a comment that I heard that common sense is 'common' and therefore not as widespread amongst the truly brilliant.
I haven't heard that said about common sense before but I love it. I think you've correctly pointed out what many people ignore when they complain about Simon missing simple stuff. He's not looking for simple stuff. He's mastered classic Sudoku. He's intensely focused on trying to figure out the logic that created this unusual puzzle by deconstruction. The easy solves are saved for later when he's lost sight of the bigger picture. I think you'll agree, that is what I love about listening to Simon think aloud. It's a privilege.
@@menglish83 It really is such a privilege. Not only that, but his absolute delight in just about any puzzle that's any good. (almost every puzzle on this channel). I want my attitude to be more like that in general.
This puzzle really struck me for some reason. There's something going on here that transcends almost every other puzzle we've seen. Take a look at the symmetry of the 4s. That pattern may simply be emergent, but there seems to be some kind of countable pattern for each number in the grid. As if you could mechanically find every instance of a particular digit just knowing the correct starting place and counting off a certain number of steps based on a certain repeating pattern applied to each step. Or I could just be completely crazy.
On of the things that Simon seems to have missed is that the break in shows that you must place at least 3 of every digit in to the white squares and after dealing with the 1s and 9s you have no 5s anywhere so the remaining 3 squares MUST contain 5s. The other thing that this does is that 1, 5 and 9 can never go into any of the intersection boxes however all 9 of the intersection boxes are the OTHER 9 digits that accompany the 5s since they all must appear more than 3 times.
I realized the 5's had to be in the other renbans (3 of them). And the other 6 5's couldn't go on intersections. 1's and 9's couldn't go on intersections. After that it was fuzzy to me but I never had to think about it. I realized if 1 appeared on a renban in a pair of rows it couldn't appear in another renban on the same 2 rows.
What a brilliant puzzle! I didn't get the break-in, but Simon's hint about the maximum number of 1s in those highlighted columns was the only clue needed. Such an elegant idea, and I love these puzzles where the idea is the hero - no need for ridiculously complex reasoning after that.
I started this late on Friday night, and thought it might end my solving streak. It did not. Finished in a time of 41:45. My method wasn't quite as elegant as Simon's, but I quickly saw how 1s and 9s were getting forced onto the Renban lines and was able to proceed from there. Incredible puzzle; one of my favorites of 2021!
Didn't appreciate the full subtlety of this puzzle until watching Simon's solve, but did at least start in the correct way with 1s, and while at one stage I felt his confidence was missplaced after I had placed one digit but hit a wall for a while, I did eventually solve this wonderful puzzle.
I do believe this Simon fellow should do some live solves at some point. All of us would sit silently for a half hour until he gets the break in and then we will have so much to say.
What an absolutely beautiful puzzle, adored the way everything fell out after the renbans revealed their secrets. Definitely a joy to watch you solve it, Simon!
Hi Simon, let me start of with saying I have the utmost respect for your ability to persevere in finding solutions to sudokus which are way too hard for me to solve. Having said that, I love watching you struggle and eventually find a solution. It’s just juicy entertainment for me. :) Now, and I don’t mean any disrespect whatsoever, I am only pointing this out to make you an even better/faster/whathaveyou sudoku solver and famous YT personality. ;p I have noticed the following before in other videos and I think this might help you out a bit: When finding a placable digit and figuring out it’s effect on the rest of the grid, you regularly do scan horizontally, but forget to scan vertically (and vice versa) and run of on some other sudokusolving tangent. Consider the following timestamps: 28:16 and 31:44 In both these instances of placing the 9s you would have been able to place the 9 on the renban in box 8, which might have helped placing other 9s. :)
When he apologized for not seeing the 3456, I was still crying for the poor forgotten 9 and its younger sibling, 6, in box 8. What a brilliant puzzle though, definitely fit for a brilliant solver like Simon.
35:48 We're all very disappointed too. Actually, you were looking for something more complicated, which is what you'd expect from this puzzle. Very tough break-in. Great solve!
Wow, this is definitely one of the hardest break ins I’ve seen. All I can say is brilliant solve. We had ups and downs, a little fun along the way, but we’ve arrived home :)
I watched for a box, containing a complete cage, and found box 9 with the 18-cage and figured out, that 5-6-7 would be a solution, leaving room for a 4 digit ranban-line, i.e. 1-2-3-4, and that dealing the 5-6-7 to a higher digit by buying a lower one, like 3-6-9 doesn't work. No other combination gives enough room for 4 consecutive digits. But then I got stuck and watch the master solution to the point, when he showed, that you can't put 2 equal quadrupels into a box row or box column and mentioned, that we have to place 3 high and 3 low quadrupels into the boxes. From there, it was only a matter of very few hours, to solve it.
