You could tell CTC’s viewership is lovely because there’s a zero percent chance any other RU-vidr with this many followers would invite their viewers to say hello irl 😂
"Don't need to be knights they need to be kangaroos" Now I want to see a Kangaroo Move Constraint puzzle. EDIT: I've been informed the video called Tigger Bounce is exactly this. Dying Flutchman always comes through.
I recall there was one in which digits three away in one dimension, and one away in the other, couldn't be the same, also solved by Simon on the channel. I recall that he called it "Tigger bounce" at the time.
10:44 "I will use colors to highlight cells. What letter is that digit?" 13:55 "Now G, H, and I ... are a sequential sequence." 18:01 "If I was nine, then this renban would contain 9, 8, and 7." 19:33 "... by a process of knights-moveage" Simon on fire today
Don't forget my favourite "by the power of sheer chicanery". 😁😈 And of course, "This is 9 because it's not A or E". The crazy sentences one hears on this channel are the highlight of my day!
This is the first of Phistomefel's puzzles that I've ever seen the break-in to without watching the video. I solved it for the first time in about 55 minutes. I've replayed it a number of times in the last week and I'm absolutely enamored with the logic of it, again and again..
If you use colors in this puzzle you can go straight to labeling main gray thermo with 2 options per cell, because orange thermo is consecutive. so thermo is 14, 25, 36, 47, 58, 69. That makes renban lines easier to determine.
Hey, just wanted to say before I watch the video, during the Fall semester, my studies forced me to put away Cracking the Cryptic for a bit. I’m proud to say I’m now finally caught all the way back up on all of Simon’s videos! Happy to be here. POST-WATCH EDIT: Gotta love a Phistomefel puzzle and a Simon solve!! Incredibly done. I love the letter technique you’re using, though personally given that my eyes are probably less colorblind than yours I tend to gravitate towards colors, thus allowing me more flexibility with central and corner pencil marks. One way you could get around that with letters, though, is by just using central pencil marks for letters instead of using big letters, thus allowing you to label letters as numbers or even as options for numbers. It is a tad clunky though. As per the convenience with which you were able to recognize that GHI were consecutive compared to, as per your example, red, yellow, and blue, you could get around that with colors by changing the color scheme such that what you labeled GHI were instead three different shades of blue, or light gray, dark gray, and black, or red, orange, and yellow, etc., thus sort of making “consecutive colors.” The letters are certainly better for that though! So benefits and drawbacks for both methods. Favorite quote from today’s video: - “For being lovely, we should award it the color of … grey.”
I used colours for this one, but when I found that consecutive bit, I labeled them "A-B-C" over the colour (in small central letters) to remind me of their order. Best of both worlds -- letters when they're more helpful, colours otherwise. :)
Simon using letters instead of colors: Pros: Doesn't keep using the color far past its utility creating visual confusion. Color blind accessible. Cons: No pretty board at the end. *Tries to keep using a letter after finding what number it is, creating the most unnecessarily confusing markings of all time.*
Also cons: Once you've filled the number in the first instance of a letter, you now don't have that letter-number match as a reference. Harder to pencil mark candidate numbers when you've also got letters in the same cells. Easy to confuse 1 and I when you start putting numbers in.
@@stevieinselby That first con is easily fixed by using center pencilmarks instead of full height letters, then if you need to check which letter it was, you can simply delete the number to retrieve the letter
I admire your ability to skip pencil marking in favor of understanding the principle and just remembering what you've deduced. That technique is beyond me- I must keep track of the most basic things. Maybe one day...
It is often beyond Simon as well, as he will sometimes lose the logic before he applies it everywhere. Along with his magical deductions and wit, this is what compels me to watch him.
Phistomefel puzzles are like a story that you need to construct so you could start. Every puzzle he makes reminds me why I think he is a unique genuis setter.. so much fun and thanks Simon for sharing..
