The birthdays be getting out of control

Real quick solve once I realized that the 7 defined the column, and in general any single digit defines the full column. 7:42

Seriously impressive vocals and guitar, that was beautiful!!!

Amusingly, I got caught on the exact same bit at the end. I ended up having to color and finding that a 18 touched both colors of 24, so had to be an 8. Totally didn’t see one of them touched a 9. I swear I looked over them all 10 times! 😂

I got 14:22! Very interesting puzzle

Proud of my performance here! I spotted the 165 constraint immediately, then fooled around to prove the low-middle-high snookering from 1-5-9 puzzles, then figured out the descent. Really fun how it just completely falls apart after that, I've never filled so many squares back to back!

I always start wordle with POINT BUSHY GLARE 15 distinct alphabets✅ Covers all vowels✅ No lesser used letters like X, Z etc.

Love the the music and the poetry readings when you do them.

That puzzle was really a tripper. And it did keep me on my flipper. ...s. But before it was done I had mountains of fun Saying "Simon, examine your zipper!"

Simon ruling 9 out of the centre circle in box 8 by going through a longish process by looking at the effects on the other zipper lines rather than using the pencil marked 9s in box 2 is such a Simon thing to do.

this took him almost three hours? this must be serious

CTC is my sleep aid of choice and mental health booster. The puzzles are engaging enough to stop intrusive and racing thoughts. I need to focus and concentrate to follow Simon and Marks mental gymnastics. The way you deliver the logic is kind amd sweet and predictable and safe (meant in the best way possible). People often confuse peacefulness as being boring. When your mind is constantly in chaos you appreciate peace. I catch up on what I missed the next day, especially when I need to calm down and focus my thoughts. Thank you Simon and Mark.

I finished in 103 minutes. I really bungled the ending and wasted 50 minutes trying to find the end, only to realize I made a foolish error. I did the beginning quite quickly and colored the Yin Yang in 16 minutes. As I switched to even odd colors, things were going great until my error where I missed that r2c2 was already even. Missing that wrongly led my brain to put r3c1 to be odd, destroying my 6 even total. I carried on not knowing what I had done, causing me to furiously try to calculate then ending, before trying bifurcation as a last resort where I finally noticed my error. I spotted my error 95 minutes in, so I could have saved a lot of time. Otherwise, this was a very good puzzle that had some really cool logic within its ruleset. I like minesweeper rulesets and it worked great with the Yin Yang and Parity clues. Great Puzzle!

I lucked out with "Rince" as a starting word. Took me a minute, because I didn't think "er" or "est" would be allowed.

Simon, beautiful rendition of The Boxer! Thank you.

Beautiful opening song today. Paul Simon was also recently on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert; wonderful performance.

If you're taking recommendations, I'll add one. It's called "Bombe"

This is so woothing

If I can do it, it's no more than 2 stars (and I was able to do it)

I always love when one of the videos starts with guitar

37:33 for me nice puzzle

22:12 for me, with a break-in that looked very different from Simon's. Mine involved zipper logic plus sudoku* on high digits gradually reducing the maximum values that could appear on various dots until one was absolutely forced. Really enjoyable puzzle! *Thus, why it looked different from Simon's solve. 😉

25:42 Some very interesting surprises turned up by the geometry on this one. Very clever.

Again I am happy with myself for solving this one! The secret for that is to persist just a little bit and not give up so easily! Thank you Mark! 😀

To me this one was easy. Altought I made a mistake (twice) in the line at box 9, but it was almost at the end so I needed to go back just a little! Thanks 😊

It is a beautiful puzzle. I have been enjoying the Miracle Sudoku app very much, and have become quite used to looking for nonconsecutive situations (even in puzzles where that is NOT part of the rules, which can slow one down a lot in solving). Thanks for this. Can I do this puzzle? Probably. Could I do it without watching your video? Maybe. But I'm very glad to have watched it, and to have the chance to watch you twice a day, Mark (Wordle) and also on Patreon. Thanks for all that you and Simon give to this channel!

At 16:49 it is indeed true that you can't put 6 on a line that adds up to 6, but that isn't relevant here because the line adds up to 7. The reason you can't put a 6 in R3C1 is because it would place a 1 in R1C5 but there already is a 1 in that column, as part of a 1/2 pair that could have been resolved a while back.

Hi!!! Loooved the guitar intro, you have to sing more please! Greatings from Chile, big ctc fan here! 😊

something i did to reduce the administrative overhead: i marked all zipper line cells with COLOUR to indicate the maximum values

I was absolutely not shouting at you

I can confirm I had a chocolate cup cake on my birthday. Thank you Simon for the birthday wish! When your brain does 100mph all day every day it's nice to have it focus on something

Finished in 64:22. I totally forgot about the consecutive digits constraint and made a very bad assumption which eventually lead me to a dead end after more than 30 minutes. After restarting with the constraint in mind, it still took me a while to figure out the solution. Mind the consecutive digits constraint! Fun puzzle!

huge fan of the outro

Finished in 19:54 with help from the video (I watched half, left for work, and then did the puzzle by myself once I came home).

Thanks for the intro. The boxer is about the only song I know in English.

i'm so tired rn all my mental maths took several attempts... 37:48

25:13 for me

I solved this almost entirely in a notepad. Wrote out my logic up to the point where I knew the pattern each column must conform to. Spent an *embarrassingly* long time looking at the grid before realizing the given 7 determines a whole column, then wrote that in. Then worked out the possibilities for the cages, figured out there was only 1, and wrote the remaining 72 digits directly into the grid

I finished in 101 minutes. I almost gave up on this puzzle and watched the video. I was starting to watch the video until Simon pointed that the puzzle is very symmetrical and should repeat logic. I already had down the break-in in the middle, so using that logic just rotated was the key to me finishing. Great Puzzle!

Oh i love braid! One of my favorite puzzle experiences

braid can be a mind bender. animal well is also really good. either one of those might require some dexterity and fast thinking.

could that title be screaming at me any louder? 22:15

You FINALLY remembered the rule of "digits on the line must appear a prime number of times" ... at 14:25, you could have filled in most of the rest of the line (4 can not be on the line twice, so R5C4 must be 3, etc) ... it would have made the whole thing much easier 😁

Two roping puzzles in one day.

It would be brilliant if the rules stated "white dots separate consecutive digits, black dots separate digits in 2:1 ratio, digits separated by V sum up to 5, digits separated by X sum up to 10, all possible dots, V's and X's are given"

This took me 5, because I thought comparitives weren't allowed for the final answer. Deftly done, Mark! 👏👏👏

I haven't even looked at the puzzle, just read the rules, already the mathematician in me is raging at the "1 counts as prime" rule. Have to remember this is just a sudoku puzzle; number theory need not apply. Calming down... starting puzzle...

16:00 for me

was stuck with only one digit for over an hour... then I remembered that there was a kingsmove restraint 🤦‍♂ 94:05

You should definitely play Braid and also a French game called Tsioque (pronounced like "chalk"). I won't spoil it, but it's incredibly cute and clever with a nice twist ending.