Thank you so much for the lovely solve, Simon! You may have forgotten, but I believe you mentioned in an unrelated email thread a while ago that you were a tiny bit jealous that Mark got to do all of the Clovers... you may have been going through a period of very long challenging solves at the time! Thus this puzzle, which I'm glad to see had just a tiny bit of a kick to it. :)
Clover, I would love to see you come up with a puzzle that has this exact ruleset, and it would fall under the category of "Approachable,, but very difficult."
Well, clover definitely has a gift for setting puzzles where the continuation is signalled so strongly. Solved this in 18m52s. One of the rare cases I am quite faster than the video solve.
Absolutely beautiful Clover. You did him up like a kipper. Simon's predilection to avoid Sudoku prevented him from noticing the 3 in the corner for some time. Props.
Sometimes you just need to embrace your inner Goodliffe! I worked out the options for the 2 pairs of thermos immediately, pencil marked them and was finished in 11 minutes. I was done at exactly the point that Simon was saying he was not prepared to mark all the options. 🙂 I think Clover knew this and was playing with you!
I mean the chances are not low. There are 4 corners and only 9 numbers. Yes i know the math is a lot more complicated, but my simple math still gives you a ~40% chance which is not that little.
Clover you are evil 😈 playing to Simon's weaknesses, and I love it! 😂 I played it working out just how limited the options on the thermos are and found the puzzle much easier to solve that what Simon went through. Well played Clover! 👌
Yay new word - shibboleth- Emily and David will also be happy for that! Bobbins has made its way into my exclamations ( replacing a few that needed to be replaced 😉)
Happy to have solved in just under 2 hours...love it when I don't have to rely on listening to Simon to progress...although watching Simon after I've finished is entertainment! Fairly new at this and I take breaks and come back when I can. Maybe someday it'll be 20 minutes, but in the meantime I've got life interrupting sudoku time. I'll take it!
Hi Simon, glad you liked my little picture! There was a CTC video in May, I think the long puzzle which nobody had solved before, where you mentioned Fawlty Towers and I just couldn't stop thinking what a convenient setting it would make for a Fawlty story!
If this ruleset comes up again in the future feel like it should be set this up with purple thermos if the software makes that possible, since that's the conventional color for renban lines and the clues in this combine the restrictions of thermos and renbans...
Loved this video and solve and puzzle!! Your reactions to the possible reasons why Clover suggested this for you in particular were amusing and fun, Simon. Thanks so much!
I love how you keep the integrity of the puzzle by not pencilmarking. I started with looking for low and high thermometers but got stuck. First one I tried after watching for three years!
suspecting that Clover would have exploited Simon's resistance for extensive pencil marking, that's exactly what I started with on the two sets of 4-length thermos, which broke the puzzle wide open. well played, Clover, and thanks for the fun puzzle! Simon, entertaining as always, thanks.
OMG. I've finished in 15:10. I can't believe. First time I solve a somewhat hard one of this channel, without help from the video or without taking too much time compared to the video.
Really superb puzzle. I love how the thermos interacted together. I got the thermo in box 7 quickly (once I'd re-remembered the consecutive rules!) but didn't spot the impact of thermo in box 3. Comments here helped me realise this. After that it was plain sailing. Simon goes on and on about not pencil marking but that does quickly lead to the break-in
Simon, If I were any good at setting Sudoku, I'd make a puzzle just for you that has a 3 in every corner. Actually, I guess I'd have to be really bad at setting puzzles to do that, but you know what I mean.