I like how there are so many different ways of getting to the answer. You went with the 47 pair breaking the Renband at 31:45. I had paused the video a bit earlier to try and work my way ahead, and the logic I had use to place it was the "secret" you mentioned earlier, that the two cage digits in row 8 would sum to the digits in the gaps. There was an 8 in box 9, which was 1 more than the 7 which was the maximum in the 18-cage, so 9 in C1R9 would have forced at least 10 into C3R8. But, as always, I would have gotten precisely nowhere without the head start you gave at the beginning. I'm not yet at the stage where I can figure out how to get started on these puzzles on my own steam. Still - the fact I finished the rest after pausing around 27:00 I'm counting as massive progress
[spoiler ahead] a 3x3 Sudoku/latin square, place the 2 quadruplets once on each renban row, once on each renban column (no way to have 3 quadruplets placed once in each box at same relative positions with square shape though, as it would always break)[/spoiler] Very funny idea!! Oh and 34:30 Simon just cracked me up so much :P. "Is that really as simple as that" :). But brilliant solve overall as usual! :)
Great Sudoku, the 5 follows the same logic as the 1 and the 9. It can also be placed outside the renban squares (and the 18er killercage) only 6 times out of 9 times which are required. Therefore the 5, like the 1 and 9 must be placed in the remaining 2 renban squares and the 18er killercage.
Awesome puzzle! What a great idea!! I had to stare at the grid for 15 minutes with no clue at all on what to do before realizing how to get started. I found it pretty easy to keep going from there, but just the idea for the break-in is enough to say this is absolutely incredible. Final time of 34:01 for me.
When he said "Is it really as simple as that?" I thought to myself . o O (No, it's simpler. The 34 in box 8 forces 3 onto the Renban line in box 7 therefore it is 3456) He could have deduced that at 33:09.
38:08 finish. Once I broke in with the 1 and 9 renbans, I realized that due to the placement of 1s and 9s, the renbans in boxes 3 and 7 had to include 4 and 6 (and therefore 5), because using either 2-4 or 6-8 would force three digits into a space that only could accept two of them. Very tricky!
I loved this, not sure why I related to it but I managed to find a logical path through it relatively quickly. When I use the word 'quickly', that is by my standard not a Simon/Mark standard.
28:15 the 9 is placed in box 9, which fixes the 9 on the renban line in box 8, but it took until 43:21 to be spotted. That must be some sort of breath holding record. Brilliant solve though Simon, I would not have been able to start this, so hats off :)
I probably never would have been able to even see the logic that simon used to get those digits in, but that 9 at 28:33 could have been removed earlier by the fact that it's on a crossing of the "purple" area
Thinking about the properties of a 2x2 line It either has a 4 or an 8, never both. I'll just call it a 4 line and 8 line If an 8 line is in a box, 4 of the 5 missing digits are 1,2,3,4. Then either 5 or 9 are needed to complete For the 4 line you only get 8 and 9 out You can never have 3 of the same type parallel to each other (and they must have at least one different digit) We'll probably see more of this, won't we?
I was indeed very cross with Simon about 36:20. When he put the 3 and 4 in the 7-cage (33:11), that forced the Renban line in box 7 to be 3456: where else could the 3 and the 4 go?
I solved this without using "the lattice" or realizing that there are exactly three 1s and three 9s, but it took me well over an hour. I only used the fact that there can be no two 1234 rensquares in one line; first to exclude 1+6 option for 7-cage in box 6, then to exclude 1+6 option for 7-cage in box 8. Then a couple of times more with 1234 and with 9876 to place remaining 1s and 9s.
Brilliant puzzle How Simon got the break in was incredible Cleaning up after the break in was typical Simon, do all the difficult stuff but struggling to spot the obvious
Read the description and had to give it a try. Assumed I'd fail, but a full day later, I've managed to do it. Now to watch the video and see how to do it right....
My break in was similar. Used set to remove rows 3,6,9 from cols 1,2,4,5,7,8. This left me with the 8 renban lines + the 18 cage equaling 3 full sets of 1-9 + the bottom right cell in each box. The got me to 3 renban lines being 1-4, 3 being 6-9, and the other two needing a 5. This also left me a 5 for the 18 box, and told me that the bottom right cells could not be 1,5,9.
it will never stop to amaze me how simon misses obvious digits (like the 9 in column 4 row 8 that was the only option for 9 since 28:12 and sits thege for 15 minutes) without it affecting his solve at all. he only seems to miss those that don't do anything
Marvelous puzzle. I also had basically nothing until I finally figured out the right way to approach the break-in. Unfortunately, I fouled it up somewhere near the hour mark (I kept mentally slipping up and trying to put consecutive digits in the cage in box 5) and had to restart. Fortunately, restarting is actually quite fast once you've figured out the break-in! I knocked out the puzzle on the second attempt in 19:20, for about 82 minutes total.
35:00 - What's wrong with 4567 on the renban? Where does 3 go in the box? Also, both options for the renban include 5 and 6, so R9C1 must be 7. I suspect the effort of the break in has blown a fuse.
So I left this puzzle sit on my second monitor for a while, made dinner, and was in and out and at some point I looked at it and just got the break in. Still took me a while and some stupid mistakes to get it finished but it was a pretty cool puzzle.
