I can't imagine not enjoying a FoW puzzle, or down rating it as Simon said. Absolutely one of my favorite types of sudoku. If anything, the fog helps follow the logic.
haven't watched the video yet, or solved/looked at this particular puzzle, so not saying it about this one at all, but in general, you can absolutely make a bad puzzle even with fow, a bad puzzle with fow or a fow puzzle that uses fow badly are both more than possible to exist
@NinjarioPicmin oh absolutely. But Simon said at the start that overall they seem to be down-rated. And I guess I'm also biased towards the puzzles that appear on this channel, which in general are not bad puzzles. I have however played many FoW puzzles not featured here, but generally from setters who have proven themselves to be setters of good puzzles, and good FoW puzzles.
In fact the fog helps you not have to worry so much about where to look… meaning that the importance of the author’s skill of ‘telegraphing’ the intended solve path is diminished. That’s not a criticism per se, just a feature
@@glum_hippo That's what I kind of like with them, you get focused on the right thing by default and don't have to chase around the full grid to figure out what logic to pursue (which is thankful for me that normally take 3-10 times longer to solve puzzles than the average puzzle solver in this community).
@53:30, you haven't ruled out the possibility that the snake goes around r5c9 by using 5 cells in box 6, and then also takes r2c9 & r3c9. It turned out to be a lucky error, and it meant you skipped one extra bit of elegant setting. It took me a little while staring at that before realising that the important bit was that every possible configuration meant 5 digits in box 6, and therefore the 16 cage must be 1249. Now the 1249 quad in r1 means that r1c9 has one of the 5 digits in the largest cage, so the rest of c9 can only have 4 of those digits. And that is what prevents the snake taking r3c9, and forces it to take r4c7. An amazingly good FoW puzzle.
Could you explain how you got from "there are 5 digits in box 6" to the 1249 configuration for the 16 cage? I've been staring at it for quite some time now
@@gemma4952 Because of the rule about neighbouring cages not sharing a digit. The big cage which has at least 5 digits in box 6 can't have a 9. It neighbours the 16 cage in box 2, which we know has 4 different digits. So those two cages have 9 different digits between them, and as the big cage has no 9, the 16 cage must have the 9. The other 3 digits must add to 7, the only way to get 7 in 3 digits is 124, so the 16 cage is 1249, and the big cage only has 35678s.
@@christopherbowers7236 But it could be an 11-cell cage with only 5 different digits, and then it can reach. It only breaks in that configuration when you show that r1c789 would be made up from those 5 digits as well, meaning those 5 digits appear too often in box 3/row 9.
Simon at 41:22: "if forced to, I can do sudoku", removing a 9 pencilmark in r9c2... Also Simon: forgets to place the 9 straightaway in r8c2 for the next 26 minutes 😀
I never thought these two worlds of mine would collide, but I am so excited for it! Roller Derby is a full contact sport played on quad roller skates. It is played on either a flat track or curved track with a complex set of rules, but the best analogy I have found that works is to describe it as a Rugby Scrum on wheels. I highly recommend looking a few matches up on RU-vid to gain a full appreciation for the sport. Greetings from another CTC Roller Derby player.
I got 111 minutes. Realizing the break-in after being lost for 30 minutes was very satisfying and the rest of the puzzle felt very nice. Fog of Wars are always my favorite and this one was fantastic!
the 9 in box 7 was literally my second digit of the solve, but I loved seeing Simon solve the puzzle in a very different but entertaining way! Also I somehow misread the 46 cage as a 45 cage and panicked the same way
That was hard! But very rewarding. The way the cage size constraint and the adjacent cages can't share digits constraint interacted produced very original logic.
I had an epiphany about triangular numbers watching this video. 15 is the triangular number for 5, 5x3, but for 9 it's 45, 9x5. Following the pattern, 7's is 7x4, which is correct. The thing that just clicked as I paused the video and mulled it over is that there are 3 lots of 5 you can make with 1,2,3,4, and 5, {1,4}, {2,3}, and {5}, summing to 15. There are 4 ways to make 7, and 5 ways to make 9. 🤯 I think this will greatly help me with a lot of variant sudokus
The pattern works for even numbers too. The triangular numbers go 1x1, 1x3, 2x3, 2x5, 3x5, 3x7, 4x7, 4x9, 5x9, etc. You always add 2 to the 2nd number, then 1 to the first, then 2 to the 2nd, etc. The first number is the number of ways to make it using only pairs/a single number. So 7 is 4x7, 4 ways to make 7, 8 is 4x9, 4 ways to make 8. And it's always a case of taking the number and the number + 1, and halving the even one, so if you needed to you can work out bigger numbers without needing to check the entire pattern. So to get the triangular number for 16, it's 16, 17, halve the even one, and get 8x17 with 8 ways to make 17 as a pair/single number.