Rules: 03:41 Let's Get Cracking: 05:20 Simon's time: 39m27s Puzzle Solved: 44:47 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Phistomefel: 3x (01:30, 01:59, 03:39) Bobbins: 1x (32:07) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! By Sudoku: 13x (10:26, 10:48, 12:25, 13:31, 18:15, 22:00, 23:44, 24:04, 27:06, 34:42, 35:29, 36:57, 39:49) Hang On: 12x (11:48, 12:19, 12:19, 12:19, 19:54, 20:27, 20:27, 20:27, 20:27, 20:34, 29:54, 30:37) Ah: 11x (07:27, 13:24, 15:31, 15:54, 17:27, 26:08, 29:16, 29:16, 32:10, 34:51, 34:51) Pencil Mark/mark: 10x (05:50, 09:47, 09:47, 10:16, 16:44, 26:44, 28:40, 33:06, 35:37, 38:20) Lovely: 7x (13:14, 27:34, 27:34, 34:51, 37:49, 37:53, 38:11) Beautiful: 6x (15:54, 15:57, 21:58, 44:45, 45:42, 46:09) Sorry: 5x (06:44, 06:54, 07:07, 07:25, 21:11) I've Got It!: 5x (17:34, 17:34, 17:37, 25:08, 25:08) In Fact: 5x (05:27, 05:46, 19:12, 28:06, 37:35) Gorgeous: 4x (21:31, 27:24, 44:49, 46:01) Obviously: 4x (12:25, 29:31, 31:09, 31:57) Naked Single: 2x (28:08, 39:17) Nonsense: 2x (30:54, 30:56) What on Earth: 1x (21:42) Bother: 1x (19:30) Bingo: 1x (44:43) Extraordinary: 1x (07:07) Our old Friend Sudoku: 1x (28:25) Shouting: 1x (06:57) Masterpiece: 1x (02:02) Magnificent: 1x (07:02) We Can Do Better Than That: 1x (36:20) Wow: 1x (32:23) What Does This Mean?: 1x (23:31) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Ten (2 mentions) Five (65 mentions) Green (8 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Even (2) - Odd (0) Higher (5) - Lower (2) Lowest (6) - Highest (0) Column (11) - 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!
I often hear Simon use words I've never heard or read anywhere else; examples include"greenage" and "sevenage." Is it possible for you to track such neologisms?
I see your "greenage" and raise you a "greenliness"! 😅 Would be quite interesting, but as the speech recognition mechanism is able to understand "Phistomefel", I guess it would work with such made up words, as long as they are phonetically consistent with English pronunciation rules. Or there might be a way to specify or train the sound of a word?
I got a 26:02! I think this was my first time finishing a solve of a phistomophel puzzle and it was fantastic. Absolutely brilliant from start to finish.
At 35:00 Simon amazes me again. He can come up with the most complex logic sequences to solve puzzles, and can miss simple things at the same time. The half diamond, shape thingy for instance. Maybe try triangle😮. For the rest a brilliant solve as usual
Isn't "half diamond" more descriptive than simply referring to it as a triangle, though. Not all triangles are half diamonds. This one very much is. So it's a more precise description than simply calling it a triangle.
It was true from the start, Simon. From the start all the cells on the long thermo saw both the full small thermo and the intersecting renban, and made the 3 cells on both the same digits.
Yes, although initially one of the renban cells could map to one of two thermo cells ... but that is narrowed down to one when you look at the other renban cells.
I absolutely love the approach of using letters for puzzles where you don‘t really know the digits until far into the puzzle, but the placement of digits is fairly restricted. Anytime I‘m solving with the sudoku pad app, that is one of my go-to approaches for especially knight-move or similarly restrictive sudokus. So yeah, it would be great if you continued to use it (when appropriate) :D
I've got a couple years now of loving the coloring puzzles -- and you've expanded the palette -- I'm not switching to letters! My current preferences are light blue & dark blue, light green & dark green, orange & brown, red & purple, yellow. I like to have colors that pair up because you often have dominoes that you start with one color that you later have to split into their components. Colors forever! (or colours for those of you across the pond).
Letters do have the advantage of allowing corner and central pencil marking distinction. Perhaps we should have the option to use coloured letters, where each letter is a different colour! This could please both crowds. Poor Sven has an never ending list of requests!
Simon is eminently qualified for a position in the Department of Redundancy Department; his frequent use of "Sequential Sequence" and then replacing that word-domino witjh "Consecutive /Sequence" proves this beyond a doubt!
