I Think I Need Help With This Puzzle 

He does discuss his setting and puzzles here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BF3FGpLN6bM.html

To expand on this. Once you recognize the bulb has to be on the 4 cell renban, it is the lower digits of the two renbans in question. The blue ‘overlap’ digits of the 5 cell renban then must be the two lowest digits of the renban meaning the yellow and green digits must be consecutive. Then the 2 cell renban from the green digit must turn the ‘virtual 7 cell renban’ into an 8 cell renban where R3C3 is the highest digit.

"Investing time" makes it sound like a chore when it should (hopefully) be fun. At the start, I just tried the easiest-looking puzzles on the channel, often watching the video for clues. Over time, I just naturally got better and could try harder puzzles. I'll never solve a Phistomefel but I'm way better than when I started, and it was fun the whole way :) Next time they post a non-GAS video between 10 and 20 minutes long, give the puzzle a try. You'll probably be surprised how much you can do yourself!

@@MisterM2402 Yeah, at this point, I try everything in a 30 minute video and look at the rules in 30-60 minute videos. But, it took a lot of time watching and practicing to get there.

@@MisterM2402 Don't sell yourself short! Not every puzzle by Phistomefel is so very diabolical: I've solved some. I won't attempt the ones that get 5 stars at Logic Masters, or even the 4s unless i'm feeling very ambitious, but there are 3-star Phistomefel puzzles and it's quite satisfying to finish one.

I still just kind of co-solve with Simon. I will start the video, pause it, struggle a bit, then unpause if I get stuck. Gradually I get to going further on a few of Simon's insights. I couldn't say if I've ever finished one of Phistomefel's on my own but they're very rewarding the more you can manage. Or if not, yeah, fun just to watch Simon's process.

@@maljamin yeah, I do the same. And it is quite satisfying to unpause and see Simon (or Mark) reach the same deductions that I did. :-)

i think the bot got murdered

@@caiodavi9829 RIP Inspiring Sands

@@caiodavi9829 Just taking a break. It was there for Marks video later in the day.

dööyöö Covnt ör dö wee häve a böt För id v?v

I wish you would not put the three in the corner so high up. Kind of a spoiler.

I want popcorn now

@@paciphaeerancourt2306 sharing is caring

Good for you sticking with it! I took a 30 second look just to see if it seemed possible and reverted back to Simon’s solve instead… no CHANCE I would have hung in there for almost 4 hours

I started this and felt like I was making amazing progress for a Phistomefel. Then I realized they're thermometers, not arrows... 😂

Nice observation. (It's "renban", by the way. But I see it's not named in the rules, and it does sound a lot like ram band.)

Hi Raven Creations. Asking out of interest (and sorry, I know this was a while back, though I think the quality of the puzzle is probably worth it), how did you identify that the digit consecutive with the bulb was also lower? I know I made a slight mistake with the longest thermo on the right of thinking that 3 digits had to be consecutive when actually the other digit on the 4-cell renban could have been placed between them. I then realised my error and avoided making it on the left.

@@joelstevens5670 Hi Joel, I did this solve on my old, dead laptop, so I couldn't use Sven's excellent replay option to check. My pencil-marks would have been really useful in jogging my memory. From what I can remember, I think the point was that R1C2 is lower than yellow and must be on the 4-cell line, so the 4-cell line must also be lower than the 5-cell line. It only contains two overlapping digits with the 5-cell line. Since R4C2 cannot appear on the 5-cell line, it must be lower than any digit on the 5-cell line. If I recall correctly, if R4C2 were higher than the bulb, it would put too much of a gap between the bulb and yellow. That is, the bulb is sequential with the overlapping digits. I think I'd worked out earlier that there was exactly a two-digit gap between the bulb and yellow, which contained the two overlapping digits, but I'm afraid I can't really remember how I'd come to that deduction. I'm sorry I can't give you a more definitive answer.

Right. I think Simon also missed a few other geometric tricks. See my separate comment for details.

Happy birthday :)

Happy birthday!

Glad you had such a wonderful day. Happy Birthday!

@@davidrattner9 hi David, been missing you. Hope all is ok!

@longwaytotipperary ty my friend. Much appreciated. Means alot. Been visiting family , other things going on. Catching up on solves. 🙂

Except case testing is permitted? 😂

he might be an AI supercomputer

I started from the thermous and it took me 28min to solve from there 🤔. I never before been faster than Simon. Simon teaches too good others and does the hard way always 😀

Details about my third point: *🔹r4c7* is mirrored in *r7c8,* hence it cannot be 1, 2, 8, or 9 for obvious reasons. *🔹r4c7* cannot be *3* because it would force *1* and *2* in the first two cells of the thermo in *box 9,* making it impossible to place both *1* and *2* in *box 6.* *🔹r4c7* cannot be *7* because it would force *8* or *9* in the thermo tip immediately above, making it impossible to fill the renban segment in *box 1*

U misunderstood the definition of the pairs of those numbers. The one green cell and two yellow cells in box 4 can either be 567 pairs or 678 pairs. Similarly, if we put them on thermometer, we cannot have 568 pairs

For people looking for solving ideas, I did letters on the left side of the puzzle and colors on the right, which was an absolute mess, but I think required less mental storage space from whatever the heck Simon was doing here.

I find there is a hierarchy. Thermo > Renban usually depending on length.

4* Phisto is a 5* from everyone else.

(r1c2?)

