Sudoku Hero Or Anti-Hero?! 

Thank you for featuring my puzzle. It is so great to see them solved and shared! Simon has actually done my first "Parity Mirror" puzzle a few months back. I wanted to revisit this idea with arrows, and it worked out very well. As for the Taylor Swift song, it was stuck in my head while I was setting. The line I am referencing goes: I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror. I thought it made for a fun title, and was appropriate to Simon missing some reflection logic. By the way I did a full Weird-Al-ification of the chorus ... just because: - It's me, hi, I'm the puzzle, it's me. - Parity time, everybody agrees. - I'll stare directly at the sum but never in the mirror. - It must be exhausting getting these clues to cohere. Apologies to Taylor.

I enjoyed watching Simon prove cells to be Odd or Even instead of using the mirror to reflect the Odds and Evens he already had.

Video length: 44:08 Video length if Simon remembered to always follow the mirror rule: at least 3x shorter 😅

Both the Taylor Swift part of my life and the Sudoku part of my life has met. I have never been more happy

Simon's determination to ignore the parity mirror is right up there with his determination to ignore the Zetamath's domino rule...

Simon playing a Taylor song, something I never thought I'd see! love it already!

28:20 "all of the circles have been even, which is odd" is what I was waiting for

Rules: 06:09 Let's Get Cracking: 06:58 Simon's time: 35m50s Puzzle Solved: 42:48 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Bobbins: 2x (25:39, 37:38) Three In the Corner: 2x (42:17, 42:18) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! By Sudoku: 10x (25:12, 26:13, 29:03, 30:07, 31:00, 32:40, 32:45, 39:41, 42:15, 42:34) Beautiful: 9x (05:33, 10:59, 18:43, 18:43, 18:44, 26:43, 28:38, 42:50, 43:37) Clever: 6x (00:45, 22:22, 22:25, 34:42, 34:45, 42:50) Lovely: 6x (06:52, 10:56, 37:04, 42:32, 43:13, 43:13) Hang On: 6x (09:01, 09:10, 16:37, 31:24, 38:32, 40:03) What on Earth: 4x (08:38, 08:48, 15:49, 16:39) Gorgeous: 4x (05:40, 16:22, 23:50, 37:01) In Fact: 4x (11:43, 30:04, 38:38, 39:01) Sorry: 3x (19:34, 23:34, 42:20) Break the Puzzle: 3x (16:26, 16:30, 16:37) Ah: 3x (36:24, 36:56, 42:23) Goodness: 2x (15:58, 16:09) Stuck: 2x (22:13, 30:56) Brilliant: 2x (02:04, 03:43) I've Got It!: 2x (10:52, 10:52) Stunning: 2x (24:36, 24:36) Cake!: 2x (03:26, 03:43) Good Grief: 1x (24:34) Out of Nowhere: 1x (42:44) Naughty: 1x (24:58) Our old Friend Sudoku: 1x (13:09) Come on Simon: 1x (15:46) Shouting: 1x (05:16) Of All Things: 1x (13:58) Magnificent: 1x (00:25) Surely: 1x (34:47) Progress: 1x (27:26) Next Trick: 1x (41:27) On the Cusp: 1x (34:06) Pencil Mark/mark: 1x (37:48) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Sixteen (2 mentions) Two (56 mentions) Orange (11 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Even (75) - Odd (54) Shaded (2) - Unshaded (0) Black (2) - White (0) Row (21) - Column (18) 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!

So frustrating watching Simon get a parity and not immediately mirror it so he doesn’t forget about it

Watching simon forget about the rules seems to be met with frustration from some of the audience -- but it's _always_ an invitation to watch brilliance at work, because he'll literally construct a scale model of the universe in his head before applying an unusual ruleset sometimes -- and get an answer from it! Amazing to watch.

Simon, Simon, Simon... Remember the rules! They are there to help you solve the puzzle!

This was really great. I have missed solving with Simon. He's so positive about even the difficult things; it's quite lovely.

