Oh, thank goodness! Whenever a puzzle is described as "easy", it almost certainly guarantees I can't solve it, no matter the time or effort, despite solving other puzzles with twice the solve time by one of you. Got this one without throwing in the towel (though I will admit to a hairy minute in the early-middle).
A newbie here: It was very indeed pretty begginer-friendly. After watching a few videos here on the channel I felt like this is the one that I can do. And indeed, I made it in 15 minutes. It is a pretty good entry point
That's how I started, too: after watching for long enough, if a puzzle was described as 1* difficulty and looked interesting I'd try my hand. After a few successes I'd try a couple of harder ones, and suddenly I've solved a 4* Dorlir puzzle! I don't know that I ever would have solved any of them, even the easier ones, without the skills I picked up by having watched this channel for long enough.
I've been playing the easier puzzles on this channel for a couple years, and was happy that I clued onto the coloring strategy pretty immediately, but I would say it wasn't trivial for me. For a digitless miracle puzzle, it's VERY approachable. Loved it!
Quite a newbie - and used a little colouring but in a very different way. Started on he diagonal, seeing that the bottom right 2 squares had to be the same, and got the 1,1,1,1,2,3 reasonably quickly. Moved on to the 2,3 pairs after that and that's where I started colouring.
I ❤ to see the easier puzzles!! Your engaging personality still makes the puzzles entertaining to watch! And allows me to include myself in the Sudoku solver community!
Solved it in 17:06 :-) What a lovely puzzle! And indeed I have to say I am very glad that there are some shorter videos lately, with just as enjoyable puzzles as the longer ones... But which are slightly less compromising on my need for enough sleep...
I have tried so many puzzles on here and never been able to finish them. I'm so happy to say I've finished my 1st cracking the cryptic puzzle!!! Very approachable. Thankyou so much
I myself think this only deserves a 1* difficulty if you are kind of used to variant sudoku - if you've never heared of coloring (or the law of leftovers, which put you in the same place in this puzzle), you might not be able to solve this one. But what a lovely little puzzle that was :)
An internet search of "Law..." Does show sudoku variants at the top of page one so that must be correct. "Lore..." however makes it sound like all the leftovers are going on an epic quest! Nothing wrong with that either!
I finished in 5:18 minutes. This was a nice friendly puzzle. The break-in involving the long diagonal felt very cool to spot and continued being satisfying from there. I tend to enjoy these short and sweet ones a lot. As always, it feels good to beat Simon's time. Great Puzzle!
You always look so happy when you start a video, Simon! It really puts a smile on my face too! I'm not entirely new to variant sudokus, but when I was, I would have struggled with this puzzle for sure!
It's late and my eyes are now saggin'. But I had to come get a quick gag in. I thank you, dear host For that nice verbal toast To my mommy, the great Nana Dragon. Happy birthday, Mom, and congratulations on your progress beating cancer!
Found the puzzle very challenging. Difficulty with the coloring as I learned you can't randomly start coloring, or they will overlap and create confusion. Eventually I figured to color everything in a single row, then branch from there. After solving the 1's, I had the entire grid colored before I entered another digit, so the entire puzzle came together instantly and excitedly at the end.
Loved this one. I like when a less advanced solver like myself gets a chance to actually solve it lol. I also love watching you solve the really hard ones though so it's a win for me either way
Rules: 02:53 Let's Get Cracking: 04:47 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Three In the Corner: 1x (14:05) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Lovely: 4x (10:49, 11:59, 13:44, 18:07) Ah: 4x (03:23, 09:24, 10:17, 14:00) Beautiful: 3x (17:16, 17:37, 17:37) Brilliant: 3x (02:07, 17:21, 17:23) The Answer is: 2x (13:42, 15:26) By Sudoku: 2x (06:12, 12:48) Cake!: 2x (02:09, 02:51) What on Earth: 1x (11:19) Sorry: 1x (14:54) In the Spotlight: 1x (14:05) Break the Puzzle: 1x (15:38) Shouting: 1x (14:57) In Fact: 1x (01:29) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Ten (6 mentions) Three (19 mentions) Green, Blue (20 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Column (9) - Row (7) FAQ: Q1: You missed something! A1: That could very well be the case! Human speech can be hard to understand for computers like me! Point out the ones that I missed and maybe I'll learn! Q2: Can you do this for another channel? A2: I've been thinking about that and wrote some code to make that possible. Let me know which channel you think would be a good fit!
OOH cute, finally one I can do.. 12:31 after some tiny back tracking when I made a wrong assumption and found out it was the wrong one.. That was very enjoyable! thank you!