Placing one digit was simple for me, the rest took a bit of grinding to get done since my brain isn't smart enough to spot the logic with 1s and 9s on the lines. In box 8, if the line contained a 4 or less then the 7 cage would break, so the line is either 5678 or 6789, both contain a 6, which means that the 7 cage isn't 1+6 so the 1 is placed.
The reasoning that led to concluding you had to put three ones and three nines on the redban squares, also applies to every other digit. So there has to be a minimum of three fives on the redban squares, as well. Once the ones and nines were placed, there were only three remaining redbans on which to place the fives. On the squares at the intersections of rows 3, 6, and 9 with columns 3, 6, and 9, you cannot have a 1, 5, or 9 or you would have to place them on a fourth redban square, which is not possible. These two principles would have faciltated the solve immensely.
ermahgerd Im in a CTC video! (My SudokuPad review! XD) I did have trouble finding it, btw, since "sudoku pad" didn't bring it up (at least not anywhere near the top), something to fix if possible so no one misses it? :) Happy to support all of your work, I just love every video, I watch them when I can pay attention and I also play them when I need help falling asleep (with volume just low enough that I can't hear to follow along in my head LOL). You've mentioned others saying it has helped with their anxiety, and you can count me among those folks too. Thank you!! :)
Typical Simon is finding the most elaborate way to populate the grid seemingly from nowhere but not noticing that a 3/4 pair in row 9 forces a 3 onto the renban in box 7. And then crafting the most elaborate way to prove it anyway.
At minute 27 or so, it might be worth keeping the highlighting a bit more to consider 5s. The same argument as with 1s and 9s places 5s in the renbans in boxes 3 and 7 and the 18 cage in box 5, since there are no 5s in the other renbans, as well as keeping 5 from the intersection points of the purple lattice (as with the 1s and 9s). But this is just a minor help. Nice solve and kudos to udukos!
Surprised Simon didn't use the centre square more. The 9 forced the 1234 and 5678 into boxes 2 and 8 resolved by the 7-cage in box 8 give 1234 in box 2. Similarly the 1 combined with the 7 cage in box 6 forces 1234 into box 4 and 6789 into box 6. This then forces position of remaining 1234 and 6789 squares. Also the 18-cage along with the given 1,9 meant that the other 3 cells must add to 17 and must be either 467 or 458. Since Box 6 and 9 both contain 6789 squares and 7-cages (and once the 25 pairs eliminated) the 4 is forced into R6C6 and the 34 7-cages in boxes 6 and 8 are resolved.
Once I wrote out the possible combinations of three series 2x2 renbans, and noticed that 1,2,8,9 can't ever appear twice in each series, that gave me the giant x wings on 1 and 9 thanks to the starting digits. Which got me that initial 1 Took me nearly an hour to do that though, I spent way too long trying to start with the cages
Does anyone else only watch Simon and not Mark? For absolutely no reason other than the first puzzle I watched was from Simon and I fell in love with his love for the solve and that's it. Won't even TRY Mark. Am I an idiot?
Love watching both, Simon for his creative and zen-like approach with an almost artistic appreciation, and Mark for his methodical and intricate insights and things like spotting naked singles practically instantly.
Yes! They have very different approaches but each is equally valid and equally exciting, It’s amazing to watch Mark scan a grid and immediately see what numbers are missing as he says them backwards and enters them in the correct order as annotations! And his ability to spot naked singles is beyond astonishing! Do give Mark’s vids a go again - with a very open mind, please!
16:00. There has to be three renban lines with one and three with 9. Because in the 3 rows and 3 columns that are not on renban lines, there can only be 6 of each. Very easy to understand. I knew 1 and 9's were important. I'd figured that you couldn't have two renban lines with 1 that saw each other, because the other block in the row or column would need 1234 all on it's edge that didn't see the renbans. But I never would've figured there had to be three. Then where they are is obvious, after you've worked out they can't be in the boxes with 2 digit 7's.
I think a piece of Simon's sudoku soul broke when he found he got tripped up on the 3 needing to be on the renban line in box 7. Great solve, and kudos on the break in!
Polarity was a good approach at the start. You could have gotten the fact that you need exactly 2 odd and 2 even digits in the 18-cage inside the center box.
Nobody's getting cross with you Simon for missing something simple in a puzzle most people can't place a digit in. Probably a few people laughing though when you couldn't figure out why the box 7 Renban had to have 3456 in it, especially when you had just said this 34 pair in box 8 pushes 34 into that square.
What a brilliant solve by a brilliant man. However... having said that... Simon is the only man I know that calculates how many cows there are in a field by counting all of their legs and dividing by four.
After first checking that they all have four legs each, naturally. And to be sure, he counts the ears and divides by two as well.
No each ear and leg ÷ 3 then ÷2
But first he will check the shape of the field and if the maybe-cows align with the fences
Why would you be given that cows have four legs each if you weren't meant to use it?
but just the purple and green cows
When Simon misses something that I happen to notice, I start trying to figure out what it is he is looking at, as I suspect it's a key to why he sees stuff that I don't. What I see might resolve a digit or two or a pencil mark or two, while what he sees moves the puzzle along in bigger strides.