A good barometer for Mark's vids for sure, but these days with Simon, if he makes a long vid its only about a 50% chance that its because of the difficulty of the puzzle. Either that, or its yet another vid where he bumbles around, usually refusing to pencil mark (or ignoring his pencil marks), forgetting conclusions he already made (usually due to not pencil marking), missing all the low hanging fruit while spending inordinate amounts of time looking for the most difficult and obscure ways to prove relatively simple deductions. In other words, a long video by Simon these days is just an opportunity to beat his time.

@@ceevio_art I feel like Simon is more intelligent but Mark the "Pencil Mark" has better flow to his solves.

@@jimi02468 Simon is still the king of the impossible break-in, and is probably more "intellegent" when it comes to that one aspect, but I wouldn't put him over Mark in over all intelligence. Mark has a much broader set of skills at a very high level when it comes to general problem solving, gaming, cryptic crosswords - both the setting and solving of them. And Simon's 'intellect' is his own biggest barrier at times... like his elitist attitude to putting in basic pencil marks, which invariably makes him miss so many easy gets. Not to mention todays solve was just a chain of continuous bifurcations. .. which Simon now refers to as "case studies". "...What if this cell was an 8 - let's try it... no, that breaks the puzzle. What if it was a 7... no that also also breaks the puzzle" . That's beginner level bifurcation, and hardly what you'd call elegant logical solving.

Challenge accepted. Firstly, you use geometry which you can mirror on each side as you go. The digits on the 5-cell line in box 6 go in column 7 of box 9 and therefore the 4-cell line in box 3 (similar applies to the digits on the 5-cell line in box 4 by symmetry). [When colouring where 2 digits go, I suggest using the white colour to indicate when they are not exactly determined (e.g. 2 cells of 3).] The single digit on the 4-cell line that peeks into box 6 goes in column 9 and on the 5-cell line in box 9 (and the one in box 4 on the 5-cell line in box 7). You should now have 3 cells coloured on each 4-cell line in boxes 1/4 and 3/6 respectively. The first key step is to realise that there cannot be any gaps between coloured cells on the 5-cell thermo in box 9. This is because the final digit on the renban now appears in column 8 and any gap would imply that the missing ‘gap’ digit appeared on the thermo, breaking sudoku rules (as an example, consider what would happen for the digits 6, 8 and 9 with 7 being the ‘gap’). We can therefore exactly locate the coloured cell in box 9. The symmetrical logic is flipped since the thermo and renban swap places on the left but it’s the same argument, this time for column 2 and box 1. Returning to geometry, the last 3 digits on lines in column 8 boxes 3 and 9 must go on the thermo in box 6 (and similar for column 2 and box 4). The second key step is to identify the sequences of digits. On the right, we have a 5-cell thermo sharing its 3 end digits with a 4-cell renban. This makes the missing renban digit larger than the other 2 thermo cells, in order to be consecutive (it will either be exactly 1 smaller than the first coloured cell or larger than it), which puts that cell on the end of the 4-cell thermo. The 2nd digit on the 5-cell thermo is now the next coloured cell furthest along (if digit A is larger than digit B on one thermo then the same applies for all thermos where both A and B appear). We now have a 7-cell sequence (not necessarily consecutive) starting with the first 3 digits on the 4-cell thermo and ending with the digits on the renban line. The end of the 2-cell thermo sees the whole of the 4-cell renban, so that digit must be larger than all digits on the renban. This makes the maximum digit in the sequence 8, which in turn restricts the digits at the start (on the 4-cell thermo) to 1 of only 2 options (1,2; 2,3; 3,4) and the remaining digits on the 5-cell thermo to 1 of 3 options (4,5,6; 5,6,7; 6,7,8). On the left, we have a 4-cell thermo sharing its 3 end digits with a 5-cell renban. It also shares its bulb with a 4-cell renban. Since the 4-cell and 5-cell renbans share exactly 2 digits (the other digits on the longer renban all see the shorter renban), we again have a 7-cell sequence (this time consecutive) starting with the 2 digits that are unique to the 4-cell renban and ending with the 3 digits that are unique to the 5-cell renban, which happen to be the last 3 digits on the 4-cell thermo. The 2-cell renban sees the whole of the 4-cell thermo so extending the sequence again by 1. This reduces the last 4 cells to 1 of 2 options (5,6; 6,7; 7,8; 8,9), forces the 4-cell renban to use only the digit 1-5 and makes the final digit on the 4-cell renban a 1, 2 or 3. The last major step involves row 4 and the central ‘X’. The cells on the ends of the 3-cell thermo both see the whole of the 3-cell renban so they are a sequence of 5 digits in some order (again, not necessarily consecutive). However, the digits on the renban cannot include the smallest/largest digit or else the smallest/largest digit on the thermo would have no fill. Thus they must be the 3 middle digits and the smallest/largest digit must be the first/last cell on the thermo. There is also a 1, 2, 3 triple in row 4 which makes the lower digit and row 4 column 1 a 4, 5 pair, so row 4 column 7 is a 6 and this resolves the 2 sequences. [Note that a/b here is used as ‘a or b respectively’] I hope you’re able to follow everything ok (assuming it makes sense and I’ve not missed anything) and enjoy the break-in. The rest of the solve is good old sudoku with some minor thermo/renban logic. 😉

Once r4c3 became 7, the longer renban could no longer be 87654 because that would have forced all of 865 into the two yellow cells in box 4. That made the renban 76543, the overlap 43 and the shorter renban 4321 removing 1 from the options for r5c2 and r6c2.

@@jounik Thanks! It was really hard for me to follow this puzzle. Very complex. I re-watched it and now it makes sense: as soon as the yellow pair becomes 56, the only available consecutive sequence of length four in box four is 1234. 🎉