I solved in 10:32. The very first thing I considered was the top left diagonal being limited to one digit, and then the double ? diagonal. Then I proceded to do the coloring exercise.
Definitely needed two attempts to solve this one, myself -- first attempt was about 30-40 minutes of various coloring attempts with some minor deductions but no noticeable progress, but the second attempt only needed about 9:21 because I realized that once I'd placed three colors along the largest diagonal clue, three different colors necessarily sum to >=6 (on a diagonal that cannot sum to >9) which allowed me to solve the first digit, which cracked the rest of the puzzle wide open.
at 15:03 I nearly fell out of my chair, I did not expect you would know the old memes! (Do quote the old memes at me. I was there when they were written but they're still funny)
You are right, this had enough logical complexity to be truly interesting, but I still solved it in less than 15 minutes. Very enjoyable puzzle, and I enjoyed the video, of course, Simon!
I feel like the people who get upset when Simon "solves" during the rules need to lighten up, since sometimes rules require specific examples to understand and Simon is explaining them for our benefit; which if anything, usually takes him longer to solve than it otherwise would (and I know people get upset far more over that), so it's not like you're in competition with him.
I agree with you. Solving a good sudoku is like reading an excellent book - it is not spoiled if you know some of the plot points before you start if the book is truly excellent. So seeing a bit of the logic explained during the explanation of the rules themselves does not give everything away, or even, in a truly good puzzle, anything of importance.
Sure thing. If you really don’t want any spoilers, just read the rules. If you get them, start the solve. If you don’t, have Simon explain them to you with some helpful examples.
I did the breakin a little bit different. I started with the main diagonal and after some deduction I saw that the top two cells could not include a 1, so it had to be a 2-3-pair and everything else in the diagonal became 1. Then worked on 23s vs 456. Did it in just over 20 mins with only a little bit of coloring. Very nice puzzle indead.
I would like to say this puzzle is a fantastic way to prove anybody of any backround, anywhere in the world can click the link below and try it because the puzzle is not judging anyone. Be yourself and appreciate we all have our opinions. Take care ❤
I think if you had to solve this without coloring it would be more than 1 star..I found it easy but if I had to do it on paper with just a pencil it probably would have been more difficult.
solved in 8:48. I certainly took more time to think about the little killer clue on the negative diagonal than I could've, but it all worked together as I did some grid coloring for the puzzle.
I'm embarrassed to say that I failed the puzzle overall. BUT amazingly, I independently chose the same colors as Simon, and I consider that a huge win!
Solved it in under 8 minutes, and that was despite making a mistake that caused me to invert the place of 2s and 3s. I did a hybrid of Simon’s approach looking at the geometry for unique colors and actually considering how the clues work, and the latter made the former much more useful. How can the long diagonal work if it sums to a single digit? Even if it is as high as 9, it forces the identity of purple, which in turn gives you the identity of blue and green, and orange too shortly thereafter.
Solved it in under 8 minutes, and that was despite making a mistake that caused me to invert the place of 2s and 3s. I did a hybrid of Simon’s approach looking at the geometry for unique colors and actually considering how the clues work, and the latter made the former much more useful. How can the long diagonal work if it sums to a single digit? Even if it is as high as 9, it forces the identity of purple, which in turn gives you the identity of blue and green, and orange too shortly thereafter.
I was very surprised and delighted to see I made the deductions in this puzzle in the exact same order. (Though, I used letters - much more color blind friendly. )
11:09 for me. Got stuck for two minutes or so until I could prove the long diagonal to my satisfaction, then everything went relatively smoothly. Colouring helped immensely.
By the principle of Chekhov's Gun, the ?? clue _had_ to be 10 ..... Why else would it be mentioned in the rules that a ? as a units digit could stand for 0? Unless that's a deliberate bluff, and it's really 11 or 12 .....
95% of the time or more, a clue of ">8" will mean exactly 9, but in a non-trivial minority of cases it won't be. Some setters specify "digits cannot repeat in cages" even in puzzles where that would not be possible under normal sudoku rules. Sometimes there _isn't_ a 3 in any corner. You may feel you can safely make an assumption based on the laws of narrative, but that isn't solving the sudoku.
Deliberate bluffs are quite common amongst sudoku setters that have been featured multiple times on the channel. I imagine there is something satisfying about making Simon laugh...
I'm reasonably proficient (can usually do a 6-7 star puzzle on the CTC app without hints, if I give myself a few days) and I'm not sure I would have found my way into this one.