39:00 watching Simon re-derive parity in box 3 was hard to watch when he could have copied from box 7.

I was waiting for Simon to notice that the circles in box 3 and box 7 were mirrored but he solved it a different way. Great puzzle, great solve.

I found the break-in all by myself! Woot! Thanks to Simon for always telling the secret and explaining what he’s doing; I’ve learned a lot since watching this channel for the last two months or so a few days a week!

use the mirror, Luke...use the mirror...!!

I never thought my love for Taylor Swift and my love for Sudoku would cross but man this is my wonderland.

I was one of the testers of this puzzle and I really liked it. Zegres always makes really clever puzzles and I immediately understood the Taylor Swift reference when I solved it.

Simons brain is in entertainment mode, either sees the most brilliant deduction or overlooking the most obvious one for our viewing pleasure!

I think I yelled at Simon more times in this video than any other. The number of times he didn't just mirror parity over was killing me, but then when he looked at the logic to figure it all out when it was readily available (see box 3, for example) was simple breathtaking. :) As an example, he asked about the 49 pair in box 9, and decided he couldn't do it yet. If he'd just looked at the parity of the cells in the box, it _was_ done immediately.

Even if they are not so popular now, I think crossword solving videos could draw in many of your "sudoku regulars" and introduce them to something new. I started doing the short telegraph plussword daily puzzles recently, mostly to improve my English, and I could see myself progressing on via your videos.

37:10 with 5 minutes left of the solve, "I'm finally remembering the rule" "let's just check this out down here first" immediately forgets the rule again for the rest of the solve 🤣🤣🤣🤣

While I am addicted to your videos, you have the maddening tendency to focus on sudoku while forgetting the rules, and vice versa. This is immensely enjoyable.

Bonus points in advance for Taylor Swift. 😁 If on Twitter there’s no Taylor GIF to express something, it’s not worth saying. I very much like the cryptic crossword puzzels, although I’d never be able to solve them in English myself. [edit] This surely was a great puzzle and as always a great solve! Thank you, Zegres and Simon!

I love watching Simon, as we see such different things when looking at the puzzle. I may well be going "you've missed this bit of logic", meanwhile he spots something I hadn't even considered looking at.

I have never be a fan of crossword puzzles, but I love watching you solve these cryptic ones. It's very interesting from a viewer's perspective. Keep doing it!

Hooray, a ZegreS puzzle! I loved those riddles. This should be fun.

Missed opportunity that I thought he was actually going to say: "All of the circles so far have been even, which is odd!"

It's not just Simon that comes out with strange statements while solving. This puzzle elicited from me this bizarre statement, "I was right for the exact same reason I was wrong!"

A splendid puzzle. Love the way the four worlds (sudoku, arrows, parity and parity mirror) overlapped and helped each other out, like a symbiosis. You have to constantly travel from one to another to dig yourself out of those sneaky dead-ends.

I was screaming at my screen for 80% of the video for him to just reflect the even/odd parity and to put the 9s on the line

I’ve been watching this channel for a while now but sometimes I have a hard time keeping up with all the videos you guys put out (a good problem to have though lol I’m glad to always have a sudoku video ready when I want to watch) but I really am a simple person; I see Taylor, I click. I see Taylor on a sudoku video and I click even faster. (Also your guitar version of anti-hero was so nice😁

Saw the thumbnail with Taylor and was surprised to open a Cracking the Cryptic video. This is the most unexpected thing you could've done lol and I'm LIVING for it. The color parity thing in this puzzle was super fun too the time just flew by!

Take a shot every time Simon colors a cell even/odd and forgets to color its counterpart across the mirror line 🤣

Great setting and solving, great musical intro, and I’m loving this new parity mirror rule and hope to see it again soon!!

I continue to be amazed at the speed with which mark and Simon home in on the right areas to make progress in the puzzle.

Simon - love the way you explain the word play and solutions in solving the cryptic crosswords. It has helped me tremendously in improving my cryptic crossword play. I would love to see you taking on a weekly cryptic crossword. Thanks for all you do!

