Wasn’t expecting a solve of this so soon after I posted it to the Discord! Delighted not only to watch the solve, but to have broken the 30-minute mark on Simon’s solve time as well! 😏 There were some really good Halloween puzzles posted in the Discord for the Trick or Treat theme this month (some of which I hope to see on the channel as well); if you liked this puzzle, I’d highly recommend Stavros’s Pac-Man sudoku; it’s another path puzzle with some really incredible logic and some cute art as well. Hope everyone enjoyed the puzzle; let me know how you got along with it!
Discovered my first advantage over Simon. I am a designer, graphically trained. Once I have the rules firmly in mind I can see a snake so fast it's scary! I do have to prove it though, and he is a great teacher. Note to self - don't count on this working in any puzzle in future: it is indeed Halloween!
"This means: Today, the snake is orange." **intense glare at camera** "No jokes!" I hope your book has one of those for every sudoku in it. It's just not CTC without your Simonisms :D
Remember folks, do not touch your snake orthogonally but diagonally is just fine. You keep talking about how brilliant these puzzles are but what is brilliant is the person solving these great puzzles. I do hope that you do create a puzzle because I can't imagine what you could come up with. Maybe that should be one of the stretch goals that you and Mark have to contribute a new puzzle each. We have already seen an example done by Mark which was very good. Maybe it is your turn to do one.
I like to watch these to relax before going to sleep, so yesterday I ended up falling asleep to the sound of Simon's soothing voice. But at 16:49 woke up thinking I had done something very wrong. Now I'm here to finish watching it.
Great pick for the holiday. I got it done in 51 minutes. Truly impressive how fast you can solve these and do your explanations. I don't even need to take the time to tell someone that if they add the digits 1 through 9, it comes up to 45.
I spent a good long while stuck at the point 30 minutes in in the video, because at 2am I just forgot that one of the squares had to be visited, and I couldn't disambiguate between the two snake paths. Pretty much as soon as I figured it out, combined with some direction logic I'd done previously, the puzzle basically finished on its own. I greatly enjoyed this puzzle, even if my solve was addled by a sleep-deprived brain.
Figuring out the snake was difficult but a lot of fun. Took me at least an hour to finish. Not sure of the full time because I had to pause the clock by going back to the RUclips description to check the rules four or five times. Vocally smiling and shouting about the twos for a good few fun minutes while you were a bit hampered after finishing the houses. Excellent puzzle, wonderful fun!
Increadible puzzle. Really enjoyed it. Solved it myself partly. Got some logic done then had to use your solve on the first part of the dragon-snake. After that the finish with the knight's move constraint was very doable and fun. First puzzle I tried solving on the chanel after watching a load of videos. Also working on the app and those regular sudoku's can be really hard too! Thanks for this great channel and video's. Also ordered the kickstarter book. Keep up the lovely work please.
Simon: spots a bunch of different logic I never would have found. Also Simon: has all but 1 cell filled for row 2, proceeds to fill out almost every other cell left on the board to find the missing number in row 2. (41:28)
Yes, and it was also very clear that the 8 in the top middle box could only go in row 1, column 5 as the other positions were all ruled out by either sudoku or knights move.
Boy that was tough! Just over 2h for me. My logic path was roughly the same as Simon's. But I did put more effort into cancelling some pencil marks by the knight's move constraint. It's a lot of effort and I only cancelled a few here and there that Simon didn't. But ultimately, I don't think that extra cancelling really helped. I wish I'd spotted the significance of the quintuplet in the circles earlier! Brilliant puzzle though!
Love the new app! Really enjoy the double-click functionality. One issue that I see is that the gray used in the puzzle setup makes it difficult to see if that specific cell is selected or not. The palette colors seem to work fine.
I'm very thankful for you, taking care of the colorblinds - I'm the one who asked for it. You mentioned it before but then I was often distracted from my solving attemps and forgot to thank for this very fine service. Changing topic: For this puzzle, I got confused about the formulation "in strictly ascending order" so I thought, a starting 2 would imply, the first visited circle number would have to be a 3. But I got another rule wrong, too, which is purely my fault: The home cell (2) being the lowest digit in the path - I thought this would only relate to the houses with circles, visited, not every single step in the path. And well, the starting/ending cell doesn't have a circle. Btw.: On the experimental page in alpha-stage, the first cell in the first block has a circle, without being a grey block. It only get's visible when trying to colorize it. An awesome puzzle, btw. Great work, and great work solving it.
My treat was solving in 36:52, just squeezing past the video solve :) I happened to notice the box 3 path constraint straight off, so got a good start into the path/houses part.
That was the weirdest thing ever! At 21' 30" I thought I saw something about the snake moving from Box 3 to Box 2. IE, it could not go horizontally across because of the pencil mark 1s. But then I saw there were two 1s pencil marked in row 1 as well. I'm being dumb again. Then -- Simon does this bit with R3C2 and R4C1 and rules out the 1 pencil marks in row 1 box 2!!!! OMG! So now my idea works. The snake has to turn up in C5 and R3C4 has to be a 1! So now I'm screaming at the screen for Simon to see it! Who would have thought watching CTC would become like watching the Super Bowl! :-) /// Alright I've watched more, and its quite a bit more complex than I thought. [grins sheepishly] Perhaps I get a point or two for good sudoku intuition! ;-)
@prahas777 - Oh, you're talking about the 1 . I almost made a false assumption too when the numbers were 1st placed in all the circles. I saw only one circle had a 1 in it so I falsely assumed for a second, that one had to be the 1st one visited. Man, was I wrong (being that was the 1st one Simon eliminated with that 1 logic earlier) lol. ;) 😂 [[@18:44 approx lol]] [[That's where I am in the video and my solve Btw. So I haven't seen it yet ]]
I just watched it (that was a lot of chaining around Simon did). Your way of eliminating the path up there was actually better in a way, (unless I'm being dumb again and those 1s aren't up in row one) lol. Have to see how this pans out 😂
@@stevesebzda570 Did I get the minutes/seconds notation wrong? LOL I think I took a big shortcut in my logic, and just ignored other possibilities. :-( But my intuition turned out right in the end... I hope your solve went well! :-)
At the point Simon reached at 18:25 in his solve, I noticed the circled house r2c2 couldn't be a 3. If it was, it would rule out 3 from every available space in c3: same box, knight's move, only one 3 in circled house, and same row. Thought it might prove useful. It wasn't particularly. 🙂 I really enjoyed this puzzle. Took around 56 minutes.
