zetamath reacts to Simon solving Exclusivity 

"I think the most natural way...". Oh my sweet summer child, you don't seem to know Simon.

1:02:28 Simon later spotted your method of resolving the thermos - when he did so, I was screaming at my computer that r4c4 sees both r2c4 (sudoku) and r2c6 (unique thermo) which were both taken from the three digits and hence resolved what r4c4 had to be!

Zeta, I just watched this 2 days later. This ouzzle was an excelllent thought process. I understand why you submitted it.

When comedy writes itself.. utter genius ❤

When I resolved the end, I noticed that there had to be a 3 on the thermos. If you put a 3 in R2C4, you can’t have a 3 on the Thermo, so it must be a 1. Very nice puzzle!

Before needing to pencil mark r6c6 (1:20:50), I saw the conflict between R2C4 / R2C6 / R4C4. R4C4 couldn't be a 3 because it would put another 3 in R2C6.

I just finished the puzzle. The time was about three hours, although I took breaks in the middle. I clicked to CtC's video, and saw the reaction livestream currently running. I was disappointed because I wanted to join the livestream, but I also wanted to solve the puzzle first before watching either the video or the reaction. After early work, I got stuck and needed a nudge from Simon's solve. That occurred when he announced he could place a digit after discussing the green lines, and I stopped the video right there. I placed that 5 and saw that block 2's purple line had to contain 5, as it saw two high and two low digits. Once I limited that purple line to 456 or 567, I bifurcated hard on the choices. (Bifurcation shmifurcation, as long as I can solve the puzzle.) My mode of bifurcation was to use centermarks for one choice and cornermarks for the other. A 789 triple in block 4's circle and block 6's purple line placed a 6 in block 4, settled the choice, and gave me a bunch of other digits. 12:20 Any comment on the thumbnail? 25:00 Sorry, I skipped to this point just after Simon began solving. It's still before Simon announced the digit. 28:40 Sorry, I haven't seen enough of your puzzles to recognize a zetamath puzzle when I see one. 30:30 That's where I stopped the video, and proceeded on my own. (And I live next to Houston.) 33:00 I tried asking where those digits (and the corresponding digits in block 4) went in block 1. Nothing came of it. Around this point in my solve, I figured that the green line digits came in dominoes exactly five digits apart: 16, 27, 38, 49. 39:10 Block 2's renban needs the 5, because it sees two lows and two highs. Block 4's can't have 5. It also sees two highs --- the circle and the domino in the block. It has to be 123 or 234. This gave me 456 or 567 on block 2's renban. 40:30 We saw a Simonism: the line couldn't be 678 because (some reason other than 6 being immediately above the line). 44:40 I never used the adjectives Simon used, but it's also not underwhelming. 48:40 Sigh, I never made that deduction. It would have saved me the bifurcation and considerable time. 50:00 1 has to be on the three-cell arrow. Otherwise, 234 breaks the dot. 1:02:00 I don't know what the "exotic triple" was, but I was rather stuck around here, so I began centermarking things. I found a 456 triple in column 5, which got me back on track for a little. In the video, the 4 has already been placed, so there's only a 56 pair. I got several of those. 1:02:40 Okay, that was it. At one point, I had 123 in the three bulbs. I didn't do anything with R4C6, though. 1:06:00 I just reviewed a bit of my solve. The reason that I didn't do anything with R4C6 from the 123 in the bulbs was that I placed the 6 there first. A 1235 quad in column 6 gave me a 79 pair in block 5 which gave me the 6. 1:12:20 The red R4C4 sees both 13 cells in block 2. It can't be 3, and must be 2. So I followed the intended path in the early section, with the two three-celled renbans. But by the end, I was very much going my own way.

How dare you not put a 3 in the corner!

I'm always interested in knowing more about some of you top notchbsetters like phistomofel, jaydyer, qodec etc. Good to put a face to zetamath.

As I wrote in my comment to Simon's video, the beautiful break-in you designed can be easily performed using *placeholder digits.* Simon definitely took the long way around it. Although I am a very slow solver, relative to Simon, I obtained in *15 minutes* the same results he obtained in *27 minutes,* from 9:13 to 35:52 See my comment for details. I am curious to know whether you used *placeholders* to set and test your puzzle or not. You might have designed the geometric configuration of whispers and renbans before using other clues to disambiguate them, and in this case you might have needed to use placeholders to figure out the interactions beteween them, because they are by definition ambiguous (not sensitive to the difference between N and 10 - N).

Great puzzle.