Great puzzle, the amount of times Simon forgets the mirror constraint is amazing

I am probably in the minority here, and don't take this the wrong way! some of the puzzles you all do I could never fathom doing. not even in days of work would I get 1 single digit! but I still watch every video and second because I love the logic and watching the solves. I would like to see the occasional video where you do a NYT puzzle or a general expert/evil level sudoku. would be great to watch but I understand many would be disinterested here. either way, love watching you both solve and it brightens my day!

honestly i don’t care for crosswords, but hearing your voice is so soothing and it really helps me relax when i’m having some anxiety, that’s how i got into sudokus and i’m starting to get into crosswords, but they’re so difficult 😢😢😢

What a nice puzzle! I think I will try this one, because it seems as if the logic and layout are something familiar enough ... and now that I've seen your solve, Simon, I will know (maybe?) what to remember to do! I love your videos, you are enthusiastic and complimentary of the solver and you love the beauty of it all, not just the getting-to-the-end part. So wonderful. Thanks, as always, Simon.

I finished a 71 mile hike we have been doing in sections, and on the ride home I just kept looking forward to today's puzzle. Thanks, Simon.

38:53 - though admittedly I needed to hear Simon work through some parts to get my logic unblocked at a couple of parts. I do like how the circles straddling the diagonals helped to give you a key to how the evens and odds propagate outwards

Yes please make the Friday cryptic a regular feature! Learning how to do cryptic crosswords is my New Year’s resolution and I find the videos really help my understanding ❤

Ug!!! I missed the last circle clue in box 1-2 because I didn't have outlines on elements turned on in settings! That circle finished the whole puzzle. Excellent puzzle, ZegreS, and nice solve, Simon.

Took me ages, but it all fell out nicely in the end. At first I was freaked out about the length-2 arrows, but as it turned out, they actually help.

Love the guitar intro! One of my favorite songs.

59:51 for me. Took me a while too mesh with the logic involved, but enjoyed the originality of the puzzle! Kind Comment.

12:46 as soon as you get the odd in the cross in the middle box you also know that since both circles in that box have the same parity they must both be even because there's not enough odd digits left to make them both odd.

Never in a million years would I have expected to hear Simon do a rendition of a Taylor Swift song. I would think at tea time, everybody agrees that was a welcome surprise! Cheers, Simon! 🍵

30:50 - kept waiting for him to realize that 8 has to be in R4C2 by the mirror being even, and kept wanting him to fill in all the odd even colors in block 1

Instead of shouting today, I said in my calmest, gentlest voice: “Simon, why don’t you stop and reflect upon what you’ve done.” (Love the video, as always. No criticism here, just a bit of friendly bants.)

Interesting. I got the first 8's a different way: 1+3+5+7=16, and the only way to have two even Sudoku digits add up to 16 is 8+8.

26:57 ... probably the easiest 'Simon' Sudoku I've done all week Nice puzzle!

Wouldn't have managed this without Simon's breakthrough, though he did miss early on finishing the central box. 9 can only go on the mirror, and 2 couldn't be in a circle, which gave the 46 pairs in the circles, and 29 pairs on the mirror around the 8. That gave early parities all round the mirror and he'd have cut 10 minutes off the time. I also needed Simon's help to place the 6 in bottom left corner after which the whole lot did itself. Thanks, Simon.

38:09 “this is a 4/9 pair. . . . Do we know the order?” Yes. R9c8 reflects even parity.

Argh! The amount of times Simon found the parity on one side of the line and didn't reflect it was driving me crazy! Lol. I was yelling, "REFLECT!" at my screen all video long. 😆

One rule (and it wasn't important in this puzzle) that wasn't mentioned is that in each of box 1, 5 & 9 (i.e. the diagonals) at least one cell in the diagonal must be odd. It does sort of help at 12:53 as since you know you have 4 odds already, and the fifth must be on the diagonal, then the two circles in box 5 must be even.