55 minutes for me today. Always a wonderful thing when I manage to do a Phistomefel puzzle without any hints from Simon. Strange with a Phistomefel puzzle without a monstrously difficult break in.
I also felt its way better with letters than with colour. Readability alone does the trick, but here especially for being ordered. I made two adjustments though: a) Replaced I with J, to not be confused with 1; b) Once I assigned a digit to a letter, I dropped the letter altogether. So after figuring the values for A and F, box 2 was immediately filled with a 19E triplet. Thank for helping me solve. Phistomefel amazing as always.
32:58 ... after seeing my solve streak end on yesterday's Sudoku, it feels good to start a new streak of 'Simon' solves with the Sudoku Devil himself! Nice puzzle!
I loved this puzzle, and I am quite proud that I was able to finish it even though I had to start over twice due to mistakes that I wasn't able to trace back. One theme that I think is recuring in Phistomefel's puzzle is this sort of purposefully cluttering one area of the grid for maximum chaos and then taking the solver from there to complete the rest of the grid. On another note, I don't have any issue with Simon's preference for letter over colours as aides in this puzzle. But for me I thought that colours worked better because the advantage of colours is that they are permanent. You can leave your colours even after deducting the digit and that helps to propagate that deduction to other areas without having to remember what letter it was before it became a full digit. Anyway, great puzzle and great solve!!
The same pattern of crossing thermos was used in the second miracle sudoku. I recognized the pattern before the rules were read, and I was validated when the rules turned out to have a knight move constraint (Miracle Sudoku #2 also had it).
70 minutes for me, losing about 15 of progress to a wrong leap in thinking about the thermo digits. This puzzle immediately screamed "The Miracle Sudoku 2" to me.
Super proud I was able to solve this puzzle without even starting the video for any hints. I'm excited to watch Simon's solve to see his "ah ha" moments like I had throughout the puzzle. I ended up struggling with the sudoku at the end more than the logic of the puzzle, but that's because I have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to classic sudoku.
I feel like once a digit is known it's worth using that digit and not its letter, I don't think mixing letter and number marks would be as bad as Simon seems to fear.
Wow! I finally solved a Phistomefel puzzle without having to watch the video for tips! Had to restart a couple times when I made some incorrect deductions and got stuck. But I'm still really happy to have solved it!
Nice, thanks. After struggling through a couple of recent puzzles this one was almost a walk in the park. That said, if I had used letters it would have been another epic struggle.
A really fun and clever puzzle, and actually a bit more approachable than I expected for a 4/5 phistomefel. I would have gotten it done in a reasonable time except I got stuck because I missed knight's move (the 5 in r4c5 eliminating 5 from r3c7). Despite multiple attempts scanning the puzzle and looking to see if I was missing a knight's move, I kept on missing that elimination. My ineptness at scanning aside, a great puzzle.
I like the possible triple-entendre of the word transmission - as a noun, where the knob of the orange thermometer becomes the part one would grip when shifting a standard gear shift in an automobile (the grey thermometer representing the gear box), as a verb as in to share a piece of knowledge or practice, or as, in the Buddhist tradition, a passing down of a lineage to an acolyte. All apt when applied to this puzzle.
Devilish devilish But not extremely so: Thermos and renban lines, Puzzle with style. Lovely construction, this Phistomefelian Helping of letter soup Served with a smile.
I always get a little thrill when I spot something important before Simon, it happens so rarely 😁 In this case, right at the beginning, the logic he used to show the orange thermometer digits can't exist on the grey one, also apply to the renban in the same area. So immediately you can say that the orange thermo and renban have to use the same 3 digits, and they must be distinct from the grey thermo.
