Hi there! Catmandoku here. Thanks so much for featuring my puzzle! This is the first sudoku I have ever made and had no clue what I was doing going into it. I am glad that it turned out to be a nice puzzle that people have enjoyed! The name Catmandoku I came up with because my last name has “cat” in it so a nickname for men in my family has been “Catman” and then I combined it with the end of su(doku) to get Catmandoku! 😊 I found CtC a few months ago when I had never done variant sudoku other than killer. Now I can’t get enough of them! Thanks Mark and Simon for introducing me to the wonderful world of variant sudoku!
Thank you! Finally solved one faster than Mark! Just one thought, the vertical green in column 8 seems redundant as the thermo creates the same constraint. Is there a reason for it?
@@easternbrownI believe it was there before the thermo and I didn’t take it out after. Certain ways I played around with the lines didn’t end with a unique solution and at one point I needed that line. I think it does help in different ways of solving, because it can help determine the parity of the cells at the beginning. I believe it can be solved without, though. Great question!
@@Catmandoku Hi, I enjoied this but I am I afraid Mark's approach and mine might not be the easiest way to disambiguate the line in *box 7.* Many people solved this puzzle so quickly that I suspect there might be a shortcut. Is there?
@@Paolo_De_Leva it took me around 50 minutes to solve it myself, so I’m not exactly sure the path that everyone took who got it faster. I did take a different approach than Mark, though.
1:20 "A world I'm enjoying," Mark speaking about that live-stream video game. "Another 'world' you could be 'enjoying,' are our apps..." Nice segue, Mark. Push those apps, lol. 😂
There was a beautiful way to get the polarity of the german whisper in box 7, starting with the question of whether the left side were low, hence 34, then r7c2 is 1, and the 4 makes r8c5 1, requiring 1 in r9c9, which you can't have because of the 1 in r6c3. I got stuck soon after that though.
Nice thumbnail, "The Tortoise and the Hare." I'm definitely "slow" (the "Tortoise"), and the "Hare" would be quick. ("Slow and sure wins the race," the saying goes.) I may not "win" any of these sudoku "races," but I'm "slow" and enjoying myself. Off to the races, lol. ;) 😅
that was a hard one, on mine i ended up at the end with a bunch of 78 and 23 everywhere, and it's the placement of a 2 that couldn't be repeated that unlocked the whole thing, nice
After struggling for over 90 minutes, I thought I had finally made a breakthrough by figuring out where 2 had to go in row 5. But it broke a few steps later. After checking the video a bit, I thought that I had just gotten a couple of digits backwards, and tried to continue from there. But it broke again further down the line. I'm not going to try again, so failure. 🙁
@@Paolo_De_Leva As soon as 24:32 in the video you could already get it. If at that point green is low and pink is high you get that: - The only place for 1 in box 7 is r7c2. - r8c1 must be a 4, which makes r8c5 a 1. - Now the 1s in r7c2 and r8c5 would place a 1 in r9c9, but that's impossible because of the 1 in r6c3 (disjoint rule). So green must be high and pink low.
Well, the red queen did not quite do her job as you hoped, but I actually agree with something you said after you remembered the disjoint rule - it did not play a huge role up until that point. The only place I saw that might have made a small difference was in eliminating the 3 from the central cell in box 9. But you did discover that soon after and it didn't do much at that point. Certainly after the midpoint the disjoint rule had a bigger impact - but you and the red queen were in good communication by then and you applied the rule with vigor. Thanks for this video, Mark, I love watching you solve sudoku.
@@NinjarioPicmin It has been suggested many times in comments that he have some kind of visual reminder about knight's constraints, but I had the chance to meet Mark last fall and I gave him the red chess pieces as a little token of friendship and mainly as a little joke. I am delighted every time they come out, as you can imagine.
@@emilywilliams3237I'm still an advocate for using the pen tool to put a colourful circle somewhere in the grid to remind myself about an otherwise invisible rule. Far more likely to keep noticing it.
for these high/low puzzles, I personally find it very helpful to choose a third color (I use black) to color the 5s, it makes it much easier to keep track of things. so a cell that can be any of 1/2/3/4/5 would be colored blue and black, for example.
I finished in 94 minutes. I liked this puzzle, but I very much suck at scanning the disjointed set. I feel like half my time was dedicated to scanning for just that. Beyond that, I liked the way the slow thermos interacted with the german whispers. Great Puzzle!
Oh, is that why a 52 minute vid/solve from Mark? Looking at the grid, I thought I had a shot at it. Maybe I do?! (With a little help from Mark at some point of course) Maybe I have a shot at it then? ;).😉😅
74:14 for me. Not me forgetting for THIRTY MINUTES that there's a disjoint set rule. That actually peeves me off so much because it's such a good puzzle too.