Exactly, I try to do the same. The 9, 6, 7 in row eight (I think it was row 8) was apparent for a long long time before Simon noticed it, and the 9 by itself several minutes before that. But all of the other stuff he did in that span was mostly beyond me.
The key is that there are layers of information. Some more punctual, some looking at a bigger picture. When there are additional rules, these adds different ways of thinking. Due to experience, practice, and overall proficiency, SImon easily spots the layers and switches from bigger picture to details fairly faster.
It's like in chess you could be calculating moves based on the bishop and rook, but miss a knight's move because it was on a 'different layer', a different pattern.
I just spend 10 minutes irritated ans screaming at my screen for 1 digit i found, while he fixes half of the puzzle
@@drainar right? i just scream nine in lower columns because sudoku rule and he just clear half of the puzzle number i don't even know... and now here i'm testing playing sudoku stuck at hard
"This was a complete red herring." Simon, please, it was clearly a purple and green herring.
My exact thoughts
Rainbow trout.
@@andrewgrant6516 As someone who reads Advice and Trust, the phrase is a delight to see, even in a different context :)
I think it's courageous to do these live solves and have people comment about the inevitable little things you miss. I'm blown away as always by how quickly you get to the heart of the matter, and explain it too!
Amen!
Thanks again Simon for another beautiful solve. Please don’t be so harsh on yourself, we hate to see you like that. You’re an absolute genius, and I would have never found that break-in given an entire day and a hint. Don’t listen to the mean people!
After 7 minutes I discovered that I have a 50% chance of placing digit 1 correctly in box 8.
The placement of the 1s and 9s on the renban are like a 3x3 sudoku within the larger sudoku! My mind is blown!
Me at the beginning: *has no clue how to start the puzzle*
Me at 35:35 : IT'S OBVIOUSLY 3456, HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE IT????
😂😂
Seriously, that was both painful and hilarious to watch. He really has a unique talent of untangling insanely complicated problems and then failing to spot the bleeding obvious.
@@siorac1147 Right!! I love him and his videos 😂 Never in a million year I thought I'll be watching sudoku videos on yt in my free time
Mine was the 7 cage in box 6... That was solved back around 20 minute mark. He just didn't put any time into the logic behind it.
I am yelling the SAME thing at the screen!!!
Meanwhile I've been yelling for 5 minutes about box 8 and that he placed a 9 5 minutes prior!
Yesterday I almost remarked that puzzles with Renban lines seem to come easily to me. I actually finished yesterday's puzzle about as fast as Simon did, and was quite pleased with myself. And then today's Renban puzzle comes along and I'm totally clueless as to how to even start solving it!
Take a bow udukos. What a beautiful puzzle.
"Can you place one correct digit?" - Sure, I will just put 1 in every square.
Nine correct digits!
@@Coyotek4 Eight* because one of the 1s is given!
@@kyawlinthan1415 Place 2 in every square, then you got 9 correct ;)
I made a cat, did I win?
A broken clock is right twice a day, and a sudoku with the same number in every cell has 9 correct digits
Wow, that was BRUTAL. I managed to solve it all by myself and now I'm going to watch Simon do it so I can see how many obvious and smart things I missed along the (excrutiatingly long) path I took.
It's a brilliant puzzle, to be sure, but probably the hardest one I've ever solved without any hints or help.
I find it amazing that I can so easily pass 3 hours of my day watching Simon solve these puzzles. So chilled and thoroughly entertaining!
Simon: I know you'll all have got very cross with me about that.
No, it was very funny, and you made me chuckle a lot.
These videos are very entertaining sometimes :-)
Always very entertaining!
We get amused, and sometimes exasperated, but cross? I certainly don’t get cross with him for not spotting something, and I’ve not seen anyone else say they do.
Not gonna lie I got cross but then he was embarrassed and I felt really bad
It's like a weird kind of meta-sudoku, where you treat a 1-2-3-4 quadruple square as a "square" in suokdu, and can' have them appear more than once in a "row" or "column". Likewise for 6-7-8-9. Genius.
This has got to be one of my favorite sudokus ever featured on this channel. The cleverness is mind-blowing indeed. Also, keep these amazing renbans/nabners coming :)
Instantly seeing the 456 triple in the box 7 renban at around 36:00 makes me want to scoop Simon up in a socially distanced consolation hug.
The accidental absolute avoidance of resolving the 9 and then later the 6 in box 8's renban for twenty minutes is precisely why I keep coming back. As a viewer I get to notice these things easily while you spend 20 minutes resolving everything else despite those digits
That was such a crazy, awe-inspiring break-in. I paused the video to marvel at both the setting and the break-in. In my head, Simon was very cross with me* for not seeing it. So good.
* not really, he's just too nice and would probably say "That was difficult."
So it's basically a renban swordfish.