This puzzle took me over two hours to solve by I enjoyed it a lot. I was making really great early progress but hit an absolute wall. I just scrubbed through your video because I wanted to timestamp where I was stuck so any future reader could see and it looks like I solved this *wildly* differently than you did. That’s pretty unusual for a fog puzzle!
It would be very interesting to know how you solved for the *8-digit cage.* That was seriously hard. In short, the crucial step in Simon's solve was, in my opinion, understanding that the 8-digit cage contained at most 5 digits, which makes it impossible for it to use *r3c9...*
Hey Simon! I was just wondering if you'd find it interesting to have an eye tracker on during your solves. I thought that it could be annoying for you to see the actual grid, but maybe it can be toggled just on the video. I'm not sure if that's a great idea but it could be nice!
Puzzle idea: A ship going through the grid with the fog revealing ‘uncharted territory’ by making the blue sea lighter colour , sea monsters appear, etc.
I like to keep the video paused after rules. I know Simon tends to be faster than me even with his explanations but it's great to finish a puzzle without having to hit play.
Dear Simon, at 52:15 you made the deduction that the snake couldn't go through R2C9 too quickly. The orange region could have gone up in C9 via R6C9, R6C8, R5C8, R4C8, R4C4, R3C9, R2C9, R2C8 with there being only 5 digits in column 9 and cage 6.
I came in here to point this out. we can still use the logic that the 16 clue contains a 1249 and so the orange cage needs to contain 35678 plus extending the 16 cage like simon did without knowing the exact path of the orange cage. We can then prove at 56:20 that the snake doesn't go into box 3 through col 9 as stated because r1c9 is a 6th cells with "orange" digits. i.e. you can only put 2 of 124 in col 9 if you go that way.
This is correct, it doesn't have to touch orthogonally and there is nothing in the rules that says the last cage is eight. It could be 12 cells long using christoph's (corrected) path and continue to R2C7 R3C7 R3C6 and then joining the four cell cage which would start at R3C5. However, once you look at this, knowing R1C789 are of the values 5678 and the cage must contain at least four of 35678 (if you go a more direct route) eliminates this as a possible option and forces the lower path.
At 50:58 Simon concludes that the orange cage can only have 5 different numbers and can thus not pass the non fogged cell (R3C8) because there would be to many orange cells in column 9. Which is true if you go straight but if you make a C shape in box 6 like he did at 50:24 and you go left in row 2 of box 3 it would work wouldn't it? You'll only have 5 orange cell in box 6 and 5 orange cells in column 9. The box would have a total of 10 or 12 cells but that was nog against the rules. I get why it couldn't be like that later on when the numers where clear but at that time in the solve I believe it would kept the option open. I'm I missing something?
I used Simon a couple of times to help me, but both I had already done as far as I watched to, which gave me the confidence to go back and carry on. A great puzzle, and for me doable.
Love FoW puzzles and this one was definitely one of the best (and hardest ones) I’ve ever solved. Not the worst time either (for me), just over 1.5h for a puzzle that took Simon well over an hour too
Very well engineered, thanks, and it worked out nicely once I'd remembered all the rules. Even while making progress kept wondering how it would resolve itself but of course it did.
Lovely puzzle. The way the path revealed itself was quite beautiful. The logic was not too difficult either, the tricky thing was remembering the sizes of the cages used!
I was a little tripped up by the puzzle name at first. I thought the "22" was part of the name. And early on, once we determined the cages shown, it was possible to make a 22 cell snake to connect them all in the middle, and I thought maybe that's where it was going. That was quickly proven wrong by logic, and I didn't realize until after the solve that it is just the setter's 22nd FoW puzzle in this series!
Oh my goodness, now as Simon catches up (I basically try to stay ahead of him and pause if I sense him catching up) he got a different first digit than I did! My first was r9c3!
I've started playing them before watching in the last 5-10 puzzles, and this time I managed to get through with only looking at the video once, and it was only 1 break-in conclusion I'd missed (there's only four numbers of 1,2,3,4 in a row 🤦 at 30:30). Still took me 2 hours to finish 😅. But just wanted to thank you Simon for getting me from a sudoku newb, to consistently attempting and mostly on my own completing these fairly high difficulty sudokus.
46:19 for me. What an extraordinary fog of war! ❤ The beginning is not so hard but the last big breakthrough in box 2 is just breathtaking, I am glad not to have given up before finding it on my own!