Really lovely puzzle. I got as far as seeing it was almost a quadruple then I bifurcated (guessed) some 1s to solve the path. The first logical thing I got was the centre box had to be a 2 with the 1 blocking the path in the top right and forcing the 2 onto the path. I am a "miracle" follower but I went back and looked at some early puzzles and saw Simon solve some really neat snake ones which helped here. I am still working my way through the treasure trove of puzzles.
At 39:17 column 10 can only have a 9 in r1 and r3 due to those being the only open spots for it in that box. Which means there was something there for Simon to find with 9's. It would have ruled a 9 out of r4 c4, giving him a 3 4 pair in r4. Meaning r4 c 6 would have to be the 9 in r4 :)
36:21 And that 8 forces an 8 into row 1, column 5 because of the 8 in box 3. Which he finds at 43:26 Brilliant solve though. Getting all the logic with the snake was amazing.
"The central cell contains the lowest digit that can appear on the path." Messed me up; made the faulty assumption that it had to be unique. It's still possible to complete a path using this assumption, but it breaks when there's no way to visit houses in ascending order. Edit: Nevermind, I guess it breaks according to knight's move as well and I just overlooked that the last 1 I entered was not allowed by the rules, since I "knew" that 1 was the only number it could be. So it breaks slightly earlier than I thought. Still frustrating.
I had the same thought until just trying ones out at the outset. Also thought after establishing the central two that none of the houses were less than central. I was working with pathing 345689 for most of my solve. :(
Loved the joke at 22:58. Also, there is a much easier path forward at this point. Look at R2C8. Can it ever be a 3? The answer is NO! Any way you try to reach it you pass by a circle with a minimum of 4 in it. We know one of the quintuple must be a 3, so the snake has to pass by at least one of the circles on the left first, either the 2 at the bottom left, or one of the 3s above it. By the same logic, the circle in R2C8 can't be a 4 either! So now if you try and make R3C5 a 1, then that turns the snake down towards the home and the next cell it takes would connect, so that would have to be the end of the snake making R4C7 a 9 and R3C8 an 8. Now it is extremely obvious that there is no way to avoid the circle in R8C8 and still pick it up again later, so it has to be the 6. (If you try, you either create a short snake completely missing the portion in the bottom left, or you connect to it blocking off access to R8C8.) This gives you the 3 in R6C3 and the 4 in R2C2. Now if you have colored in the cells at the top in blue around the top left corner and from the 1 in R3C5 to the 9 in R2C3 around the top of that gray block, you can clearly see the 4 in R2C2 has to be done as a drive by connecting behind the 7 in R4C2. As soon as that cell is snake, we have a problem. It forces a 1 into R6C2. Now the 1 we assumed in R3C5 is preventing a 1 from being in the middle 3 cells of box 5. The snake prevents a 1 in R4C6, there is a 5 in R4C4 and the same assumed one prevents a 1 in R4C5, so the only place for a one in box 5 is the bottom three cells which clashes with the forced 1 in R6C2. That means that R3C5 is not a 1. This gives the 1 in R4C4 and we still now know that R2C8 is either 6 or 8 and one of the other right two circles are the end of the snake and one of the left three circles are the beginning. Given this, is it possible for either left circle to be an 8? No! Again, if we try, then that 8 would have to connect to one of the 9 circles in the right, but any way you try it, you either have to pass back by the home finishing the snake early, or go by the 25 circle breaking the order. Likewise it is clear they can't be 6 either. If one of them was a 6, then they either have to pass back by the home breaking the sequence early, pass by the 25 breaking the order, or pass by R4C7 picking up an 8, but then what possible value for R2C8? There is none, so it is broken again, so none of the left cells can be a 6 either. This gives you a 3 in R6C3 and a 4 in R2C2. Now look at the right circles. We know the snake has to go either one direction or the other through the back wall. This means that R2C8 is the middle cell of a 689 triple, so it must be 8, leaving the other two circles a 69 pair. Now ask yourself if the snake can ever turn left from R5C9? No, it can't. If it turns left it would have to connect to the home, ending the snake because if it didn't, it would plow through the only cells that can have a 1 in them in the box and we know the snake can't have a 1 on it. If it runs into the home cell, though, there is no way to pick up the circle in R8C8 without breaking the sequence. Either the 25 cell line hits it, either direction breaking order, or it is missed altogether. This means the snake must continue down from R9C5. Now the top gray cell in column 4 has to be visited, and so you must loop the snake through that upside down U. Now once you do that you must know the order of the snake and all the circles! The 6 must go between the 4 and the 8 in R2C8, making R8C8 the 9. This also eliminates the 5 from R8C2 making it a 2 and the first circle we have to reach. (This also resolves the x-wing on 5s.) The snake has to go around the 7 on the lower side in box 4 to pick up the 3 and then must turn immediately up to get the 4 so it doesn't touch the home cell early. This forces R5C6 and R6C5 to be snake and makes R6C6 not snake. Now the 9 end of the snake must turn up and connect at R5C6 while the 2 end of the snake goes straight down from the home square. Now just color in the other cells blue. The 1s in boxes 6 and 9 are resolved by the snake in box 6. From there it is just sudoku and knights move constraints. :)
if you color the first cell R1C1 with anything other than white you get a circle Idk if that's a clue or what but it's scaring the fuck out of me idk why it doesnt show up for SImon
I noticed that. I couldn't decide if it was some hidden clue or not. Since it wasn't in Ricky Cruz's excellent original picture, I decided it couldn't be intentional. But definitely disconcerting. I then had to highlight every other cell to check it was the only one. 😁
My winning streak came to a screeching halt on this one. Tried on three separate occasions (one of which ended up a break), but never really got far beyond a handful of digits and partial paths. Watching the video, there's just too much that I missed to make mention. I liked this puzzle. Just wish I could have done better on it.