I thought the same thing
I think the lattice and Box 5 was the key to the break-in of this puzzle. When you figured at least three of the RenBan lines had to have a 1 on it and three had to have at least a 9, Box 5 put a major restriction on how you could set that up. Excluding Box 5 from having a 1 or a 9 in the area where there was no lattice made it restrict the possibilities of how these 1's and 9's could be separated. Finding that break-in was probably one of the most difficultly eligant and unique I have seen on this channel. We have seen many different break-ins to puzzles over the years but for this one to take Simon 30 minutes just to figure out what was going on, is a testament on how difficult and unique this breaking was.
I would never in a million years have got to that point, but even so at 35:00 I just have to shout *WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!* when you try three times to put 4-5-6-7 into a box that already has a cell limited to 567 and no other place for a 3...
Happens a lot with me. If I'm doing a high level sudoku that requires some more advanced logic I'll miss the simple crap often enough. I have to remind myself to go back to actual sudoku sometimes.
Same with the 9 in box 8, this was there for ages....
Us: Look at the lovely forest.
Simon: I can't see it. All those trees are in the way.
the one thing I could guarantee was that this comment would be here and I could just reply instead of typing it all out.
57:30
Incredible elegant simplicity in the layout concealing some wonderful logic.
"but even blind squirrels find acorns". lol. I can't even find my light switch in the dark
LOL!
It's definitely a quote I'll be using at some point lol
35:49 What I love about this is that you are so beyond brilliant that while my simple mind spotted this in an instant, it's just too low and common for you whilst you search for higher, more difficult logic. It reminds me of a comment that I heard that common sense is 'common' and therefore not as widespread amongst the truly brilliant.
I haven't heard that said about common sense before but I love it. I think you've correctly pointed out what many people ignore when they complain about Simon missing simple stuff. He's not looking for simple stuff. He's mastered classic Sudoku. He's intensely focused on trying to figure out the logic that created this unusual puzzle by deconstruction. The easy solves are saved for later when he's lost sight of the bigger picture. I think you'll agree, that is what I love about listening to Simon think aloud. It's a privilege.
@@menglish83 It really is such a privilege. Not only that, but his absolute delight in just about any puzzle that's any good. (almost every puzzle on this channel). I want my attitude to be more like that in general.
38:56 sums up so much of my solving process. "I can't remember why...just trust my pencil marks"
We do love seeing Simon ending up with a completely goodliffed grid.
this is definitely the smartest break-in i've ever seen in a puzzle, wow!
This puzzle really struck me for some reason. There's something going on here that transcends almost every other puzzle we've seen.
Take a look at the symmetry of the 4s. That pattern may simply be emergent, but there seems to be some kind of countable pattern for each number in the grid. As if you could mechanically find every instance of a particular digit just knowing the correct starting place and counting off a certain number of steps based on a certain repeating pattern applied to each step.
Or I could just be completely crazy.
On of the things that Simon seems to have missed is that the break in shows that you must place at least 3 of every digit in to the white squares and after dealing with the 1s and 9s you have no 5s anywhere so the remaining 3 squares MUST contain 5s.
The other thing that this does is that 1, 5 and 9 can never go into any of the intersection boxes however all 9 of the intersection boxes are the OTHER 9 digits that accompany the 5s since they all must appear more than 3 times.
I realized the 5's had to be in the other renbans (3 of them). And the other 6 5's couldn't go on intersections. 1's and 9's couldn't go on intersections. After that it was fuzzy to me but I never had to think about it. I realized if 1 appeared on a renban in a pair of rows it couldn't appear in another renban on the same 2 rows.
What a brilliant puzzle! I didn't get the break-in, but Simon's hint about the maximum number of 1s in those highlighted columns was the only clue needed. Such an elegant idea, and I love these puzzles where the idea is the hero - no need for ridiculously complex reasoning after that.
I started this late on Friday night, and thought it might end my solving streak. It did not.
Finished in a time of 41:45. My method wasn't quite as elegant as Simon's, but I quickly saw how 1s and 9s were getting forced onto the Renban lines and was able to proceed from there.
Incredible puzzle; one of my favorites of 2021!
Didn't appreciate the full subtlety of this puzzle until watching Simon's solve, but did at least start in the correct way with 1s, and while at one stage I felt his confidence was missplaced after I had placed one digit but hit a wall for a while, I did eventually solve this wonderful puzzle.
I do believe this Simon fellow should do some live solves at some point. All of us would sit silently for a half hour until he gets the break in and then we will have so much to say.
What an absolutely beautiful puzzle, adored the way everything fell out after the renbans revealed their secrets. Definitely a joy to watch you solve it, Simon!
Hi Simon, let me start of with saying I have the utmost respect for your ability to persevere in finding solutions to sudokus which are way too hard for me to solve.
Having said that, I love watching you struggle and eventually find a solution. It’s just juicy entertainment for me. :)
Now, and I don’t mean any disrespect whatsoever, I am only pointing this out to make you an even better/faster/whathaveyou sudoku solver and famous YT personality. ;p
I have noticed the following before in other videos and I think this might help you out a bit:
When finding a placable digit and figuring out it’s effect on the rest of the grid, you regularly do scan horizontally, but forget to scan vertically (and vice versa) and run of on some other sudokusolving tangent.
