I'm terrified to think of the puzzles Simon will be solving 2 years from now. Go back and look at what he was solving 2 years ago. The puzzles of the future will probably involve fusing atoms, time travel and AI.
I've noticed that way way before and I have to say that it's just because it's not easy to do three different things at the same time: trying to figure what to do, trying to articulate what to do and do it. So I've stopped of telling him what he missed as that is what he does all the time and I've figured why he does it. At least he's stopped preaching about diligence because he's not diligent enough to do that anymore.
This madman has achieved the impossible: making the fact that 69 is a memorable number a key part of the puzzle! That's it, sudoku-setting memelords; time to pack it in and bow to our king.
Oddly, Simon you could've left Garford's original colouring on the puzzle. Look at the leaves: dark colours are tens digits, lighter colours are units. He did the starting work for you! :)
as soon as i saw the original coloring i was certain there had to be a reason it was so particularly like that. they should've had a little more faith that the setter was doing things with intent!
When I first started following this channel, it was very interesting for me that there were several types of sudoku puzzles other than classic sudoku, like sandwich, x-sum, killer, knight, thermo, arrow, etc. After a while, those puzzles started to seem like standard sudoku. Nowadays the rulesets of the puzzles are getting completely crazy.
Our illustrious host needs to start rating the puzzles according to the Bobbins count. This would make it easy to discern the difficulty - a puzzle with a bobbins count of 10 would be of average difficulty I think.
I would assume that the number of bobbins would be positively correlated to the video length, as the length can also be used to estimate difficulty. Perhaps we could determine an average time per bobbins.
Yes it is. Especially for mathematicians: “If you take all of the natural numbers between 1 and 9 and then look at the divisors of all of them and add them up, it adds up to 69. Adding up numbers like this is a very fun and common thing in number theory.” (Grant from 3Blue1Brown).
That was a fantastic puzzle. Congratulations to the setter. I'm sure you've had this requested many times and I'm not sure if you guys ever did this. But how about one day you guys both blind solve the same puzzle? To see how different your might approach the same problem. It'd be fascinating.
The problem is that one of them usually tests the puzzle to make sure it’s a good candidate for the other to blind solve. That said, they have occasionally both done a solve on the same puzzle, usually when Simon found it hard going with his logic only method; I think “Tatooine Sunset by Philip Newman” was one example.
@@Bin216 Yeah, but that wasn't blind. Simon solved it after seeing Mark's solve. But they do have testers that could send a puzzle to both of them before either see the result.
There have been the occasional one. I remember something about a 0-8 sudoku from last summer (before they had the new software) and the classic quote from Mark, "Sorry, missed that, I'm just not used to seeing the number 9 represent a zero because I'm so used to seeing it represent a nine". And Simon had done some obscure fancy logic and/or maths, and colouring, on the puzzle to solve it a different way. End of June if memory serves, if you fancy going back.
@@elizabethgrosvenor153 I remember that one! It was a killer cage. Simon added '1' to every digit in the puzzle, and '1' per box to all the cage totals. Then when he was finished, he reverted it all back. It was the kind of thing you wouldn't think of, but when he explains it, you're amazed at the simplicity.
They sure are... I'm 16-years-old doing my GCSEs and pretty stressed out as you could imagine. I like to fall asleep listening to these videos because they help me relax lol
@@114erin I've fallen asleep to a couple of their vids, but some have had the opposite reaction... thinking I could nod off to them, they ended up keeping me transfixed for 50mins+.... Good luck with the gcse's. Tough year to have to take them, eh. As you appear to be the kind of person who can chill out to some blinding logic, I'm gonna guess you'll do pretty well though, so don't stress it too much.
@@wossaaaat i keep the videos unwatched until I start to drift off, then open one up with my eyes already drooping haha. Also, thanks! I don't see any point complaining about the GCSEs this year so I try to just get on with revising and moving forward. Back at school next Monday to soon take the exams. Fingers crossed! Anyway, I'm off to sleep now so I suppose that means time for me to "watch" the newest CtC video that I haven't seen yet
one year into my lockdown/covid unemployment and here you are every day, still calming me down and encouraging me to persevere and do hard things. you're wonderful.
I started trying to do that with the 10s digits before realizing it was madness. I ended up just pencilling in the minimum value, which was quite useful.
1:04:22 - It took me a *long* time, but strangely, I never felt that I was completely stuck. It was just a slow, methodical process that led me to the end. Incredible puzzle!