3:45 this suggest that you can't put a one in the middle? You mean it suggest than you can't put a NINE in the middle. And that the middle number is certainly a one or I missunderstoud something?
Indeed we cannot put a 9 in the middle for obvious raisons... I felt confused as well but I am pretty sure Simon meant that if it was a 1, it would not be a restriction...
from the start the cell r3c9 must be passed so r2c8 is touched, it must take one of those 2 paths: one with a 2, and the other has a 1. so the center cell must be a 12 pair. after that i cluelessly failed to do the sudoku
I think Simon was just making a predication. The puzzle writer likely wouldn’t write that rule if it was just a 1 going into that cell. Unless there was a lot more logic required to eliminate the 1 than there was. Just like someone making a standard killer puzzle wouldn’t make one cage that was just 9 cells long along one row.
@@_-_-Sipita-_-_ a cell cannot be a xx pair, pair is for two cells, triple when there is three etc for exemple if two cells in a row can be only 1 or 2 they are, together, ONE 12 pair. Pair is the concept that eliminate those candidate from other cells so will not say 123 pair because 2 cells of 3 nubers arent relevent. So two 12cells in a box, row or colomn is A 12 pair. Three 567 cells are A 567 triple (if one of those is just 56 its still a 567 triple because these cells, this triple eliminatese the candidates in the others cells. 😉. Btw thanks for the answer i'll check of the center cell is really limited to 1or 2.
@@stephenbeck7222 On the other hand, that could potentially be a way to disambiguate the central cell if you discovered that the snake _had_ to pass through a 1 and so the central cell was forced to be a 1 ... less likely, but not completely trivial. (Or sometimes they just like to throw red herrings in for a laugh)
Hey Simon, great solve but i just thought id tell you, I had a different solve, the two circles in boxes 3 and 6 got interchanged and i got to a solution completely different yet correct !
Sorry, but it has a unique solution. If you swap 6 and 8 in the circles in boxes 3 and 6 then the path wouldn't be visiting the circled houses in ascending order (house 6 would be between houses 8 and 9). Note, the check button will still tell you your solution "Looks good to me" since it is only checking for a valid Sudoku grid. It doesn't check for the correct solution when variant rules are taken into account.
Wow, really cool puzzle! And very surprised I was able to solve it considering the difficulty. Took me some 40 mins before I recognized I could rule out one from the center box then another 20 minutes getting an actual break in...so it basically took me an hour before getting my first digits (not counting the free ones). But with my break in I completed the "snake" and with the copious pencilmarks I had accrued during that hour I was able to finish the rest quickly and ended up with a time of 1:21
Interesting.. (I think right around here that'll show what I'm going to say) [[Edit: @38:24]] Down column 7 ( 4,8,9). The 9 in the center of box 9 sees one of the 9s by sudoku (in the box) and the other by knight's move (placing the 9 in r7c5). That makes a 48 remaining pair. The remaining cells in row 4 mentioned are going to be 934, (that's going to create a 34 pair in box 6 fixing that 48 to an 8) [[I guess it all depends on where ya' look 1st. I looked down column 7 then row 4 after some things in otherwords ]] @38:44 (for instance) that 9 being in r4c6 is going to fix the 9 in box 2 to r1c3) . Waiting for Simon to look down column 7 (and not quite yelling, but it's funny waiting lol) ;) 😂 @39:03 oh, crikeys, I got a 9 (described above) that's going to fix that 69 in row 5. Why wouldn't Simon look down column 7? There's only 3 cells remaining? Lol (That's cool though) 😂 [[@39:36. Oh christ, he fixed the 4 1st and missed it. Oh well, LOL ;)) 😂 ]] Excellent puzzle.
Simon is much better at solving puzzles than I am, but I've noticed that he often doesn't "scan" the entire grid. When he misses something, it is usually because it is at the opposite end of the grid than where he is focussed. He seems to be mostly looking at 6x6 areas. Brilliant solve though.
WOW! Simon REALLY struggled with this one. I took 38m43s to solve this and took my sweet time. The only thing that could restrict the path were low digits, so I looked at 1's first. Saw the 2 on the path. And the top right showed clear dead-ends that showed more restrictions on the 1s. Simon had a very difficult time seeing this. Weird. He's usually much faster than I am. I saw instantly that r3c2 couldn't be a 1. It clearly created a dead-end. Maybe I just got lucky because Simon spent a LOT of time on that part. I just feel like something is wrong with the universe when I see something before Simon does. lol
It's their own software. It's due to be upgraded sometime "soon". The new software (quite similar) is available to test by a link on the bottom of the old software page. Also, I think Simon recently mentioned they're planning on providing a website soon where users can build they're own puzzles.