I was puzzled by the sections of whisper line that were within box 9, given that they are connecting digits that are at least 5 apart by the thermo 🤔 I had to restart this one after a pencil-marking fail early on, total time of 56 minutes - there were a couple of steps that didn't feel particularly great, so I may have missed some better logic. One thing I quite often do with disjoint subsets is to Full Elmer on the grid and colour each disjoint subset with a different colour - I find it helps me to scan (and to remember that the rule is there!), so that's my tip for anyone who struggles with that rule.
39:21 Got a little stuck forgetting the disjoint subsets, but otherwise this flowed quite nicely especially the path of the long whisper affecting the thermo below.
For this type of disjoint subset puzzle, I like to color the same position within each box (top left cell red, top middle orange, etc). Makes it much easier scan for me. Obviously doesn’t work great if other coloring is used, but in this case the high-low coloring Mark did doesn’t feel necessary. Or at the very least, it helps in the beginning but can be abandoned after a bit in favor of coloring the disjoint.
The logic here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wRmtB9PcnoI.html was too hard for me and I had to watch the video, felt a bit better that it took you a while too. Thanks for the solve!
Ow. Ow. Ow. These disjoint set puzzles always wreck my head. 😅 This was a LOT of scanning in this one, but I did finish it in 33:46 (conflict checker off), so I guess I didn't do too badly! Really awesome puzzle from Catmandoku, many thanks to them!
Oh, cool. It was a "disjoint set" that was forgotten, and I have a shot at this 52 minute vid from Mark? Cool I have a shot, then. (Maybe lol) But, btw, praematura, you do know , when I see ("conflict checker off"), I immediately look above, and know it's you. I have a feeling you saw my discussion with Richard about that "conflict checker." I use it for typos (mis-thumbing a number), and slowly he showed me how that conflict checker benefits you inadvertently. But, my need for "anti-typos," FAR OUTWEIGHS, what little thing Richard eventually showed me. I'll have 4 or 5 typos every single sudoku. Just saying. Maybe, I have a shot at this one, though. Ciao.. ;) 😉 😆
@@stevesebzda570 I should probably be more specific, but when I mention 'conflict checker off', it's really the 'check pencilmarks' that I avoid as I feel it assists the user a bit too much, but I still tend to leave the full conflict checker off as if I was solving the puzzle on paper. Just one of my quirks on sudoku solving. 🙂
@praematura oh, yes, those I definitely leave off. They steer you. Edit: and distract you Joke: Then say: (pencilmark checker off) lol. Yeah, those little ones I leave off 😀
@praematura that's the thing (about you not using the big one so it's like "solving on paper," you said), you're not going to write a 4 instead of a 5 (or anything else). Leaving that big one ON is "like writing on paper." To each his own, though. Enjoy 😆
@praematura , I still can't figure it out after a bit I'll have to tune into Mark solving for something about where I am I know there's a virtual 124 triple down in row8 (taking a 4 out of r8c7) so 35 there. But I can't get thru lol Gotta tune into Mark for a hint there lol 😆
Appropriate title. I am not even sure I really grasped it. It feels like I clumpsily stumbled through it, probably ignoring many possible shortcuts. Anyway, this is a fascinating construction and I enjoied solving it.
@@Paolo_De_LevaIt's still quite convoluted, but if Mark had continued to look at what happens if you try low digits in green (around 26:50): He had 4-3 and 8-9 pairs on that whisper. He saw that put 1 in r8c5, which made r8c8 2 or 3. With the disjoint rule, that becomes a 2, but even without that, Mark saw it made the end of the thermo in box 9 5-6-7[-8-9]. What Mark then missed was that resolves the 7-8 pairs in boxes 3 and 2, and you end up with no fill for r1c2. Not sure it's any easier, but at least it doesn't rely on the disjoint set rule.
@@RichSmith77 Brilliant, as usual. Thank you. 😏👍 I used a similar, very long, inference chain. It seems there's no simple way to rule out *green = low,* although some people was able to solve in less than *25 minutes.* They may have bifurcated, or they may have an off-the-scale *predictive power* 💪🧠
@@RichSmith77 *Gonzalo Garcia* found an elegant shortcut. @24:32, he simply focused on the position of *1* in boxes *4, 7, 8, 9.* See his comment below.
@@Paolo_De_LevaThe crazy thing is, I'm 90% sure that Garcia's way must have been the way I did it during my original solve. I was playing back my solve while watching Mark. I got to that point and, in the replay, I saw I marked green as high and purple as low, but I couldn't for the life of me remember the logic I'd used to make the deduction. I feared I'd made a logically invalid deduction, so paused the video and spent a few minutes coming up with that 7/8 path I explained above. I knew that wasn't how I'd done it originally, but thought at least it plugged a gap I feared I had in my original solve. I feel much better about my original solve now, because I suspect Garcia's logic is what I originally used. 😂 Spotting those disjoint restrictions is hard!