I nearly didn't attempt this, because I'm tired and it looked like it might be monstrous, but the thought that I might watch the video and regret not doing it first just drew me in. I'm so glad I did. I wouldn't call it easy, but I found it surprisingly approachable, but I had to concentrate really hard not to mis-scan when looking for repeats. Like Simon, I shaded the tens, but I also pencil marked their upper and lower bounds (by starting with 1 in box jobbie, and working out, then starting at 9 at the leaves and working down). This made it relatively easy to spot where there were pressure points. Whenever I placed a digit, I adjusted the bounds of affected cells, and it all came together nicely. I'm amazed at how many incredibly good debuts we've seen on the channel over the last year. I hope the trend continues after the world starts returning to normal.
You've refoliaged the tree -- indeed if you look back at the original colouring it's identical (modulo the colour changes near the base) to what you've drawn
I often try to play along with the sudokus shown. This is the frist I managed to complete, took me 164 minutes though. But WHAT A SOLVE, WHAT A PUZZLE.
This is the first time I tried it but I find it really fun and engaging. I lose focus and patience quickly, but I like to keep my brain busy either way, so I opened up the puzzle on another tab and I'd start to work on it, then when I got stuck I'd come back to the video to see Simon's progress, follow his conclusions a bit, or when he brought attention to a box I'd pause the video and tab back to the puzzle and check it out! It was almost like doing the puzzle with Simon giving me the tips, ideas and confirmations I needed to keep going and managing to finish this absolute numbers work-out, and I loved it! ♥
Thrilled to see this! Looking forward to the solve! Had the seed of a similar idea (just straight up thermo's with 2-digit numbers), so I'm super excited to see this!
I went from liking to do some easy sudoku's to listening to these two man solving sudoku's for hours on end. To today subscribing. What rabbit hole am I going down? I've sat here for the past 4 hours watching 2 men solve sudoku's... Guess this will be how I will spend my evening from now on.
You're right! Using eight different colours in four arbitrary sets of two is equally as confusing as using only two colours. How could I not have noticed that?
@@CSmyth- well, the "4 arbitrary sets" are not that aribitrary: as far as I can tell, the tens digit is always darker shade, ones digits lighter shade (in most cases of same color, though there are exceptions). But yeah, 1 set is easier that 4. And he didn't put tomato sauce on the spaghetti junction, big disappointment!
I have to say I ADORED this puzzle. I have a bit of a method to choosing which puzzles I try and usually if I see a puzzle where Simon goes longer than 40 minutes I know I have no chance but because this had such an interesting idea behind it I went ahead and tried it and was not disappointed. I took to this concept so well and really had a fun time figuring out the logic. This variant it probably not possible all that often but it was so much fun and I really hope people toy with it and we see more of this idea because I love it. Great solve and great choice.
OMG I normally don't even come close to their times but this time I think I actually won, my time was 45:40. I've done every puzzle in their Thermo Sudoku app and it's probably the variant I'm most proficient at. I immediately marked the min and max for each 10s place cell. This gave me a huge time advantage over Simon because I didn't get tripped up by the 3 in row2, and I think Simon also spent a lot of time reproving what the bounds of certain cells had to be, or not cascading the information to the surrounding branches. Simon gained back almost all of that time though by being much better at spotting the normal sudoku logic. What a fantastic puzzle though, I really hope to see more that use this ruleset!
Oh man I completely forgot about the "numbers along the tree can't repeat" rule. I got pretty far before I was lost and had to turn on the video. Really nice puzzle.
That puzzle's opening is definitely better than it's ending, even beyond the 'at some point most sudoku becomes an exercise in polishing things off' due to the all numbers on the tree being unique rule. But the opening made the ending worth it.
My partner and I loved doing this solve together! Stopped our timer at 83:30 with the solution, but we really did need all four eyes and two brains to do it! I'm really enjoying all the new variants coming out, and this one was so interesting and enjoyable! Well done Garford!
For all of Simon's genius, sometimes I just wonder. He asks if there is an easier way to find these particular digits. And I am saying, "Why not just highlight the digit you are looking for?" Very simple.
Looks at length of video, looks at time available before going to night shift, looks further at adding time from break on said shift.... Watches the next evening as a reward.. Great solve as usual.
That was a phenomenal puzzle! I love how each individual step was fairly simple, yet the overall puzzle was satisfyingly complex. I bet there's some interesting logic to be had combining geometry with the parity of the tens/ones digits, but it will take a much better mathematician than I to figure that out!
I really enjoy in some of the more…”different” puzzles or ones with logic he hasn’t seen before (like the miracle puzzle) the first bit of the video is Simon convincing himself the puzzle can actually work, and the rest is him continually taken aback at how it continues to work.
This is the first one I fully solved without having to wait for Simon to show me a weak point or bit of logic I missed. His approach was much cleaner than mine (I resorted to lots of pencil marks to figure out potential ranges for 10's), but I still did it in a bit under 2.5 hours, which is good for me (I don't stay focused very well). His agony at the idea of keeping track of the used numbers....I'm with him. I had a spreadsheet open on my other monitor to grey out numbers as I used them.