I'm at 0:18 and I already love everything about this video

You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear Simon playing Taylor Swift. Ear to ear grin

I have 3 puzzles left in the hunt. I don't know that I'll be able to finish... but this is the closest I have come to finishing the whole hunt. If I got these puzzles before I found cracking the cryptic I wouldn't have made it passed the first one. Guaranteed.

Narrator: "despite Simon's protestations, he has *never* broken the puzzle."

My first thought when seeing the rule was "oh geez." But it wasn't too bad, flowed very nicely when I wasn't messing up and having to undo the last 20 minutes. Liked it a lot.

The german word für Chocolate is "Schokolade" "Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte" means, as you said "Black forest gateau" and translates to "Cherry geteau from the black forest"

23:36 for me. I have no clue how I got stuck on this, it was definitely not that hard. Anyways, interesting puzzle!

I swear I thought he was gonna say: "all the circles are even, that is odd" ..... ;-)

I've begun the puzzle. I seem to be irrevocably breaking it. 9:00 The next thing I did was to reflect the arrows in the center box. All four arrow cells have the same parity. 12:30 This relates to the mistake I made in breaking the puzzle. The digits are all 8, in the two circles with central box arrows and the central cell. 16:40 No, the puzzle's not broken. Not yet, at least. The green cells you just colored are odd, and don't add to 8. 22:30 "... this much damage with two-cell arrows." Damage to what? Our brains? 32:20 I've been off-and-on muttering about the 2 in row five. Thanks for the video. I needed your help at certain stages of the puzzle.

It's my birthday today. Shout out to me. Thanks for all the great videos. I love them.

Someone needs to make a parity mirror anti-knight Sudoku to get the true bane of remembering rules. :P A really fun puzzle, and once you wrap your head around and remember the parity mirror rule I found it fairly approachable, but full of lovely logic. And an enjoyable solve video from Simon who of course easily obliterated my solve time despite the occasional mirror rule forgetting.

I think this is the first time I was ahead of Simon, ever. I must be getting better at these. 😃

So, at 42:20, Simon's saying "It's 3. Hi. I'm the problem, it's 3?"

30:22 lol, famous words when he didn't shade in box 1 😂

I'm glad I'm not the only one who kept wanting to use the diagonal as an extra region.

53 minutes! Loved the break-in!

I yelled "reflection" at my screen for a solid minute

Me, every 30 or so seconds: Color in the parity!

I love how you fill in the parity of box seven and tell yourself “I mustn’t forget to extend the parity” and then you promptly forget to extend the parity and you work it out a different way instead lol.

Beautiful puzzle. At 39:52 Simon says: "Actually a bit surprising that this [puzzle] is going to finish... because I think I've used up all the arrows." At that time, there were still six arrows unfinished and only five arrows completely filled. 🙂

Your music taste is CLASSIC!

34:32 for me. Fun and pretty simple, though I messed up a correct deduction because I forgot the right possibility for r1c3.

stared at this for ages before realising that the parity is the SAME not opposite over the mirror line :D - it then solved nicely

Always enjoy guitar intros even when (as today’s) I’m not familiar with the song. I’m aware of Taylor Swift, just not a lot of her music. I love the puzzle and the theme and of course watching Simon crack it!

45 min. That was really enjoyable.