@@wanderlngdays As far as I know, it's only available through the links on each video, to a web page with that particular puzzle already entered. If you want an empty grid in their software, into which you can enter your own Sudoku setup, or copied from elsewhere, you can use the following empty grid from one of their past puzzles. (Just ignore the arrow clues around the edge). cracking-the-cryptic.web.app/sudoku/8D346R4gjB
It’s always disappointing when I notice I made a mistake after 5 hours of trying to solve a puzzle and I can’t figure out where it is, especially when feeling that I make a lot of progress. I figured out all the 5s and a 7, I figured out the central digit, and I reduced all white-circle cells to at most two possibilities, but then there was a conflict with the placement of 1s and how the snake had to move near box 1… Looking at the video, I think I missed some of the options when considering which order the white-circle cells could be visited in and which digits they could contain.
Damn, almost finished faster than Simon for once, but I mislabeled the 689 candy houses because I went decreasing from the center (so I labeled the 6 house as 9, as you touch it again at the end of the dragon). Took a bit of backtracking because of that, but ended up under the 1 hour mark. Great puzzle. :)
I don't know if this is valid for the solution or not, but once I was able to narrow down the lower left circle to being either 2 or 5, I couldn't see any way to establish a 3-4-5-6-8-9 route, which made the "2 or 5" circle have to contain a 2, which also established both the clockwise-ish direction of the path and the identities of the other circled numbers going around clockwise-ish. I'm thinking maybe that would've shaved 10 minutes off of Simon's solve time.
Pretty sure that 25 square in the bottom left was forced to be 2 as soon as we knew it was those digits, and must be the first in the chain, and making the snake part more obvious. It was sitting there for so long.
I struggled to make sense of that too. I think he almost made an error, but realised what he said was wrong (there's a brief hesitation) and instead made a correct deduction that the snake had to connect to the home square through the right-hand side. If he truly believed the snake couldn't come down from the 2 (mistake, it does), he would have coloured the cell below blue. He didn't, so I assume he knew on some level what he said wasn't right.
As soon as you recognized the quintuple you should have known box 6 or 9 was last house visited and working out house 2 and order would be much easier.
I could have made a mistake, but the puzzle is not solvable if the central cell contains the highest instead of the lowest digit on the path 😬. (reading correctly is important)
i made a mistake solving the puzzle...i inverted the 8 and the 6 in the grey cells in the circles...but incredibly if you make those two numbers in the wrong order the puzzle is still solvable...
20:00 he was so close if he applied bit mor logic he would see the bottom left house cant be 5 because if its 5 you can't visit in ascending order because which house did it come from and where is it going, if its a 5 you can't do the loop
Wasn’t expecting a solve of this so soon after I posted it to the Discord! Delighted not only to watch the solve, but to have broken the 30-minute mark on Simon’s solve time as well! 😏
There were some really good Halloween puzzles posted in the Discord for the Trick or Treat theme this month (some of which I hope to see on the channel as well); if you liked this puzzle, I’d highly recommend Stavros’s Pac-Man sudoku; it’s another path puzzle with some really incredible logic and some cute art as well.
Hope everyone enjoyed the puzzle; let me know how you got along with it!
Love your puzzles and the awesome artwork! The Cluedoku solve is my favorite video on the channel, keep up the brilliant work!
Discovered my first advantage over Simon. I am a designer, graphically trained. Once I have the rules firmly in mind I can see a snake so fast it's scary! I do have to prove it though, and he is a great teacher. Note to self - don't count on this working in any puzzle in future: it is indeed Halloween!
Thanks for this. Tricky, but definitely a treat.
Very enjoyable and interesting puzzle, thank you! I found it very tricky and had to refer to the video a number of times for hints on how to proceed.
Great puzzle. Love the fact that Simon will say "obviously" for some series of complex logic then proceed to explain that 1 is less than 2.
"This means: Today, the snake is orange." **intense glare at camera** "No jokes!"
I hope your book has one of those for every sudoku in it. It's just not CTC without your Simonisms :D
Remember folks, do not touch your snake orthogonally but diagonally is just fine. You keep talking about how brilliant these puzzles are but what is brilliant is the person solving these great puzzles. I do hope that you do create a puzzle because I can't imagine what you could come up with. Maybe that should be one of the stretch goals that you and Mark have to contribute a new puzzle each. We have already seen an example done by Mark which was very good. Maybe it is your turn to do one.
"Today my snake is orange."
That's fine, no probs.
"No jokes."
Oh...
the way he looks at the camera like a dad would look at unruly kids in church ahahahah
And then moments later "mustn't let your snake touch itself."
Simon: snake
Dragon: Am I a joke to you?
I like to watch these to relax before going to sleep, so yesterday I ended up falling asleep to the sound of Simon's soothing voice.
But at 16:49 woke up thinking I had done something very wrong.
Now I'm here to finish watching it.
Very much appreciated Simon's "no one here" pun
Great pick for the holiday. I got it done in 51 minutes. Truly impressive how fast you can solve these and do your explanations. I don't even need to take the time to tell someone that if they add the digits 1 through 9, it comes up to 45.
I spent a good long while stuck at the point 30 minutes in in the video, because at 2am I just forgot that one of the squares had to be visited, and I couldn't disambiguate between the two snake paths. Pretty much as soon as I figured it out, combined with some direction logic I'd done previously, the puzzle basically finished on its own. I greatly enjoyed this puzzle, even if my solve was addled by a sleep-deprived brain.
Figuring out the snake was difficult but a lot of fun. Took me at least an hour to finish. Not sure of the full time because I had to pause the clock by going back to the RUclips description to check the rules four or five times.