You scored a like from me simply because of the West Wing reference to Shibboleth. BEST full stop. SERIES full stop. EVER full stop. Just to channel another famous scene from Aaron Sorkin
Rules: 08:00 Let's Get Cracking: 08:37 Simon's time: 25m39s Puzzle Solved: 34:16 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Three In the Corner: 3x (21:08, 32:34, 32:44) Bobbins: 2x (02:03, 02:11) Maverick: 2x (33:54, 34:11) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Hang On: 10x (04:28, 11:41, 20:39, 21:23, 23:33, 24:24, 24:24, 26:54, 30:26, 32:25) Ah: 10x (16:16, 19:00, 19:00, 21:13, 22:22, 27:55, 30:26, 30:57, 32:33, 34:01) Brilliant: 8x (02:48, 03:17, 04:50, 05:46, 07:20, 24:35, 34:22, 34:25) Sorry: 5x (03:27, 11:26, 11:44, 23:53, 23:53) Beautiful: 4x (19:12, 19:14, 26:10, 27:55) In Fact: 4x (09:48, 13:46, 20:39, 24:55) Symmetry: 4x (09:59, 11:52, 16:30, 18:49) Naked Single: 3x (27:47, 32:57, 33:19) Clever: 3x (21:56, 21:57, 26:54) Obviously: 3x (04:52, 16:19, 22:29) Our old Friend Sudoku: 2x (27:27, 30:15) By Sudoku: 2x (31:07, 31:51) What Does This Mean?: 2x (22:51, 27:24) Have a Think: 2x (15:58, 19:33) Pencil Mark/mark: 2x (18:22, 34:39) Cake!: 2x (03:50, 05:18) The Answer is: 1x (17:31) In the Spotlight: 1x (32:37) Lovely: 1x (02:41) Gorgeous: 1x (34:59) Approachable: 1x (01:22) Witty: 1x (35:05) Surely: 1x (21:28) Think Harder: 1x (13:42) Progress: 1x (33:26) Fabulous: 1x (04:46) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Ten (3 mentions) One, Two (67 mentions) Green (4 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Low (6) - High (4) Even (2) - Odd (0) Column (18) - Row (9) 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!
20:11 Due to the combination of thermometers and renban, pencil marking everything was super fast and helpful. As soon as you are able to remove a pencil mark clue from a cell in a thermometer, it caused a chain reaction and you easily remove pencil marks clues from the entire thermometer.
@@tiarkrezar If I don't beat Simon's times these days its usually because its a super hard break in (he's still the goat for those) but on "regular folk" logic puzzles like this one he's getting slower and slower every week, usually because of his stubborn resistance to pencil marking - its beneath him to pencil mark a puzzle (for some reason.) . I'd love to see him do some GAS puzzles. He'd probably spend 30 minutes on each one - using unnecessary set theory and phistomofel rings when a few pencil marks would do the job.
@@ceevio_art Haha yep, by now I've fully embraced the pencilmarking madness, I go even more all-out than Mark. Thermos are especially annoying to mark though, so I can see why you'd want to avoid the hassle if you can work around it.
20:47. I will admit to a heavily pencil-marked solve path, with a bit of brute forcing around the three-cell thermo in the bottom left, but once I had something to anchor myself around, ruling out possibilities, the remainder of the puzzle snapped into focus. Excellent and approachable as ever, Clover!
I struggled a lot at the beginning of this one, mainly because I remembered the consecutive requirement for every thermo except the one in box 7, which left things ambiguous for far longer than they should have been. As usual, remembering and applying all the rules consistently is crucial to solving puzzles. 😅 I did remember it eventually, and from there the solve was delightful!
One likes to think that constructors start with 3s now, just to give Simon joy. A brilliant puzzle 22:02 here, the right mix of impossible and oh that’s so clever
22:06; I found the corner thermo by pencil marking all of the possibilities, myriad as they were, and realizing that the consecutive constraint on the thermos in boxes 1, 4, 8, and 9 limited those possibilities. It pared down to one option quite quickly. Goodliffe notation stays winning.
Hey Simon. I got a good chuckle out of your changing maths to math in the intro. In the US, we like to think that the (s) is a pluralization of the word and indeed it is a subject that is not one single thing. However, we consider the word the same as sheep. It's both singular and plural. You don't say sheeps, unless assigning it ownership. Not a criticism, but a perspective. I do respect your culture of word usage. After all, we probably wouldn't be able to so easily communicate without England's influence on the colonies. That said, your educational descriptions and speaking out your thoughts processes have greatly helped me in my problem solving skills, as well as made other games like minesweeper become easier.