45:20 I fixed the 6 and the 7 long before you did, the next number on the branch was a 69(nice) and the ones digit of the previous was an 8, the only 2 options therefore were 68 or 78, considering it had to be lower than 69, the answer was 68, sorry if I did a bad job explaining.
Good move starting by shading the tens digits (I do like that we get to choose our own color for it, thanks for leaving that up to us). But just after it would have been great to take a page from Mark's book, and pencil in, well, not all the possibilities for the tens digits, but at least the minimal values to start. That led me straight to the traffic jam in R2 and a number of useful deductions that followed, and also saved time of repeatedly proving that a tens digit far down a branch couldn't be some small number. Reached the 30-35min point in the video solve quickly that way. Of course, for the actual sudoku work I bogged down, took me several times longer to do the 'last 15 min' of Simon's solve. But it got there! My technique for tracking the uniqueness when the grid was mostly full was to mark the ones place following any 7 with one color, following 8 with another, etc., which worked decently.
WOW, I actually finished this! I very nearly gave up and watched the video to see the solution, but after staring at it for much too long I finally found the next step that I'd been missing and I was able to work my way through it and solve it. *Extremely* tough to scan this one, as you have to go looking through the whole tree for two digit numbers to use the negative constraint (i.e. the same 2 digit number cannot appear more than once in the entire tree). Took me 2 days and I really wasn't paying attention to the clock at all so I have no idea how long it took, but just finishing a puzzle that had a video nearly an hour long feels like a huge accomplishment, especially when it's so complex as this...
Must admit I got a real kick out of watching Simon frantically look for the negative constraints, as well as his increasing consternation at having to use that constraint. It made me feel a little bit better about having found them tough to find.
So simple, yet so complicated!! I was actually able to follow this, surprisingly. I think this is actually approachable. Looking forward to seeing a forest grow from this seed!
Very nice, great solve! I noticed something though. If you go back to the original colored-in image of the puzzle at 1:11, the tens places are all already colored in for you. They are all the colors that are not pastel. Clever!
28:30 Looking at 9's in box 5, it could never be in r5c6, as it breaks the next 2 digit number starting with 2, this places it in column 4, eliminating it from r1c4. Working back along the thermo, it eliminates 7 from being in either r4c4and r4c5. That forces r5c4 to be 789 which helps eliminate it from a 10's digit anywhere in box 4.
took me a little over an hour to solve. Would have never dreamed of solving something like this only a month or two ago. Thanks for the sudoku content!!
Yet another incredible puzzle! The logic is not that hard but every step takes so much time, especially when not remembering I had already put 69... Now time to see how Simon manages to break it 🙃
Such a nifty puzzle. For once, what I was shouting at the screen wasn't so much "put that number in that cell" but "it's OK, you've got this, don't panic." Simon's intellect grokked the puzzle very quickly but his emotions didn't catch up until the final release of tension. Sort of a feline reaction: "(tentative sniff) ooh, this is interesting" coupled with "oh dear, this is new and strange and therefore a potential threat (backing off)" coupled with "meeewww! I can't!" and finally capped with "YESSS! I did it! (satisfied lick of paw)."
26:50 - A better way of saying this is that the left branch and the right branch combined produce 6, 7, 8 and 9 in Row 2, columns 1, 3, 4 and 5. And they all come through one of the two Box 5 tollbooths. So one of the tollbooths can be no greater than 6 (to get 7, 8 and 9), and the other one must be less than 6, in order to produce a 6. Since 1, 2 and 3 are used up, the lower gateway must be 4 and the upper two must be 5 and 6.
Enjoyed the puzzle, enjoyed the video afterward, laughing all the way from the point where it "broke" before even starting! Took me nearly 2 hours to do, so I'm getting better.
What an absolutely beautiful concept for a puzzle! The only sad thing is I imagine it's incredibly difficult to set more of these. But I would love to be proven wrong in that!
Garford already did some more in that stlye. Some easier, some more tricky. But definitely worth checking out. There are even some double-digit arrow sudokus popping up right now. Great stuff.
26:56 i think you could still have placed 5 in box 5 cell 8 from the given knowledge: you could try making 54 and then follow it with 59 which allows for 6 and 7 as tens digits following that.
I feel like the next puzzle is going to be this rules set, with a smattering of little killer clues around the grid, a single killer cage without a given total, and the knights move constraint. Maybe even a few Kropki dots with “not all dots are given”. And Simon will solve it in like 4 minutes...I’ve noticed that the more rules, the faster it goes sometimes.
Garford did some more in that stlye. They are definitely worth checking out. There are even some double-digit arrow sudokus popping up right now. Great stuff.