The easier way to see how to get your first digits is to add up 1357. It's 16, which can only be satisfied by two 8s. The only remaining odd, the 9, must go on the diagonal, since it can't reflect. This means the two sum-cells in box 5 must be even. You were very lax about reflecting the parity, even after chastising yourself several times. It's really not hard to say "that's even, so that must be even", every time. After you worked out that R3C4 was even, you could have used the reflection to make R4C3 even. However, you could also make R7C6 even, because the two arrows in box 5 contain the same mix of parities, and so the arrow totals have the same parity. This then makes R6C7 even too. In boxes 3 & 7, the arrow sum is the same parity, and the arrow tips have the same parity, so the inner cells on each arrow have the same parity. This means that R2C8/9 are the same parity, as are R8/9C2. In box 1, you could have got the whole box's parity once you made R1C3 odd. You had box 7 all worked out, but you still faffed around trying to figure out the parity in box 3. In box 9, 9 must go in the empty 2x2, on the diagonal, so R7C7 is even and can only be 6. Sudoku means R6C7 is 8, so R2C7 is 4 and there's a 24 pair in R1C1/2 - how on earth you failed to spot this is totally beyond me - there's an 8 looking at two of the three remaining evens in the box, so which one is the 8? Both the 46 pair in box 6, and the 2s in boxes 5 and 6 mean R5C3 is 2, which resolves the 24 pairs in both box 1 and box 7. You put the 9 in box 7, but could have also put 9 in box 1, since it can't go on a line. This then places 9 in box 4. You put a 49 pair on the end of R9, but had you reflected the parity, you'd have known which was which before you marked them. Even when you asked whether you knew the order, you failed to spot this. It's not as if the diagonal was out of sight, and out of mind - the domino included the diagonal. You'd be so much more efficient if you examined the effect of each placement. When you placed the 2 in box 6, you should have been looking what effect it had. First, it placed 2 in R5C3, second, it took away the only other cell where 8 could go in the box, so you'd have got R6C7=8. Placing the 2 in box 4 resolved the 24 pair, etc., etc. Instead of this, you failed to place either the 8 in box 6, or the 2 in box 4 for ages, leaving so much on the table to be discovered by searching much later on. Slow down, and stop getting excited. When you've made "educational" videos, where you've taken time to explain every move, you've been much more efficient, because you've given yourself enough time to properly assess the impact of each placement. It's a good job I live in the UK, where we have the NHS. If I were in the US, the doctor's fees for the reconstructive surgery after all the face-palming, not to mention the treatment for my damaged larynx would have made this a very expensive video. I'm sure the hair that was pulled out will grow back, so I'll just have to wear a hat for a few months.

I was kinda intrigued by the fact that the 9's in the puzzle are also mirrored to each other.

I also love the outlines

I wish I could come up with a measure of "influenced squares" to discuss how difficult rules are. It is hard, because one doesn't want total transitivity (or all sudoku rules are the same for a given grid size because the solutions are unique) yet stopping after one step seems wrong too.

24:14 for me. Much quicker than expected once the colouring got started.

Hearing a none native speaker saying „Schwarzwälderkirschtorte“ is very impressive. In German there are two words for cake. Normal cake is referred to as „Kuchen“ and layered cake (for example filled with cream or ganache) is „Torte“. So „chocolate cake“ would be Schokoladenkuchen. (Or Schokoladentorte)

took me twice as long and i remembered the mirror rule😭 still cool tho, glad i was able to do it without watching the video, been a long time since i could do a puzzle on this channel by myself

Y'all tease Simon for not using the parity line. But don't you realize he was just staring directly at the sum, but never in the mirror? A true Swifty

Times I have heard Simon say "I think I've broken the puzzle" - 439 - Times he's actually broken the puzzle when he says this - 0!

Very interesting and beautiful puzzle. Not nearly as difficult as most of Simon's puzzles. I was able to solve it rather quickly and without any problems (without brain acrobatics) ... and of course with great pleasure.

You could do it faster if you payed more attention to the mirror rule, but I enjoy the video, this puzzle was very beautiful

28:14 a new Simonism "all the circles so far have been even which is..." . Who would have guessed he wouldn't say "odd"?

(Thanks to Simon and his prior puzzles on this channel, I used the corner letter technique to identify the mirrored cells rather than more colors that would confuse. Once the cells had parity color, I removed the lettering. Only thing is that I still couldn't do the puzzle without him!)

32:24 for me - a great puzzle, ZegreS.

Simon covering Taylor Swift has made my year! ❤

*one of if not the most well known and prolific artist of the modern era* Simon: She's relatively popular XD

Love that ruleset, could be some gorgeous GAS versions of that, maybe start with lots of givens like a classic but put the parity mirror in and add cages🤔 could even lead to some new variation of set?