Vocally smiling and shouting about the twos for a good few fun minutes while you were a bit hampered after finishing the houses. Excellent puzzle, wonderful fun!
Simon missing more than half the digits: "we've now done everything I think"
Increadible puzzle. Really enjoyed it. Solved it myself partly. Got some logic done then had to use your solve on the first part of the dragon-snake. After that the finish with the knight's move constraint was very doable and fun. First puzzle I tried solving on the chanel after watching a load of videos. Also working on the app and those regular sudoku's can be really hard too! Thanks for this great channel and video's. Also ordered the kickstarter book. Keep up the lovely work please.
Simon: spots a bunch of different logic I never would have found.
Also Simon: has all but 1 cell filled for row 2, proceeds to fill out almost every other cell left on the board to find the missing number in row 2. (41:28)
Yes, and it was also very clear that the 8 in the top middle box could only go in row 1, column 5 as the other positions were all ruled out by either sudoku or knights move.
Ricky is an artist in the truest of meanings.
$200k stretch goal: Simon bifurcates.
19:36 ...that has two effects. 1... and B.
Can't believe I missed that when watching the first time ;-)
This one was so fun to watch! I loved the story, the logic was cool, and I laughed a lot too :)
Finding 2 knight moves to solve the last digit in row 2. Impressive, haha.
"You're going to get a trick, 'cuz there's no 1 here!"
Snake? I thought it was a knight hating dragon.
Dragons are just snakes with wings
No ones here.. oooh: No one's here for trick and treat! Well that means you gonna get a trick, doesn't it?
Somehow I enjoyed this part^^'
Boy that was tough! Just over 2h for me. My logic path was roughly the same as Simon's. But I did put more effort into cancelling some pencil marks by the knight's move constraint. It's a lot of effort and I only cancelled a few here and there that Simon didn't. But ultimately, I don't think that extra cancelling really helped. I wish I'd spotted the significance of the quintuplet in the circles earlier! Brilliant puzzle though!
Great puzzle! It was very fun solving it
Wasn't expecting this to be so straightforward - completed in 24m43s.
wow you are really talented at these
SIMON! the amount of innuendos in that one!!!!!
40:21. Any time under the video is a win, so I'll take it. :) This felt like great practice for doing snake puzzles, not one of my strong variants.
11:14 - "Today, my snake is orange....No jokes." :)
for the first time ever, after like 30 videos, when he said "I'm missing something here", I actually saw something he didn't.
Hell yeah Ricky!! Absolutely killin' it!!
Can't believe I actually solved it....and in only 90 minutes. Never could have solved this a month ago before binge-watching Simon
Love the new app! Really enjoy the double-click functionality. One issue that I see is that the gray used in the puzzle setup makes it difficult to see if that specific cell is selected or not. The palette colors seem to work fine.
I'm very thankful for you, taking care of the colorblinds - I'm the one who asked for it. You mentioned it before but then I was often distracted from my solving attemps and forgot to thank for this very fine service.
Changing topic: For this puzzle, I got confused about the formulation "in strictly ascending order" so I thought, a starting 2 would imply, the first visited circle number would have to be a 3. But I got another rule wrong, too, which is purely my fault: The home cell (2) being the lowest digit in the path - I thought this would only relate to the houses with circles, visited, not every single step in the path. And well, the starting/ending cell doesn't have a circle.
Btw.: On the experimental page in alpha-stage, the first cell in the first block has a circle, without being a grey block. It only get's visible when trying to colorize it.
An awesome puzzle, btw. Great work, and great work solving it.
Can you please enable zooming in again (on android phone) ?
Fastest Ive ever caught an upload! Happy Halloween everyone!
Simon manages to both solve the puzzle and come up with better jokes than me, I feel inferior
This turned out to be a very smooth and nice solve for me - I finished at 31:37. Fun puzzle!
Outstanding puzzle, took over 2 hours to solve, but fun nonetheless!
At 27:24, why is the square below the highlighted 7 not allowed? Or why does it need to go to his highlighted cell (corner 1)?
My treat was solving in 36:52, just squeezing past the video solve :) I happened to notice the box 3 path constraint straight off, so got a good start into the path/houses part.
That was the weirdest thing ever! At 21' 30" I thought I saw something about the snake moving from Box 3 to Box 2. IE, it could not go horizontally across because of the pencil mark 1s. But then I saw there were two 1s pencil marked in row 1 as well. I'm being dumb again. Then -- Simon does this bit with R3C2 and R4C1 and rules out the 1 pencil marks in row 1 box 2!!!! OMG! So now my idea works. The snake has to turn up in C5 and R3C4 has to be a 1! So now I'm screaming at the screen for Simon to see it! Who would have thought watching CTC would become like watching the Super Bowl! :-) /// Alright I've watched more, and its quite a bit more complex than I thought. [grins sheepishly] Perhaps I get a point or two for good sudoku intuition! ;-)
@21:30 (just saying)
(And for anyone else that just wants to click on it quickly) 😂
@prahas777 -
Oh, you're talking about the 1 .
I almost made a false assumption too when the numbers were 1st placed in all the circles.
I saw only one circle had a 1 in it so I falsely assumed for a second, that one had to be the 1st one visited.
Man, was I wrong (being that was the 1st one Simon eliminated with that 1 logic earlier) lol. ;) 😂
[[@18:44 approx lol]]
[[That's where I am in the video and my solve Btw. So I haven't seen it yet ]]
"Longitude & Latitude" that's definitely a good notation though (hours, minutes and seconds) lol ;) 😂
I just watched it (that was a lot of chaining around Simon did).