A very interesting puzzle, i understand why you would call it hard but as a beginner i would say this is still "approachable" its only hard in the sense that it requires a lot of work and therefore time but it doesn't require a lot (if any) complicated "sudoku math" which i find extremely hard to wrap my head around i found it very easy to follow along with just basic sudoku knowledge and the rule set. Thanks for the great video so glad i found this channel
I am totally and utterly gutted. I spent 5 hours on this puzzle and got through 90% of it until I just could not spot the duplicate number that would help me finish. Instead, I resorted to a bit of trial and error to get my last few numbers and thought I'd solved it until I checked this video and realised I'd made a mistake. So, I undid my trial and error bit until my grid looked identical to yours and followed along. The crucial clue I missed? Of course, it was the bloody 69.
I'm terrified to think of the puzzles Simon will be solving 2 years from now. Go back and look at what he was solving 2 years ago. The puzzles of the future will probably involve fusing atoms, time travel and AI.
9x9 Sudoku Rubik's Cube 👀
So... from what you’re implying, I gotta ask the setters, 3D Sudoku when?
@@liamboardman8776 That would be 9x9x9 Sudoku Rubik's Cube.
In 2 years the video length for an "easy" puzzle will be over an hour.
Hi there, this is me from 2023. You don't know the half of it.
I find that Simon misses simple numbers only to fill them in via a much harder method using the other side of the grid. Always fun to watch!
And that harder solution he finds is always “absolutely beautiful logic” 😂
Yeah this was the first video of Simon’s that I felt like I was 1 or 2 steps ahead of him the entire time
Yes always.
Yes. Sudoku as a last resort, but also the most complicated sudoku first. Lol. But the way he breaks open puzzles I could never catch him.
I've noticed that way way before and I have to say that it's just because it's not easy to do three different things at the same time: trying to figure what to do, trying to articulate what to do and do it. So I've stopped of telling him what he missed as that is what he does all the time and I've figured why he does it. At least he's stopped preaching about diligence because he's not diligent enough to do that anymore.
This madman has achieved the impossible: making the fact that 69 is a memorable number a key part of the puzzle! That's it, sudoku-setting memelords; time to pack it in and bow to our king.
Nah; now we need a 10x10 Sudoku with a 420 arrow.
yet he still didnt register the 68 straight away afterwards :D
Nice
Yea 43:30. He’s in sudoku mode afterwards so he didn’t register the 68 immediately
I wish I could like this comment more than once
"Spaghetti Junction". I see a new puzzle name on the horizon...
Ah, that name brings me back.
That traffic was amazing.
Now try our 7th app!
Spaghetti sudoku!
Oddly, Simon you could've left Garford's original colouring on the puzzle. Look at the leaves: dark colours are tens digits, lighter colours are units. He did the starting work for you! :)
Oh, that's handy of Garford!
as soon as i saw the original coloring i was certain there had to be a reason it was so particularly like that. they should've had a little more faith that the setter was doing things with intent!
I found this channel a couple of weeks ago and thought it was wizardry. Today i caught myself arguing with Simon. What's happening to me 🙈
Welcome to the club.
You will be assimilated...Resistance is futile...You're uniqueness will be added to the collective.
@Tejesh Patel 8472
gooble gobble one of us
You weren't wrong, neither in thinking it's wizardry, nor in arguing with Simon. Welcome to the fold.
> Can choose any two digit number in the example
> Chooses 69
Nice
It was a memorable number ... for some reason
@@RKelleyCook 😏
I wanted to like this but its at 69, so...
*imaginary like*
The digit 45 would have been more fitting... Don't think Simon let us in on the secret once this puzzle...
You're currently at 96 likes by the way.
When I first started following this channel, it was very interesting for me that there were several types of sudoku puzzles other than classic sudoku, like sandwich, x-sum, killer, knight, thermo, arrow, etc. After a while, those puzzles started to seem like standard sudoku. Nowadays the rulesets of the puzzles are getting completely crazy.
That's what we call progress 😂
I started to feel like "regular" Sudoku is just boring nowadays...
@@MLWJ1993 I actually get bored when all of the clues are solved and there's only sudoku left to do, still finish them but meh hahaha
The sheer number of creative variants of a Sudoku is insane. Props to the setter!
Simon solving a crazily glitched version of Nokia Snake? Hell yeah!
Our illustrious host needs to start rating the puzzles according to the Bobbins count. This would make it easy to discern the difficulty - a puzzle with a bobbins count of 10 would be of average difficulty I think.
I wonder how Simon's videos are not demonetized with his use of such profane words
🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵🧵?
I wanted to like your comment but right now you’re on 69 which I don’t want to change given this video
I would assume that the number of bobbins would be positively correlated to the video length, as the length can also be used to estimate difficulty. Perhaps we could determine an average time per bobbins.
Simon’s quote of the day: ‘69 is a memorable number!’
