Hi Olli, loved the puzzle (even though I mainly had to wrestle with my own faults marking some cells wrongly). Love the idea of famous album covers. Got so many ideas immediately.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1350">22:30</a> Simon: *highlights all nines so it can clearly be seen that the last three nines can be placed via sudoku* Also Simon: *solves the position of the nines in a way more complicated way without using sudoku* That was my favourite part! 😂 And to be honest, I solved it by using sudoku and 'my way' wasn't nearly as graceful. I explicitly came back to watch this sudoku be solved 'the Simon way' after solving it myself :) The essence of this puzzle became more clear in this video. Such a fun puzzle!
A good cheesesteak sandwich uses good, thinly sliced steak and good cheese, not some amorphous cheese sauce. I hope you had one of the good ones. It almost makes up for the trip home. My parents lived in Philly as newlyweds and my mom bemoaned the loss of her daily cheesesteak for more than 50 years.
Imagine if your Philly Cheese sandwich was so expensive it meant you couldn't afford to heat your house, that would make it a Chilly Fees sandwich too!
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1364">22:44</a> Let's highlight all the placed 9s and completely ignore the fact that we can just fill in all the rest. Why spoil a sudoku puzzle by doing sudoku!
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1551">25:51</a> for me - i like to try these now if Simon and Mark’s time isnt too long and i look at the puzzle and think, yes I might be able to do this one.
I was actually able to do this one. It took me <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="79">01:19</a>:27 but I made no mistakes! I solved completely differently, finding almost all my 1s and 9s first, mainly from being bad at sudoku.
Congrats Olli! A Simon feature that’s well deserved. I’m sorry I haven’t visited your twitch stream lately; I moved back to America this summer, so I’ve been busy.
Now I want to see a sudoku named after Revolution #5 by Neil Cicierega. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mambo Number 5. . . Number 5. . . Number 5. . . Number 5. . . Number 5. . . Number 5. . . Number 5. . ."
Thanks for highlighting such a cool puzzle! I wonder if Simon ever checks the solve counter after he posts his solves? This puzzle has over 5800 solves now the day after Simon solved it. I don't normally attempt to solve the puzzles Simon posts, but seeing as my last name is Nine, I had to try this puzzle. 😁 I'm glad I did! I finished and had a fun time!
I finished in <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1535">25:35</a> minutes. This was such a clean sudoku. I really liked the simplicity of the grid and the rules. It created a very fun solve. I particularly enjoyed solving box 9. The ending was very difficult to see, but I can proudly say that I didn't resort to bifurcation and was able to do it all in my head. I mentally calculated if r7c9 could be a 6 and it was impossible as it led to no place for 7 in box 9. That was so satisfying to do. If I bifurcated at the end, I would have beat Simon's time. However, there's no fun in that. Great Puzzle!
The White Album had some really interesting songs, Oh-Bla-Dee Oh-Bla Da, Blackbird, I'm So Tired, Helter Skelter, Glass Onion, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Revolution I, Back in the U.S.S.R. and Revolution 9, and some underrated gems too, Dear Prudence, Martha My Dear, but does anyone remember Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey?
Thanks for choosing my Friday night karaoke song, Simon! I’ll happily sing along to George Harrison. Unfortunately I can’t comment on the puzzle itself because my husband isn’t off work yet (and we like to solve together before watching Simon tackle it)
Always ❤ guitar intro! Also love Beatles! And George Harrison’s “As My Guitar Gently Weeps”. Also will get the approachable app!!! Update: Just bought the approachable puzzles pack!! Let the fun begin!!😃
How apt that the White Album includes the songs ‘Birthday’ (that would make the birthday announcements interesting! 🤣😜) and ‘Helter Skelter’ (though this puzzle less so than the previous ones Simon has featured). Great setting to only use the 9s as clues yet still produce a smooth solve path.
I loved this puzzle, which I did before watching the video (unusual for me). And I loved your solve, Simon. I was so intrigued by how may different ways there are to go about this, in terms of the order of thinking about various things.
Funny enough, after the initial 2x9, 3x1, 2x3 and the 12 pairs, I started with the middle row to find out where the 1 COULDN'T go, resolving the 12 pairs. That showed where all the 9s had to go to make the sandwiches.
I managed to pip Simon to this solution by 40 seconds, possibly the first time ever or certainly very rare - admittedly I wasn't talking my way through it!
I took a bit longer than you, Simon, but I really enjoyed solving that one. I do have a request. Please could you delete the colours (and/or lines, circles and crosses) after you no longer need them in your solves. I find that they clutter the grid and make things much harder to follow. I found your solve of the recent fog-of-war puzzle very difficult to follow for that very reason. Thanks.
Since you guys weren't certain when the new puzzle pack would go live, how serendipitous for it to launch at the same time you featured an approachable puzzle.
Beautiful puzzle. Solved it in <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="971">16:11</a>. It seems to me that Simon is just so unwilling to pencilmark cells and is still able to find hidden singles, etc. I myself need to pencilmark cells to notice these. I also have to ask: Prince??? I think you mean Eric Clapton.
Finished in <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1212">20:12</a> (without getting distracted by Philly cheesesteak sandwiches!). My approach was totally ddifferent to Simon's - after pencilling the first 3 diagonals I found all of the 9s and found all of the sandwiches
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2428">40:28</a> for me. Even though my logic could have been flawed in the beginning. I think I assumed at some point that there must be 2 cells between 1 and 9 in the sandwich clues. Luckily for me it didn't bite me in the behind.
It took me 6<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="202">3:22</a>, but this was still a little more difficult than I typically attempt, so I was proud to be able to solve it at all.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1364">22:44</a> its been a while since I did a sandwich puzzle, took a minute to get back n the mindset but it was still an interesting puzzle.
Excellent construction but for some reason I needed to bifurcate to disambiguate the colours at the beginning, after placing 1s, 2s and the shaded 3. Luckily, I syarted by exploring the wrong prong of the fork, and I was able to prove it was wrong.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2946">49:06</a> for me, so about my usual ratio of video to solve time (perhaps slightly better). I ended up doing red/green coloring for the early stage to help pinpoint the 1s and 9s.
Very nice flow to this puzzle, completed in <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1089">18:09</a> (conflict checker off), many thanks to Olli Wright for it!
The (current) last puzzle on the line pack.....the hints could be better. I reached many conclusions that impressed myself big time, then I got stuck and used help, but the help reaches conclusions without explaining why. So I did bifurcation to prove it. It took me like 2 hours. I would love to know why the line in box 9 has to be 15. You said it was 15, but never said why. At that point I said it could have been 12.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2839">47:19</a>@#1232. About what I'd expected. I'm not that good at either of these variations. It's only the short solve time in the video that led me to try it out. The first half went ok, but then I couldn't really see how to break through on it, and I only did with a bit of bifurcatory magic on box 9.