Your way of eliminating the path up there was actually better in a way, (unless I'm being dumb again and those 1s aren't up in row one) lol.
Have to see how this pans out 😂
@@stevesebzda570 Did I get the minutes/seconds notation wrong? LOL I think I took a big shortcut in my logic, and just ignored other possibilities. :-( But my intuition turned out right in the end... I hope your solve went well! :-)
To me the easiest part was seeing the path. That came round easily after just a couple of deductions...The normal sudoku part was much harder to me
At the point Simon reached at 18:25 in his solve, I noticed the circled house r2c2 couldn't be a 3. If it was, it would rule out 3 from every available space in c3: same box, knight's move, only one 3 in circled house, and same row. Thought it might prove useful. It wasn't particularly. 🙂
I really enjoyed this puzzle. Took around 56 minutes.
Screaming at Simon for 15 minutes about the snake path on box 6 hahaha
Basically if the path took the top route there wouldn't be a position for 1 in the box once it's been ruled out of the candy house.
Really lovely puzzle. I got as far as seeing it was almost a quadruple then I bifurcated (guessed) some 1s to solve the path.
The first logical thing I got was the centre box had to be a 2 with the 1 blocking the path in the top right and forcing the 2 onto the path. I am a "miracle" follower but I went back and looked at some early puzzles and saw Simon solve some really neat snake ones which helped here. I am still working my way through the treasure trove of puzzles.
At 39:17 column 10 can only have a 9 in r1 and r3 due to those being the only open spots for it in that box. Which means there was something there for Simon to find with 9's. It would have ruled a 9 out of r4 c4, giving him a 3 4 pair in r4. Meaning r4 c 6 would have to be the 9 in r4 :)
If I may offer a couple of corrections
"Column 10" -> column 9
"r4 c4" -> r4 c9
(I think) 🙂
Hello, I am finding that reading pencil marks on the gray squares really hard to read in the beta app.
36:21 And that 8 forces an 8 into row 1, column 5 because of the 8 in box 3.
Which he finds at 43:26
Brilliant solve though. Getting all the logic with the snake was amazing.
"The central cell contains the lowest digit that can appear on the path." Messed me up; made the faulty assumption that it had to be unique. It's still possible to complete a path using this assumption, but it breaks when there's no way to visit houses in ascending order.
Edit: Nevermind, I guess it breaks according to knight's move as well and I just overlooked that the last 1 I entered was not allowed by the rules, since I "knew" that 1 was the only number it could be. So it breaks slightly earlier than I thought. Still frustrating.
I had the same thought until just trying ones out at the outset. Also thought after establishing the central two that none of the houses were less than central. I was working with pathing 345689 for most of my solve. :(
the end bit was kinda boring, once I put the whole path in it was just normal old antiknight since I already had all the 1s in
"Bobbins!"
What does "ascending order" mean? Is it the digit on the path next to the house that must be ascending or the digit on the house?
The digits on the houses are the ones that have to be in ascending order.
@@stevieinselby Thanks, figured as much when I was solving it. Didn't make much sense the other way around anyways.
Loved the joke at 22:58. Also, there is a much easier path forward at this point. Look at R2C8. Can it ever be a 3? The answer is NO! Any way you try to reach it you pass by a circle with a minimum of 4 in it. We know one of the quintuple must be a 3, so the snake has to pass by at least one of the circles on the left first, either the 2 at the bottom left, or one of the 3s above it. By the same logic, the circle in R2C8 can't be a 4 either! So now if you try and make R3C5 a 1, then that turns the snake down towards the home and the next cell it takes would connect, so that would have to be the end of the snake making R4C7 a 9 and R3C8 an 8. Now it is extremely obvious that there is no way to avoid the circle in R8C8 and still pick it up again later, so it has to be the 6. (If you try, you either create a short snake completely missing the portion in the bottom left, or you connect to it blocking off access to R8C8.) This gives you the 3 in R6C3 and the 4 in R2C2. Now if you have colored in the cells at the top in blue around the top left corner and from the 1 in R3C5 to the 9 in R2C3 around the top of that gray block, you can clearly see the 4 in R2C2 has to be done as a drive by connecting behind the 7 in R4C2. As soon as that cell is snake, we have a problem. It forces a 1 into R6C2. Now the 1 we assumed in R3C5 is preventing a 1 from being in the middle 3 cells of box 5. The snake prevents a 1 in R4C6, there is a 5 in R4C4 and the same assumed one prevents a 1 in R4C5, so the only place for a one in box 5 is the bottom three cells which clashes with the forced 1 in R6C2. That means that R3C5 is not a 1. This gives the 1 in R4C4 and we still now know that R2C8 is either 6 or 8 and one of the other right two circles are the end of the snake and one of the left three circles are the beginning. Given this, is it possible for either left circle to be an 8? No! Again, if we try, then that 8 would have to connect to one of the 9 circles in the right, but any way you try it, you either have to pass back by the home finishing the snake early, or go by the 25 circle breaking the order. Likewise it is clear they can't be 6 either. If one of them was a 6, then they either have to pass back by the home breaking the sequence early, pass by the 25 breaking the order, or pass by R4C7 picking up an 8, but then what possible value for R2C8? There is none, so it is broken again, so none of the left cells can be a 6 either. This gives you a 3 in R6C3 and a 4 in R2C2. Now look at the right circles. We know the snake has to go either one direction or the other through the back wall. This means that R2C8 is the middle cell of a 689 triple, so it must be 8, leaving the other two circles a 69 pair. Now ask yourself if the snake can ever turn left from R5C9? No, it can't. If it turns left it would have to connect to the home, ending the snake because if it didn't, it would plow through the only cells that can have a 1 in them in the box and we know the snake can't have a 1 on it. If it runs into the home cell, though, there is no way to pick up the circle in R8C8 without breaking the sequence. Either the 25 cell line hits it, either direction breaking order, or it is missed altogether. This means the snake must continue down from R9C5. Now the top gray cell in column 4 has to be visited, and so you must loop the snake through that upside down U. Now once you do that you must know the order of the snake and all the circles! The 6 must go between the 4 and the 8 in R2C8, making R8C8 the 9. This also eliminates the 5 from R8C2 making it a 2 and the first circle we have to reach. (This also resolves the x-wing on 5s.) The snake has to go around the 7 on the lower side in box 4 to pick up the 3 and then must turn immediately up to get the 4 so it doesn't touch the home cell early. This forces R5C6 and R6C5 to be snake and makes R6C6 not snake. Now the 9 end of the snake must turn up and connect at R5C6 while the 2 end of the snake goes straight down from the home square. Now just color in the other cells blue. The 1s in boxes 6 and 9 are resolved by the snake in box 6. From there it is just sudoku and knights move constraints. :)
if you color the first cell R1C1 with anything other than white you get a circle
Idk if that's a clue or what but it's scaring the fuck out of me
idk why it doesnt show up for SImon
I noticed that. I couldn't decide if it was some hidden clue or not. Since it wasn't in Ricky Cruz's excellent original picture, I decided it couldn't be intentional. But definitely disconcerting. I then had to highlight every other cell to check it was the only one. 😁
@@RichSmith77 yea same lmao
My winning streak came to a screeching halt on this one.