But then he doesn't follow it back down the branch and fill in the previous number 🤦♂️
@@PhilBoswell ofc classic Simon 😂
This quip almost immediately became an inadvertent mnemonic device!
Yes it is.
Especially for mathematicians: “If you take all of the natural numbers between 1 and 9 and then look at the divisors of all of them and add them up, it adds up to 69. Adding up numbers like this is a very fun and common thing in number theory.” (Grant from 3Blue1Brown).
@@PhilBoswell Funnily, it was a memorable number a couple minutes afterwards
That was a fantastic puzzle. Congratulations to the setter.
I'm sure you've had this requested many times and I'm not sure if you guys ever did this. But how about one day you guys both blind solve the same puzzle? To see how different your might approach the same problem. It'd be fascinating.
The problem is that one of them usually tests the puzzle to make sure it’s a good candidate for the other to blind solve. That said, they have occasionally both done a solve on the same puzzle, usually when Simon found it hard going with his logic only method; I think “Tatooine Sunset by Philip Newman” was one example.
@@Bin216 Yeah, but that wasn't blind. Simon solved it after seeing Mark's solve. But they do have testers that could send a puzzle to both of them before either see the result.
There have been the occasional one. I remember something about a 0-8 sudoku from last summer (before they had the new software) and the classic quote from Mark, "Sorry, missed that, I'm just not used to seeing the number 9 represent a zero because I'm so used to seeing it represent a nine". And Simon had done some obscure fancy logic and/or maths, and colouring, on the puzzle to solve it a different way. End of June if memory serves, if you fancy going back.
@@elizabethgrosvenor153 I remember that one! It was a killer cage. Simon added '1' to every digit in the puzzle, and '1' per box to all the cage totals. Then when he was finished, he reverted it all back. It was the kind of thing you wouldn't think of, but when he explains it, you're amazed at the simplicity.
@@danriggs815 yes, I remember that now! I may need to go back and find it...
These videos are addicting
Once I watched a video 10 minutes before I had class..... I was 20 minutes 2 late cos I forgot
They ought to offer counselling to deal with the addiction.
They sure are... I'm 16-years-old doing my GCSEs and pretty stressed out as you could imagine. I like to fall asleep listening to these videos because they help me relax lol
@@114erin I've fallen asleep to a couple of their vids, but some have had the opposite reaction... thinking I could nod off to them, they ended up keeping me transfixed for 50mins+....
Good luck with the gcse's. Tough year to have to take them, eh. As you appear to be the kind of person who can chill out to some blinding logic, I'm gonna guess you'll do pretty well though, so don't stress it too much.
@@wossaaaat i keep the videos unwatched until I start to drift off, then open one up with my eyes already drooping haha.
Also, thanks! I don't see any point complaining about the GCSEs this year so I try to just get on with revising and moving forward. Back at school next Monday to soon take the exams. Fingers crossed!
Anyway, I'm off to sleep now so I suppose that means time for me to "watch" the newest CtC video that I haven't seen yet
"This feels a bit like nori nori... Sorry sori" - missed opportunity.
Nice puzzle from El Garford, and nice solve
"It's always in the last place you look!"
one year into my lockdown/covid unemployment and here you are every day, still calming me down and encouraging me to persevere and do hard things. you're wonderful.
that's great to hear! Don't give up hope!
I wonder if Mark would have started off by pencil marking all the possibilities!
I was just imagening all the 1 through 9 sets, as the fruit between the tens-green leafs.
That was actually super helpful in the tens digits 😀
I started trying to do that with the 10s digits before realizing it was madness. I ended up just pencilling in the minimum value, which was quite useful.
@@mikepictor I did mark all. Not sure how much it helped, but it got some numbers on the grid.
@@TomCee53 had a panic attack because that's my name
The wonderful power of explanation, when I try this myself I don't get anywhere, when Simon's doing this I see everything before he does.
1:04:22 - It took me a *long* time, but strangely, I never felt that I was completely stuck. It was just a slow, methodical process that led me to the end.
Incredible puzzle!
How you time marking a time past the end of the video haha
@@MrEst97 his goals are beyond our understanding.
I got extremely stuck until I realized that since 2 digit numbers must be increasing, I could rule 9 out of r5c6.
I just love the new photos you've been adding onto your thumbnails recently. Your content is much appreciated, guys
I nearly didn't attempt this, because I'm tired and it looked like it might be monstrous, but the thought that I might watch the video and regret not doing it first just drew me in. I'm so glad I did. I wouldn't call it easy, but I found it surprisingly approachable, but I had to concentrate really hard not to mis-scan when looking for repeats. Like Simon, I shaded the tens, but I also pencil marked their upper and lower bounds (by starting with 1 in box jobbie, and working out, then starting at 9 at the leaves and working down). This made it relatively easy to spot where there were pressure points. Whenever I placed a digit, I adjusted the bounds of affected cells, and it all came together nicely.