Classy setting as always. I wouldn't have rated this a 4 for difficulty, 3 is probably closer. I could see that by geometry, all thermo cells were different, so I labelled them with the same letters as you. I didn't want to use colours, because you can't tell whether red is greater or less than purple, or how close they are. It was then a question of using the knight's rule to narrow down options. The 3-cell diagonal renban contained GHI, so the short thermo was consecutive digits, and the long one was either consecutive, with GHI=123 or 789, or it was consecutive in two parts, with GHI in the gap. I could rule out GHI going on either end by the letters forced onto various lines, so it was just a question of working out where the break to accommodate GHI was on the longer thermo. I knew that A=1 and F=9, which allowed me to make some eliminations, and deduce the break was between E and F, so the long thermo was 123459, and the short was 678. I think sticking with letters until the numbers were all resolved avoided some of the confusing marking you had. After that, it was a fairly straightforward anti-knight/renban puzzle. "Sequential sequence"? 😜 All sequences are sequential, by definition, I think the word you were after is consecutive. You seemed to be struggling with words today, because that "shape" is what mathematicians call a triangle, as in "the half-diamondy number for 7 is 28".
I love the idea that Simon had a "9 in a corner with a 19AF penciled in" box. I feel like this sudoku skills have evolved since using letters in the last puzzle. I wouldn't be surprised if he started using letters more often now.
Letters were the right option. I tried using colours in that previous puzzle and it quickly became a hot mess! I followed the same path as Simon, but letters made it much clearer!
Yet another great puzzle from Phistomephel, though quite approachable compared to many others... The break-in is a brilliant combination of the contraints involved 🙃
Nah, I'm still for colours rather than letters! Is it just because you happen to have ended up with a consecutive sequence of letters that represent what turns out to be a consecutive string of numbers that has meant it is easier to conceptualise ... if you had started lettering from the top-left and ended up with ADH on the orange thermo, would you then have had to re-letter everything? I'm also finding it really confusing seeing 1s and Is around the grid! And of course you don't lose the colours when you put a number in. This was a tough one, it took me 1h15, but the nice thing was that there was always something to do to whittle away at it and take little steps towards the solution, there were never any gargantuan conceptual leaps needed, so it was enjoyable to complete ... as we would expect from Phistomefel!
It's impossible to scan with colors, so letters are definitely the way to go. Would work better if you used single central pencilmarks instead of full size letters, I think
Depends on the puzzle. I find it easier to tell at a glance that two cells are equal if they're both red, rather than both pencilmarked A. I find it easier to tell a cell has 3 options if it's marked ABC rather than coloured red/yellow/green/white. For something like the one two days ago, where you basically fill the entire grid before getting a digit, I found letters easier. For something shorter and simpler, like this breakin, I prefer colours. I only had a few colours in a few cells, green yellow red placed on the top left renban and thermo, red placed in box 2, there's a number smaller than green on the c6 thermo, a number bigger than red on the r2 thermo, so that's enough to place the 1 & 9 on the gray thermo, that gives 2 spots for 9 in box 2, one is quickly ruled out, and then you can fill in the thermos completely and delete the colours. Would have worked using ABC too, of course, just harder for me to spot.
If you've been watching the channel for a while then colors are easier. Because that's what we started using before the software even allowed letters. I suppose colors would be harder if letters came first. :)
What a magnificent construction. Great solve by Simon. Much more elegant than mine. I agree with Simon that *letters* are easier than *colours* in this puzzle. *Placeholder digits* are absolutely useless in this case, where the process of converting from symbols to numbers starts immediately with *1* and *9.* I used small centered letters along the thermos, because I didn't want to delete the *1s* an *9s* I pencilmarked on their bulbs and tips. At playback time 19:12 I wouldn't keep pencilmarking *A* and *F* in *box 2,* just after discovering they are *1* and *9‼* 🙃 Hybrid pencilmarking (digits and letters in the same cell) is ok.
I like letters for the pencil marks and colors for visibility. Could we get colored letters for the best of both? Or even small colored squares that can be used as pencil marks.
22:00 -ish: Simon, once you know A is 1 and F is 9, convert all he A's ans F's to 1's and 9's everywhere (center marks, corner marks, and identified digits) and then *stop using A and F altogether*!
12:40 It wasn't narrowed down without both the Renban and Orange Thermo, but it WAS true that the 3-cell Renban always saw the entirety of the Grey Thermo. Due to the weird elongated rectangle shape going on, both the Renban and the Orange Thermo see all of Grey in the same fashon. Then due to a shared box, the Renban's cells are disambiguated.