Consider the following timestamps:
28:16 and 31:44
In both these instances of placing the 9s you would have been able to place the 9 on the renban in box 8, which might have helped placing other 9s. :)
One of a few sudokus that go on the "Watch again" list.
When he apologized for not seeing the 3456, I was still crying for the poor forgotten 9 and its younger sibling, 6, in box 8. What a brilliant puzzle though, definitely fit for a brilliant solver like Simon.
35:48 We're all very disappointed too. Actually, you were looking for something more complicated, which is what you'd expect from this puzzle. Very tough break-in. Great solve!
Wow, this is definitely one of the hardest break ins I’ve seen. All I can say is brilliant solve. We had ups and downs, a little fun along the way, but we’ve arrived home :)
Thanks again for a wonderful solve Simon. Another amazing puzzle which baffled me with its symmetry and logic.
I'm always disappointed in myself for not being at least 1% as clever as Simon
I watched for a box, containing a complete cage, and found box 9 with the 18-cage and figured out, that 5-6-7 would be a solution, leaving room for a 4 digit ranban-line, i.e. 1-2-3-4, and that dealing the 5-6-7 to a higher digit by buying a lower one, like 3-6-9 doesn't work. No other combination gives enough room for 4 consecutive digits. But then I got stuck and watch the master solution to the point, when he showed, that you can't put 2 equal quadrupels into a box row or box column and mentioned, that we have to place 3 high and 3 low quadrupels into the boxes. From there, it was only a matter of very few hours, to solve it.
35:33 figuring out the renban in box 7. Unable to see that 4567 would mean box 7 has nowhere for the 3!
I had to pause the video here to see whether someone already commented this.
Yes, we're not cross with you...just chuckling at you..
@@PauxloE I did exactly the same LOL
I like how there are so many different ways of getting to the answer. You went with the 47 pair breaking the Renband at 31:45. I had paused the video a bit earlier to try and work my way ahead, and the logic I had use to place it was the "secret" you mentioned earlier, that the two cage digits in row 8 would sum to the digits in the gaps. There was an 8 in box 9, which was 1 more than the 7 which was the maximum in the 18-cage, so 9 in C1R9 would have forced at least 10 into C3R8. But, as always, I would have gotten precisely nowhere without the head start you gave at the beginning. I'm not yet at the stage where I can figure out how to get started on these puzzles on my own steam. Still - the fact I finished the rest after pausing around 27:00 I'm counting as massive progress
[spoiler ahead]
a 3x3 Sudoku/latin square, place the 2 quadruplets once on each renban row, once on each renban column (no way to have 3 quadruplets placed once in each box at same relative positions with square shape though, as it would always break)[/spoiler]
Very funny idea!!
Oh and 34:30 Simon just cracked me up so much :P. "Is that really as simple as that" :). But brilliant solve overall as usual! :)
34:20 This part must have caused the largest amount of screaming at Simon in the history of CtC.
Great Sudoku,
the 5 follows the same logic as the 1 and the 9.
It can also be placed outside the renban squares (and the 18er killercage) only 6 times out of 9 times which are required.
Therefore the 5, like the 1 and 9 must be placed in the remaining 2 renban squares and the 18er killercage.
That makes perfect sense now you say it. It never occurred to me while solving though.
Awesome puzzle! What a great idea!! I had to stare at the grid for 15 minutes with no clue at all on what to do before realizing how to get started. I found it pretty easy to keep going from there, but just the idea for the break-in is enough to say this is absolutely incredible. Final time of 34:01 for me.
Wow!
Well done!
@ 34:15 Doesn't the 34 pair in box 8 rule out a 3 in box 7, c1? Forcing it in the renban?
Edit: He got it! He just used Simon Logic to get there :D
It is always a bit painful to watch someone who is surely smart enough being on the wrong train of thought. But it does happen to the best of us.
In fairness he put 4567 in and didnt observe there just wouldnt be a 3 in the box anymore either
When he said "Is it really as simple as that?" I thought to myself . o O (No, it's simpler. The 34 in box 8 forces 3 onto the Renban line in box 7 therefore it is 3456) He could have deduced that at 33:09.
38:08 finish. Once I broke in with the 1 and 9 renbans, I realized that due to the placement of 1s and 9s, the renbans in boxes 3 and 7 had to include 4 and 6 (and therefore 5), because using either 2-4 or 6-8 would force three digits into a space that only could accept two of them. Very tricky!
Simon - you are a STONE COLD CLASSIC!!! What a wonderful break in and solve!
I can, if I fill the whole grid with ones 🤣
My man, I'd say you'd do a lot better than 1 correct digit. You'd get 9 correct ones ;)
@@elmerdeleeuw1569 though it would be only 8 correctly “placed” digits, since one 1 is given…
@@lutzdoon100 Fair enough. Still 800% better than 1 correct one placed ;)
You could fill box 5 with 8's as there is a 1 already given in this box.