I'm amazed at how many incredibly good debuts we've seen on the channel over the last year. I hope the trend continues after the world starts returning to normal.
You've refoliaged the tree -- indeed if you look back at the original colouring it's identical (modulo the colour changes near the base) to what you've drawn
That was intentionally done by Garford, even the dirt on the ground for the "root" has different colours for the unit and tens digits. :)
Wow. 42 minutes. I rarely am able to solve one, or even figure out the break-in. Loved this.
I often try to play along with the sudokus shown. This is the frist I managed to complete, took me 164 minutes though. But WHAT A SOLVE, WHAT A PUZZLE.
I Love this puzzle, and I love the rule of not repeating the 2-digits numbers to resolve it!
This is the first time I tried it but I find it really fun and engaging.
I lose focus and patience quickly, but I like to keep my brain busy either way, so I opened up the puzzle on another tab and I'd start to work on it, then when I got stuck I'd come back to the video to see Simon's progress, follow his conclusions a bit, or when he brought attention to a box I'd pause the video and tab back to the puzzle and check it out!
It was almost like doing the puzzle with Simon giving me the tips, ideas and confirmations I needed to keep going and managing to finish this absolute numbers work-out, and I loved it! ♥
Thrilled to see this! Looking forward to the solve!
Had the seed of a similar idea (just straight up thermo's with 2-digit numbers), so I'm super excited to see this!
I went from liking to do some easy sudoku's to listening to these two man solving sudoku's for hours on end. To today subscribing. What rabbit hole am I going down? I've sat here for the past 4 hours watching 2 men solve sudoku's... Guess this will be how I will spend my evening from now on.
Computer Science majors, he does a great job explaining how depth first search traverses a tree for 10s places.
There is a large crack filling the puzzle. I think it is broken.
He's a lumberjack and he's okay. He sudokus all night and he sudokus all day. Cracking puzzle for the arboretum!
"Mark thought we shouldn't include the colour because its confusing". *Proceeds to fill in the colours roughly as the original puzzle*
Wow, Good eye! Garford colored all the tens digits but Simon enjoys coloring too much
You're right! Using eight different colours in four arbitrary sets of two is equally as confusing as using only two colours. How could I not have noticed that?
@@CSmyth- well, the "4 arbitrary sets" are not that aribitrary: as far as I can tell, the tens digit is always darker shade, ones digits lighter shade (in most cases of same color, though there are exceptions). But yeah, 1 set is easier that 4.
And he didn't put tomato sauce on the spaghetti junction, big disappointment!
I have to say I ADORED this puzzle. I have a bit of a method to choosing which puzzles I try and usually if I see a puzzle where Simon goes longer than 40 minutes I know I have no chance but because this had such an interesting idea behind it I went ahead and tried it and was not disappointed. I took to this concept so well and really had a fun time figuring out the logic. This variant it probably not possible all that often but it was so much fun and I really hope people toy with it and we see more of this idea because I love it. Great solve and great choice.
105 minutes! A quite difficult puzzle, but I never felt like I was completely stuck on it. Just really methodical logic. Great setting!
Loved this so much. The first cryptic I've solved. So satisfying. Thank you Simon for being there evertime I got a bit stuck.
Just got used to thermometers and here comes a new variant
"Creating a 69, which is a very memorable number for some reason" 43:30
OMG I normally don't even come close to their times but this time I think I actually won, my time was 45:40. I've done every puzzle in their Thermo Sudoku app and it's probably the variant I'm most proficient at. I immediately marked the min and max for each 10s place cell. This gave me a huge time advantage over Simon because I didn't get tripped up by the 3 in row2, and I think Simon also spent a lot of time reproving what the bounds of certain cells had to be, or not cascading the information to the surrounding branches. Simon gained back almost all of that time though by being much better at spotting the normal sudoku logic. What a fantastic puzzle though, I really hope to see more that use this ruleset!
Oh man I completely forgot about the "numbers along the tree can't repeat" rule. I got pretty far before I was lost and had to turn on the video. Really nice puzzle.
That puzzle's opening is definitely better than it's ending, even beyond the 'at some point most sudoku becomes an exercise in polishing things off' due to the all numbers on the tree being unique rule. But the opening made the ending worth it.
That was a bit tens
let the viewers be the ones to decide that, shall we ? :-)
My partner and I loved doing this solve together! Stopped our timer at 83:30 with the solution, but we really did need all four eyes and two brains to do it! I'm really enjoying all the new variants coming out, and this one was so interesting and enjoyable! Well done Garford!
Thank you very much. I love to hear you enjoyed it.
For all of Simon's genius, sometimes I just wonder. He asks if there is an easier way to find these particular digits.