I haven't watched Simon's solve yet but loved when I realized that the 16 cage HAD to be 4 unique digits, and I knew there had to be an 8 or 9 cell cage connecting it, but that cage could only use a maximum of 5 digits, I then knew it couldn't cross into box 3 (via the exposed cell not being part of a cage which was the perfect distance to force the snake to turn thus cutting off the entire northeast area from being snake) and THEN realizing a 9 had to be in the 4 cell 16 cage forcing 1249, and then 35678 for the 8 cell cage... it was glorious. Absolutely glorious.
Finished in 43:36. The key to the whole puzzle was the snake and the limitations around the cage sizes. Very interesting way of setting the fog of war up. Fun puzzle!
I might be stupid but it took me forever to realize the snake also cannot touch itself parallelly. I guess in order for the snake to touch itself parallelly it has to touch orthogonally first.
41:15 "9 is not there by Sudoku, if forced to I can do Sudoku". Immediately ignores the 9 in box 7 that's now forced by Sudoku. I could never, ever replicate Simon's ability to beak into and solve these puzzles, but his brain really does seem to spot absolutely everything except Sudoku. 😂
53:29 finish. I struggled a bit with the path in the bottom right of the grid, but worked at it from the other direction and was able to push through. A excellent puzzle!
at 47:00 if you count the tiles after the len2 cage, to the end of the 16-cage, you end up with 12 tiles. Thats how you can deduce it must be a Len8 cage connecting to the Len4 sixteen cage
1:19:04 but I'm really happy with that because I solved it without any hints from the video. Fog puzzles are the best, and this was a particularly elegant one.
At 47:50 For me I realized the cage cannot go 6 tiles upwards, cus that means it would occupy 6 digits, and the 16-cage needs 4 unique digits. This should help down the line as the 16 cage needs a 1 or a 2, so the snake cannot pass through boss in box6
Am I stupid to think that at 53:06 the snake could wiggle to the left in box 6 and still escape to box 3 through column 9? If that's true, assuming R4C7 is snake is not valid.
Given how proper Simon is, I wonder if he knows what the "ham" in "going a bit too ham on the pencilmarks" is an acronym of. 🤔 (I didn't until recently.)
He's probably using it in this definition: "(intransitive, slang, originally African-American Vernacular, often followed by on) To enter an enraged and uncontrollable state; to go berserk." Not too bad I think?
@@stangerrits6712 My comment was referring to it's origin as "hard as a m*******cker". However, further research suggests that may be a backronym, with its real etymology unclear.
57:56 for me - got up to 58:20 in the video in 20 minutes, got stuck for 20 minutes, and after a small hint from simon i saw why r6c8 had to be in the cage, finishing from there.
67:56 with a LOT of help that I really needed. I kept thinking the 52 cage had to be much bigger because I didn't try the math to see that I could get there with four digits. I totally forgot the rule that the cages had to be different sizes. And I wouldn't have figured out how the 16 cage needed a 9.
I tend to not be great at snake and loop puzzles, and an hour video suggests higher difficulty, but I like fog puzzles and this was a pretty good half hour for me. I forgot the size rule, but wasn't stuck on that for long. There was some logic that I'd say took some creative thinking, so maybe I got lucky that I thought of it early. Box 2 was a really nice surprise and I'm glad I didn't wait long to try it when I got stuck. I'd probably put it at a 3/5 rather than a 4/5. Give it a try if you're on the fence about the difficulty.
One of the best features of these fog puzzles is that when you get a digit right the fog clears revealing the white grid. With Simon's colouring of the cages and the snake path that magic was removed. A coloured arrow for a snake would have sufficed I thought
One obvious clue you missed (but still managed without), is that the revealed white cells that aren't part of a cage aren't in the snake. But it ended up not being that significant anyway, soo... Good job!
Hey Simon, I’ve been watching for a long time but I’ve only just today started trying to actually solve the puzzles on my own. Even with how difficult they look when you solve them, I realize you make it look easy in comparison. Would you possibly be able to do a video on Just Arrows by Eric Rathbun? It is a 93% approval, three star difficulty on Logic Masters Germany, and it feels stunning, but I am completely stuck! I fully broke it and have no idea where I went wrong. Either way keep up the great content, thanks!
When Simon places his 1st digit in the puzzle at 35:34 the 9 in box 7 has only 1 square I wonder how long it takes to spot this. Still great solve of a really good puzzle
58:49 today. I made so many mistakes that it is not even funny. I had to fix at least 10 of them. My marking kept getting in the way, but i was too stubborn to redo it, that i hurt the solve time.