@@elmerdeleeuw1569 700% better. :)
I loved this, not sure why I related to it but I managed to find a logical path through it relatively quickly. When I use the word 'quickly', that is by my standard not a Simon/Mark standard.
28:15 the 9 is placed in box 9, which fixes the 9 on the renban line in box 8, but it took until 43:21 to be spotted. That must be some sort of breath holding record.
Brilliant solve though Simon, I would not have been able to start this, so hats off :)
I probably never would have been able to even see the logic that simon used to get those digits in, but that 9 at 28:33 could have been removed earlier by the fact that it's on a crossing of the "purple" area
Love how he looks everywhere except the 4567 pentomino when trying to disprove the 4567
Thinking about the properties of a 2x2 line
It either has a 4 or an 8, never both. I'll just call it a 4 line and 8 line
If an 8 line is in a box, 4 of the 5 missing digits are 1,2,3,4. Then either 5 or 9 are needed to complete
For the 4 line you only get 8 and 9 out
You can never have 3 of the same type parallel to each other (and they must have at least one different digit)
We'll probably see more of this, won't we?
I was indeed very cross with Simon about 36:20. When he put the 3 and 4 in the 7-cage (33:11), that forced the Renban line in box 7 to be 3456: where else could the 3 and the 4 go?
I solved this without using "the lattice" or realizing that there are exactly three 1s and three 9s, but it took me well over an hour. I only used the fact that there can be no two 1234 rensquares in one line; first to exclude 1+6 option for 7-cage in box 6, then to exclude 1+6 option for 7-cage in box 8. Then a couple of times more with 1234 and with 9876 to place remaining 1s and 9s.
Brilliant puzzle
How Simon got the break in was incredible
Cleaning up after the break in was typical Simon, do all the difficult stuff but struggling to spot the obvious
Read the description and had to give it a try. Assumed I'd fail, but a full day later, I've managed to do it. Now to watch the video and see how to do it right....
My break in was similar. Used set to remove rows 3,6,9 from cols 1,2,4,5,7,8. This left me with the 8 renban lines + the 18 cage equaling 3 full sets of 1-9 + the bottom right cell in each box. The got me to 3 renban lines being 1-4, 3 being 6-9, and the other two needing a 5. This also left me a 5 for the 18 box, and told me that the bottom right cells could not be 1,5,9.
it will never stop to amaze me how simon misses obvious digits (like the 9 in column 4 row 8 that was the only option for 9 since 28:12 and sits thege for 15 minutes) without it affecting his solve at all.
he only seems to miss those that don't do anything
Marvelous puzzle. I also had basically nothing until I finally figured out the right way to approach the break-in. Unfortunately, I fouled it up somewhere near the hour mark (I kept mentally slipping up and trying to put consecutive digits in the cage in box 5) and had to restart. Fortunately, restarting is actually quite fast once you've figured out the break-in! I knocked out the puzzle on the second attempt in 19:20, for about 82 minutes total.
What a beautiful break-in
35:00 - What's wrong with 4567 on the renban? Where does 3 go in the box? Also, both options for the renban include 5 and 6, so R9C1 must be 7. I suspect the effort of the break in has blown a fuse.
Thanks for persevering through the beginning so we could see this great puzzle!
So I left this puzzle sit on my second monitor for a while, made dinner, and was in and out and at some point I looked at it and just got the break in. Still took me a while and some stupid mistakes to get it finished but it was a pretty cool puzzle.
These puzzles are so absurd... can't imagine ever solving that on my own given a full day.
That was fantastic. The amazing symmetry makes it a proper classic I think. Simon was suitably dopey a few times, and all the better for it!
Placing one digit was simple for me, the rest took a bit of grinding to get done since my brain isn't smart enough to spot the logic with 1s and 9s on the lines. In box 8, if the line contained a 4 or less then the 7 cage would break, so the line is either 5678 or 6789, both contain a 6, which means that the 7 cage isn't 1+6 so the 1 is placed.
but the line could be 2345 and the 7-cage could be 1+6 so the 1 isn't placed after all :(
😱 that was absolutely amazing I loved every second of it.
Solves the most incredible break in. Box 8 “what am I, chopped liver?”
this one was yet another time I'm glad i didn't bother attempting it. just unbelievable setting and solving
the 9 at 28:17 resolves the position of the renban 9 in the 8 square as a hidden single
“Even blind squirrels can find acorns”😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Highly impressed the way you solve the puzzles.
How clever setting this is!!!!!
The reasoning that led to concluding you had to put three ones and three nines on the redban squares, also applies to every other digit. So there has to be a minimum of three fives on the redban squares, as well. Once the ones and nines were placed, there were only three remaining redbans on which to place the fives.
On the squares at the intersections of rows 3, 6, and 9 with columns 3, 6, and 9, you cannot have a 1, 5, or 9 or you would have to place them on a fourth redban square, which is not possible.
These two principles would have faciltated the solve immensely.