And I am saying, "Why not just highlight the digit you are looking for?" Very simple.
People telling they've never been this early are a bunch of liars! Just admit you're this early for every single CTC video, as I am! :)
memorable moment...
Im over a month late then. (Wink wink)
Looks at length of video, looks at time available before going to night shift, looks further at adding time from break on said shift.... Watches the next evening as a reward.. Great solve as usual.
That was a phenomenal puzzle! I love how each individual step was fairly simple, yet the overall puzzle was satisfyingly complex. I bet there's some interesting logic to be had combining geometry with the parity of the tens/ones digits, but it will take a much better mathematician than I to figure that out!
I really enjoy in some of the more…”different” puzzles or ones with logic he hasn’t seen before (like the miracle puzzle) the first bit of the video is Simon convincing himself the puzzle can actually work, and the rest is him continually taken aback at how it continues to work.
Revisiting this one today. I would absolutely love to see some more puzzles in this style.
This is the first one I fully solved without having to wait for Simon to show me a weak point or bit of logic I missed. His approach was much cleaner than mine (I resorted to lots of pencil marks to figure out potential ranges for 10's), but I still did it in a bit under 2.5 hours, which is good for me (I don't stay focused very well).
His agony at the idea of keeping track of the used numbers....I'm with him. I had a spreadsheet open on my other monitor to grey out numbers as I used them.
7:58 "I've refoliaged my tree now" LOL!
45:20
I fixed the 6 and the 7 long before you did, the next number on the branch was a 69(nice) and the ones digit of the previous was an 8, the only 2 options therefore were 68 or 78, considering it had to be lower than 69, the answer was 68, sorry if I did a bad job explaining.
One of my favorites so far... so much more than just a Sudoku!
Good move starting by shading the tens digits (I do like that we get to choose our own color for it, thanks for leaving that up to us). But just after it would have been great to take a page from Mark's book, and pencil in, well, not all the possibilities for the tens digits, but at least the minimal values to start. That led me straight to the traffic jam in R2 and a number of useful deductions that followed, and also saved time of repeatedly proving that a tens digit far down a branch couldn't be some small number. Reached the 30-35min point in the video solve quickly that way. Of course, for the actual sudoku work I bogged down, took me several times longer to do the 'last 15 min' of Simon's solve. But it got there! My technique for tracking the uniqueness when the grid was mostly full was to mark the ones place following any 7 with one color, following 8 with another, etc., which worked decently.
WOW, I actually finished this! I very nearly gave up and watched the video to see the solution, but after staring at it for much too long I finally found the next step that I'd been missing and I was able to work my way through it and solve it. *Extremely* tough to scan this one, as you have to go looking through the whole tree for two digit numbers to use the negative constraint (i.e. the same 2 digit number cannot appear more than once in the entire tree).
Took me 2 days and I really wasn't paying attention to the clock at all so I have no idea how long it took, but just finishing a puzzle that had a video nearly an hour long feels like a huge accomplishment, especially when it's so complex as this...
Must admit I got a real kick out of watching Simon frantically look for the negative constraints, as well as his increasing consternation at having to use that constraint. It made me feel a little bit better about having found them tough to find.
"Box umm... box jobby here" love the highly technical term.
Awesome debut Garford
So simple, yet so complicated!! I was actually able to follow this, surprisingly. I think this is actually approachable. Looking forward to seeing a forest grow from this seed!
this was such a fun puzzle to watch you solve! I didn't even attempt to solve it myself this time, but I loved following along.
This is a top 5 puzzle to watch. Very well done.
Great puzzle and not over difficult
Afforded Simon to crack the not too easy opening and run round in circles at the end
Very nice, great solve! I noticed something though. If you go back to the original colored-in image of the puzzle at 1:11, the tens places are all already colored in for you. They are all the colors that are not pastel. Clever!
28:30 Looking at 9's in box 5, it could never be in r5c6, as it breaks the next 2 digit number starting with 2, this places it in column 4, eliminating it from r1c4. Working back along the thermo, it eliminates 7 from being in either r4c4and r4c5. That forces r5c4 to be 789 which helps eliminate it from a 10's digit anywhere in box 4.
took me a little over an hour to solve. Would have never dreamed of solving something like this only a month or two ago. Thanks for the sudoku content!!
Genius!! The puzzle creator ... and the solver!!
43:56 - found that coloring 1/2/3/4 vs. 5/6/7/8/9 was surprisingly useful
Very nice puzzle and straightforward ruleset
Yet another incredible puzzle!
The logic is not that hard but every step takes so much time, especially when not remembering I had already put 69...
Now time to see how Simon manages to break it 🙃
I love that idea of a 2-digit thermo! And also that it is not too hard. Just need time to follow all pathes of the tree.