Tried on three separate occasions (one of which ended up a break), but never really got far beyond a handful of digits and partial paths. Watching the video, there's just too much that I missed to make mention.
I liked this puzzle. Just wish I could have done better on it.
30:40 for me, more snake variants please :D
wont attempt it cuz its hard, but the vid is fun. laughed 2 times already.
3:45 this suggest that you can't put a one in the middle? You mean it suggest than you can't put a NINE in the middle. And that the middle number is certainly a one or I missunderstoud something?
Indeed we cannot put a 9 in the middle for obvious raisons... I felt confused as well but I am pretty sure Simon meant that if it was a 1, it would not be a restriction...
from the start the cell r3c9 must be passed so r2c8 is touched, it must take one of those 2 paths: one with a 2, and the other has a 1. so the center cell must be a 12 pair. after that i cluelessly failed to do the sudoku
I think Simon was just making a predication. The puzzle writer likely wouldn’t write that rule if it was just a 1 going into that cell. Unless there was a lot more logic required to eliminate the 1 than there was. Just like someone making a standard killer puzzle wouldn’t make one cage that was just 9 cells long along one row.
@@_-_-Sipita-_-_ a cell cannot be a xx pair, pair is for two cells, triple when there is three etc for exemple if two cells in a row can be only 1 or 2 they are, together, ONE 12 pair. Pair is the concept that eliminate those candidate from other cells so will not say 123 pair because 2 cells of 3 nubers arent relevent. So two 12cells in a box, row or colomn is A 12 pair. Three 567 cells are A 567 triple (if one of those is just 56 its still a 567 triple because these cells, this triple eliminatese the candidates in the others cells. 😉. Btw thanks for the answer i'll check of the center cell is really limited to 1or 2.
@@stephenbeck7222 On the other hand, that could potentially be a way to disambiguate the central cell if you discovered that the snake _had_ to pass through a 1 and so the central cell was forced to be a 1 ... less likely, but not completely trivial. (Or sometimes they just like to throw red herrings in for a laugh)
Hey Simon, great solve but i just thought id tell you, I had a different solve, the two circles in boxes 3 and 6 got interchanged and i got to a solution completely different yet correct !
Sorry, but it has a unique solution.
If you swap 6 and 8 in the circles in boxes 3 and 6 then the path wouldn't be visiting the circled houses in ascending order (house 6 would be between houses 8 and 9).
Note, the check button will still tell you your solution "Looks good to me" since it is only checking for a valid Sudoku grid. It doesn't check for the correct solution when variant rules are taken into account.
Wow, really cool puzzle! And very surprised I was able to solve it considering the difficulty.
Took me some 40 mins before I recognized I could rule out one from the center box then another 20 minutes getting an actual break in...so it basically took me an hour before getting my first digits (not counting the free ones). But with my break in I completed the "snake" and with the copious pencilmarks I had accrued during that hour I was able to finish the rest quickly and ended up with a time of 1:21
Interesting..
(I think right around here that'll show what I'm going to say)
[[Edit: @38:24]]
Down column 7 ( 4,8,9).
The 9 in the center of box 9 sees one of the 9s by sudoku (in the box) and the other by knight's move (placing the 9 in r7c5).
That makes a 48 remaining pair.
The remaining cells in row 4 mentioned are going to be 934, (that's going to create a 34 pair in box 6 fixing that 48 to an 8)
[[I guess it all depends on where ya' look 1st. I looked down column 7 then row 4 after some things in otherwords ]]
@38:44 (for instance) that 9 being in r4c6 is going to fix the 9 in box 2 to r1c3) .
Waiting for Simon to look down column 7 (and not quite yelling, but it's funny waiting lol) ;) 😂
@39:03 oh, crikeys, I got a 9 (described above) that's going to fix that 69 in row 5.
Why wouldn't Simon look down column 7?
There's only 3 cells remaining? Lol
(That's cool though) 😂
[[@39:36. Oh christ, he fixed the 4 1st and missed it. Oh well, LOL ;)) 😂 ]]
Excellent puzzle.
Simon is much better at solving puzzles than I am, but I've noticed that he often doesn't "scan" the entire grid.