Got it done in 70:48 but there were some pauses and breaks in there. This is one of if not the first Phistomefels I've done without any aid whatsoever - the break-in was really interesting.
Great puzzle. Contrary to my expectations, I got the start done quickly. Later, I kept running into problems solving the triangle 5678... until I realized my own stupidity. I had forgotten "in any order" and therefore always had the wrong digit in the middle of the purple line in box 8. After that everything ran smoothly again.
I fairly quickly spotted that /this bunch/ of numbers are all different and ooh, /this subset/ of them must be contiguous and now I know their order, so I'm making good progress?? Oh no... I just swallowed the tasty looking bait and Phistomefel has me firmly on the hook. Great puzzle.
Oh, thank goodness. The letters are all done (@25:45 abouts). May I suggest, using center marks on those letters [because, if you slam 'em all in there as *BOLD* , you're not going to see what letters they all were ] That was my trouble on the other one yesterday. Even put the numbers-in next to the letters until they're all sorted . They're *all numbers* now. Easier. [Interesting how that renban into box6 from box5 was a 2,3 or a 3,4 (so it had a 3 on it), and those "3s" saw c6r6 (a 2,3), making it a 2 and the "3-4" on that "renban" I spoke of.. Really cool how it bounced back by knight's move. Center letters though until they're all resolved is my suggestion. [My mind (and many others) can't remember 18 different letters and numbers (nine each) and still see stuff. Will Simon have trouble? Maybe not. Enjoy [All the letters are done though ] This is akin to having *colors* where you can still enter numbers.. [Once they're *BOLD* (Letters or numbers) with letters in the grid, you *can't* see what was what] Good job
An alternate plan.. [I suppose, you can highlight a *BOLD* cell -- hit delete-- and see what's underneath.. then *re-enter* ] Trouble though [Unless you can remember 18 different things and see all of the logic ] It's going to take away from seeing the logic though .. Good move to here though, Simon. The bold letters were needed for a short bit. Put them in the center though [that's my lousy suggestion, lol] 👍😂😎☕️☕️
Solved in 50:33. I am actually surprised the day came where i approached a Phistomefel puzzle and immediately got the break in, before blinding myself for metaphorical hours on equine constraints.
Letters or colors? Simon, if you enjoy colors (and if you think that they will work) then use them; if you think that letters are fun (and they make the solve easier or more fun for you) then use them. Personally, I think I prefer colors - both to watch a video and to use in my own solves, but I understand letters and don't mind when you use them. (Replacing a pencil-marked letter with its numeric digit, but still having some pencil-marked letters or full size letters around that are that same numeric digit is quite confusing to me as a viewer, not sure how you could avoid that while using letters as stand-ins, though ...) I am always happy to see a Phistomefel puzzle on the channel because I know that it will be an excellent puzzle and example of its type, and I know that you will love it. Thanks, Simon!
Hah, I went into this puzzle not knowing who it is by :) I relatively quickly realized that the thermos must have all 9 numbers, so I just unreasonably colored everything. It was slow but steady progress with lot of feel-good-logic, so I enjoyed my inefficient solve :D
The reason for "Transmission". If you have Sven's error digit helper activated, then amazingly it now knows about knight's move, and will show digits that are in fault. I know, this is tantamount to cheating. However once you do this, you can see the solution literally bouncing back and forth between the corners of the puzzle - quite fascinating!
I'm always so frustrated when I have to look for hints in the video only to find out I was on track, but incomplete pencil markings did me in once again.
At 17:00 I came up with another way to show that I is not 9. If I was 9, then F would be 6 and by sudoku you could no longer place 6 in box 2. I like how there can often be multiple "roads" so to speak to solving puzzles like this.
transmission? Which those interacting thermometers as the break in to the puzzle, I'm guessing the name refers to heat passing through a medium as well as passing information between the 2 thermometers. But, it could be related to broadcasting, disease, electricity...
"ou new sudoku mmh yea time for a good time" (Looks away to do some drawing cause this is good background noise) (Looks back and sees the alphabet) "???????"
I don't know whether or it is because today my old project at work came up - a product that sends and receives data, i.e., transmits it, but ... transmission of data for this puzzle title origin? I.e., between the two thermometers?