The logic in this puzzle is incredible satisfying
I really like finding the 3 in r2 and the flurry of 1s 2s and 3s that follow it, a really satisfying opening
loving the improvements of the video thumbnails!
love from Indonesia~
that's not a tree, that's an entire Yggdrasill
Simon looking for repeats towards the end there was honestly so amusinggg
The searching for repeats part was honestly the least fun, it's just so tricky to scan for them when they can be pointing in all whichy ways.
Such a nifty puzzle. For once, what I was shouting at the screen wasn't so much "put that number in that cell" but "it's OK, you've got this, don't panic." Simon's intellect grokked the puzzle very quickly but his emotions didn't catch up until the final release of tension.
Sort of a feline reaction: "(tentative sniff) ooh, this is interesting" coupled with "oh dear, this is new and strange and therefore a potential threat (backing off)" coupled with "meeewww! I can't!" and finally capped with "YESSS! I did it! (satisfied lick of paw)."
That random "bad feeling" Star Wars quote... and he was even right with it!
26:50 - A better way of saying this is that the left branch and the right branch combined produce 6, 7, 8 and 9 in Row 2, columns 1, 3, 4 and 5. And they all come through one of the two Box 5 tollbooths. So one of the tollbooths can be no greater than 6 (to get 7, 8 and 9), and the other one must be less than 6, in order to produce a 6. Since 1, 2 and 3 are used up, the lower gateway must be 4 and the upper two must be 5 and 6.
Need one more of these! This was just amazing
The ending put that song by the Connells in my head ^^
This one was amazing to watch and view. very nicely done.
Loved this puzzle, managed it in 52 minutes, which i'm proud of
Enjoyed the puzzle, enjoyed the video afterward, laughing all the way from the point where it "broke" before even starting!
Took me nearly 2 hours to do, so I'm getting better.
48:04 "is there a simple wy of figuring this out or not..." - simon, who has the power to select and highlight all of a certain number
Thanks Simon. I really enjoyed that one!!
17:00 "that one cant be a one, one is in one of those, now im just ONEdering!" haha
I found it very helpful to think of this puzzle as essentially being a slow thermo on the 10s digits with the 1s just adding extra constraints.
Very nice new puzzle variant, made a great video and was interesting to think about doing more of
This was a fantastic puzzle! Very much enjoyed 🙌🏾
What an absolutely beautiful concept for a puzzle! The only sad thing is I imagine it's incredibly difficult to set more of these. But I would love to be proven wrong in that!
Garford already did some more in that stlye. Some easier, some more tricky. But definitely worth checking out.
There are even some double-digit arrow sudokus popping up right now. Great stuff.
Absolutely beautiful puzzle!
Funtastic!!! Im all ready to get an app full of these!
26:56 i think you could still have placed 5 in box 5 cell 8 from the given knowledge: you could try making 54 and then follow it with 59 which allows for 6 and 7 as tens digits following that.
I really like this variant. Can haz more? :-)
I feel like the next puzzle is going to be this rules set, with a smattering of little killer clues around the grid, a single killer cage without a given total, and the knights move constraint. Maybe even a few Kropki dots with “not all dots are given”.
And Simon will solve it in like 4 minutes...I’ve noticed that the more rules, the faster it goes sometimes.
Yes, it is, much more eliminations possible from more rules then from fewer rules.
I will watch any video, on any topic, with an enthusiastic narrator.
I've been hoping to see a 2 digit thermometer for a while. I wasn't sure how it would work though. This was very well done.
Garford did some more in that stlye. They are definitely worth checking out.
There are even some double-digit arrow sudokus popping up right now.
Great stuff.
@@darkluigi254 ive seen a few double digit arrows. Single digits but double digit totals
Oh no. CTC have fallen under Hermaeus Mora's influence!
I used to be a solver like you till I took an arrow to the knee
88 minutes. A great addition to the list of variants!
It's great watching an old video and seeing how the software has changed!
Not so great seeing Simon completely ignore a 3 in the corner though.
Wow! Amazing stuff. Love your enthusiasm
A very interesting puzzle, i understand why you would call it hard but as a beginner i would say this is still "approachable" its only hard in the sense that it requires a lot of work and therefore time but it doesn't require a lot (if any) complicated "sudoku math" which i find extremely hard to wrap my head around i found it very easy to follow along with just basic sudoku knowledge and the rule set. Thanks for the great video so glad i found this channel
I am totally and utterly gutted. I spent 5 hours on this puzzle and got through 90% of it until I just could not spot the duplicate number that would help me finish. Instead, I resorted to a bit of trial and error to get my last few numbers and thought I'd solved it until I checked this video and realised I'd made a mistake.
So, I undid my trial and error bit until my grid looked identical to yours and followed along. The crucial clue I missed? Of course, it was the bloody 69.