When he misses something, it is usually because it is at the opposite end of the grid than where he is focussed.
He seems to be mostly looking at 6x6 areas.
Brilliant solve though.
WOW! Simon REALLY struggled with this one. I took 38m43s to solve this and took my sweet time. The only thing that could restrict the path were low digits, so I looked at 1's first. Saw the 2 on the path. And the top right showed clear dead-ends that showed more restrictions on the 1s. Simon had a very difficult time seeing this. Weird. He's usually much faster than I am. I saw instantly that r3c2 couldn't be a 1. It clearly created a dead-end. Maybe I just got lucky because Simon spent a LOT of time on that part. I just feel like something is wrong with the universe when I see something before Simon does. lol
64 mins!! I’m happy...
Sorry for the question, but I’m starting with sudokus. Which is the software he uses to enter the sudokus?
It's their own software.
It's due to be upgraded sometime "soon". The new software (quite similar) is available to test by a link on the bottom of the old software page. Also, I think Simon recently mentioned they're planning on providing a website soon where users can build they're own puzzles.
Richard Smith thank you for the info, but where can I find the old software?
@@wanderlngdays As far as I know, it's only available through the links on each video, to a web page with that particular puzzle already entered.
If you want an empty grid in their software, into which you can enter your own Sudoku setup, or copied from elsewhere, you can use the following empty grid from one of their past puzzles. (Just ignore the arrow clues around the edge).
cracking-the-cryptic.web.app/sudoku/8D346R4gjB
Richard Smith ok, thank you very much
It’s always disappointing when I notice I made a mistake after 5 hours of trying to solve a puzzle and I can’t figure out where it is, especially when feeling that I make a lot of progress. I figured out all the 5s and a 7, I figured out the central digit, and I reduced all white-circle cells to at most two possibilities, but then there was a conflict with the placement of 1s and how the snake had to move near box 1… Looking at the video, I think I missed some of the options when considering which order the white-circle cells could be visited in and which digits they could contain.
Damn, almost finished faster than Simon for once, but I mislabeled the 689 candy houses because I went decreasing from the center (so I labeled the 6 house as 9, as you touch it again at the end of the dragon). Took a bit of backtracking because of that, but ended up under the 1 hour mark. Great puzzle. :)
I don't know if this is valid for the solution or not, but once I was able to narrow down the lower left circle to being either 2 or 5, I couldn't see any way to establish a 3-4-5-6-8-9 route, which made the "2 or 5" circle have to contain a 2, which also established both the clockwise-ish direction of the path and the identities of the other circled numbers going around clockwise-ish. I'm thinking maybe that would've shaved 10 minutes off of Simon's solve time.
I tend to prefer when I he ruleset is simpler. Wow!
21:21 after that deduction you could’ve put many non snake cells in box 1, as 1 in restricted in row 1
Wow I’m early. Love your videos. Keep up the good work
I dont mind snake sudoku but the rules are to complicated for it to be enjoyable.
Pretty sure that 25 square in the bottom left was forced to be 2 as soon as we knew it was those digits, and must be the first in the chain, and making the snake part more obvious. It was sitting there for so long.
And with that, let's get cackling
31:16 "the central cell can't come down or this is stranded" what are you talking about? Of course it can come down, and also go to the right.
I struggled to make sense of that too. I think he almost made an error, but realised what he said was wrong (there's a brief hesitation) and instead made a correct deduction that the snake had to connect to the home square through the right-hand side. If he truly believed the snake couldn't come down from the 2 (mistake, it does), he would have coloured the cell below blue. He didn't, so I assume he knew on some level what he said wasn't right.
As soon as you recognized the quintuple you should have known box 6 or 9 was last house visited and working out house 2 and order would be much easier.
35:37, including a restart after 12 minutes because I had misunderstood one rule... How can I have been so fast compared to Simon? 🤔🤔🤔
Bobbins!
"I'm sorry. I have to Think AGAIN" - How dare you?! 😂😂😂
Please help us to solve Ghostbusters Sudoku 😅 I've read trick or treat in the title and thought it was that one
By mistake, I flipped 6 and 8 in the white circles - and also got a unique solution
I could have made a mistake, but the puzzle is not solvable if the central cell contains the highest instead of the lowest digit on the path 😬.
(reading correctly is important)
16:49
i made a mistake solving the puzzle...i inverted the 8 and the 6 in the grey cells in the circles...but incredibly if you make those two numbers in the wrong order the puzzle is still solvable...
"It means, today my snake is orange. No jokes."
I don't have any idea what the joke is, but I still feel like I'm with the right crowd anyway.
20:00 he was so close if he applied bit mor logic he would see the bottom left house cant be 5 because if its 5 you can't visit in ascending order because which house did it come from and where is it going, if its a 5 you can't do the loop
Simon: “Ricky Cruz, you are jocking my straps”
Me: LOL
11:21 No jokes
Orange Snake Bad!!!
Anyone had the pain of Simon, where you figure out the pattern like a natural genius, but then you struggle with regular sudoku?
Uh oh. You're not talking about the software in the description anymore. Does that mean that "coming soon" was replaced with "cancelled?"
36:36 "Oh no it's not premature, that was a knight's move!" 😏
(Out of context and slightly misquoted...)
when you suddenly check your snake and realize it is orange today
Haha, if there’s no one there, you’re going to get the trick! 😂 23:00
Happy Halloween!
38:29 almost, but not quite, entirely unlike useful.
54:04
I liked this one, 38:57 for me
Snakes aren't good for Halloween. Now that I think about it, snakes aren't good for anything.
I know a dirty joke about an orange "snake"....