Indeed, impressive. :-)
Very nice and fun.. brilliant setting!
ermahgerd Im in a CTC video! (My SudokuPad review! XD) I did have trouble finding it, btw, since "sudoku pad" didn't bring it up (at least not anywhere near the top), something to fix if possible so no one misses it? :) Happy to support all of your work, I just love every video, I watch them when I can pay attention and I also play them when I need help falling asleep (with volume just low enough that I can't hear to follow along in my head LOL). You've mentioned others saying it has helped with their anxiety, and you can count me among those folks too. Thank you!! :)
Box 9 has 7 &9 which sorts box 7 & 8 for starters. Simon seems to forget the game is called SUdoku, but seems reluctant to follow through on things.
I would love to see you play the game "Understand", it's quite the unique puzzle game. I really enjoy it
Typical Simon is finding the most elaborate way to populate the grid seemingly from nowhere but not noticing that a 3/4 pair in row 9 forces a 3 onto the renban in box 7. And then crafting the most elaborate way to prove it anyway.
At minute 27 or so, it might be worth keeping the highlighting a bit more to consider 5s. The same argument as with 1s and 9s places 5s in the renbans in boxes 3 and 7 and the 18 cage in box 5, since there are no 5s in the other renbans, as well as keeping 5 from the intersection points of the purple lattice (as with the 1s and 9s). But this is just a minor help. Nice solve and kudos to udukos!
My first digit in 6:43! Actual solving it... more like 78 minutes, and that including some bifurcation. Still, I'll take it.
Surprised Simon didn't use the centre square more.
The 9 forced the 1234 and 5678 into boxes 2 and 8 resolved by the 7-cage in box 8 give 1234 in box 2. Similarly the 1 combined with the 7 cage in box 6 forces 1234 into box 4 and 6789 into box 6. This then forces position of remaining 1234 and 6789 squares.
Also the 18-cage along with the given 1,9 meant that the other 3 cells must add to 17 and must be either 467 or 458. Since Box 6 and 9 both contain 6789 squares and 7-cages (and once the 25 pairs eliminated) the 4 is forced into R6C6 and the 34 7-cages in boxes 6 and 8 are resolved.
This is the Renban masterpiece. No doubt.
A-ma-zing puzzle. Great fun !!
From somewhere around 17:00 it appears to be meta-suduko... This is frying my brain. I chose a good puzzle to not try...
Once I wrote out the possible combinations of three series 2x2 renbans, and noticed that 1,2,8,9 can't ever appear twice in each series, that gave me the giant x wings on 1 and 9 thanks to the starting digits. Which got me that initial 1
Took me nearly an hour to do that though, I spent way too long trying to start with the cages
Does anyone else only watch Simon and not Mark? For absolutely no reason other than the first puzzle I watched was from Simon and I fell in love with his love for the solve and that's it. Won't even TRY Mark. Am I an idiot?
The solves are very different. But not more or less brilliant.
Love watching both, Simon for his creative and zen-like approach with an almost artistic appreciation, and Mark for his methodical and intricate insights and things like spotting naked singles practically instantly.
I rarely watch Mark’s videos immediately when they come out, since I’m unlikely to be awake enough for complex sudoku at midnight.
Yes! They have very different approaches but each is equally valid and equally exciting, It’s amazing to watch Mark scan a grid and immediately see what numbers are missing as he says them backwards and enters them in the correct order as annotations! And his ability to spot naked singles is beyond astonishing!
Do give Mark’s vids a go again - with a very open mind, please!
You also had four 9s looking at box 8 for, like, half an hour.
16:00. There has to be three renban lines with one and three with 9. Because in the 3 rows and 3 columns that are not on renban lines, there can only be 6 of each. Very easy to understand. I knew 1 and 9's were important. I'd figured that you couldn't have two renban lines with 1 that saw each other, because the other block in the row or column would need 1234 all on it's edge that didn't see the renbans. But I never would've figured there had to be three. Then where they are is obvious, after you've worked out they can't be in the boxes with 2 digit 7's.
I think a piece of Simon's sudoku soul broke when he found he got tripped up on the 3 needing to be on the renban line in box 7. Great solve, and kudos on the break in!
Polarity was a good approach at the start. You could have gotten the fact that you need exactly 2 odd and 2 even digits in the 18-cage inside the center box.
looks like a spiderweb in inviting you into the renban rooms...
Nobody's getting cross with you Simon for missing something simple in a puzzle most people can't place a digit in.
Probably a few people laughing though when you couldn't figure out why the box 7 Renban had to have 3456 in it, especially when you had just said this 34 pair in box 8 pushes 34 into that square.
I was definitely giggling at that point.
The number of millions of years it would take me to figure out what Simon figures out is going up.
What have you got against box 8? I'm near running out of oxygen here! :-)
I just said the same thing out loud to myself 😂
The 3 in box 7 and the 5 in box 8. Come on Simon!!! Im holding my breath!!!
Right?! The 9 in box 8 that could have been placed right after 28:15 but it would take another 15 minutes. I felt so bad XD