29:14 for me-- A really lovely puzzle that had interesting and surprising logic without being monstrously difficult (something that clover constantly shows she has great skill in doing with the GAS puzzles). Seriously impressive setting!
Key to this puzzle seems to be that r8c13 are not consecutive. Realizing this was enough to get me two potential worlds, either a world with 5 in r8c1 and 9 in r8c3 or a world with 6 in r8c1 and 2 in r8c3. The 62 world has an obvious flaw with placing a 7 in c2. My break in was considerably different to Simon's.
I would have loved to see renbans in the rules: -Pink lines contain consecutive digits in any order without repeats. -Digits along thermos must increase from the bulb end. ...with thermos exactly overlapping renbans of course.
I loved this one! I did the two pair of thermos very quick (surprisingly much quicker than simon, when i usually take about x3 times the bests out here) and had it all mainly solved in 12 minutes... then i rushed and made a mistake doing simple sudoku and took 15 extra minutes discovering what i did wrong 🤣 Anyway, lovely puzzle, and a very approachable one
It took me about 84 minutes to solve, but I got it on the first try! The hardest part is getting the five longest thermometers figured out after that, it's just a matter of simple sudoku. GREAT PUZZLE!
22:20 for me!! this is so fast, usually when I read the comments, people do it in way shorter times but this time I was actually so fast!! Win for me today :D
This is a lovely puzzle. I went directly to the interaction of the box 3 thermometer and the fact that the 4-length thermometers could only be one of 3 sets (1234+5678, 1234+6789 or 2345+6789): that immediately restricted the box 3 thermometer to a single possibility - curiously, the one Clover mentions in the rules, I believe humourously 😉
11:40 for me (conflict checker off), this was an amazing puzzle! I was uncertain if I'd find the break-in on this one, but I did and wow, what a break-in! Many props to Clover!, this puzzle flowed so well!
15:07 for me. Very enjoyable puzzle! I never cease to be amazed how Simon is able to spot in his head the logic that us normal human solvers see because of our pencil marks. After my own solve, I thought clover! was trolling Simon with a puzzle that needed pencil marking to solve. But no, he just spots it straight away. I am in awe. (I also expected that a puzzle especially for Simon would have two 3s in corners, so I was very surprised when I placed that 5 during my solve.)
I finally did it, finding it easier than I expected, even though I broke it my first attempt. 18:30 I began by penciling them in. There's no shame in that. 21:10 Three other corners are still empty, any of which might be a 3. 23:50 IIRC, Block 3's thermo must be dealt with, to disambiguate the other thermos.
A 23:57 solve. There's some delightful pieces of logic, here and there that really make this a fun and worthy one, and the break-in is a fun exercise in understanding correlations in sequences.
I was surprised Simon didn't pick up the modularity constraint in box 7. It took me a wihle of playing with the possible values on the thermos pointing at that box, but eventually I realized, duh, the set of three digits remaining in column 2 and row 8 must have one from each modularity. i.e. Once you have a 1 in the center of the box, you can't put a 4 or 7 in the central cross. I had a feeling this was what Simon would use to break into the puzzle but he essentially glided past this step as he figured out the 3478 in the corners so quickly. The logic is basically the same as what he used just coming from the opposite direction. If you were to put 1 and 4 in the same central row/column of box 7, you break the thermos in that direction because you can never put 2 and 3 on them without a 4. And similarly if you put 1 and 7 together, you can never put 8 and 9 on the thermos without 7. In both cases that leaves you 2 digits that can't go on either thermo and there is only one spot for those two digits in box 7.
Once the bulbs had to be from 1256, the "cross" in box 7 is 12569 and 2 of those are on a consecutive thermo. That places 5 and 6 immediately which also places the 2 and 9 since 25 and 69 don't leave enough space to fill a thermo. I thought Simon made the break in much harder than it needed to be.
21:45 for me; the break-in was very nice, but after that the puzzle felt very rigid doesn't help that I do the patented mark method of pencil marking every possible digit of the thermos
