A 9x9 Sudoku In A 7x7 Grid??!

** TODAY'S PUZZLE **
We've had lots of suggestions to encourage any new solvers of variant sudokus to have a go at tonight's puzzle: Squished Knights by Math Pesto. It's hugely popular and with good reason! It's also quite funny to see how the squishing of the grid affects basic sudoku skills, like scanning!!
Play the puzzle at the following link:
sudokupad.app/ahxj704kln
Rules:
Fill the grid with the digits 1-9 so that no digit repeats in a row, column, or 3x3 region. The red dashed lines indicate the boundaries of regions, and cells on the lines are simultaneously part of the regions on both sides of the line. Cells that are a knight's move apart (in chess) cannot contain the same digit. Digits in a cage cannot repeat and must sum to the given total.
** NEW JAMES BOND SUDOKU HUNT OUT ON 1 APRIL **
Do you know your Drax from your Goldfinger? Make sure you've got your licence to kill renewed to enter our latest competition: a brand new James Bond-themed sudoku hunt!
Apart from the new James Bond sudoku hunt, there's:
- Simon's latest forays into the world of Islands Of Insight
- Mark's video looking at the new OneUp puzzle from Rodolfo Kurchan.
- his solve of Region Geometry by Emre Kolotoğlu (3hr 36min long...!)
- Mark's solve of The Times Club Monthly cryptic crossword
/ crackingthecryptic
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▶ Contents Of This Video ◀
0:00 Theme music & Puzzle intro
2:00 Please help us to dream!
2:47 Our Sudoku Club On Patreon
3:18 Rules
5:05 Start of Solve: Let's Get Cracking
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[@mathpesto]

Thanks so much Simon! It was a delight seeing you pick up on the patterns. And shoutout to Jay Dyer for coming up with squishdoku!

[@Digital_Drug]

All the repetition of patterns within the numbers is fascinating to me, every instance of a digit has the same numbers orthogonally connected to it and each, even the diagonals repeat. Is that by design or is that a result of the rules of squishdoku and knights move?

[@bodemeister118]

@@Digital_Drug While most of the orthogonal connections are the same, not all of them are. Check digit 7.

[@gordonglenn2089]

"This GREEN could be orange, but it could be green" and other fun things we hear on CTC.

[@johnh2052]

While explaining the rules, Simon notes how restricted R2C4 is in box 3. Then he ignores that for the first half of the puzzle. :)

[@chocolateboy300]

I got 55 minutes. I had to catch myself many times on this puzzle. I accidentally tried to put all 9 numbers in every row and column before realizing that it didn't make sense or was even possible. Once I got the hang of it, coloring was my friend. Really Nice Puzzle!

[@RoderickEtheria]

The first revelation I got from this puzzle was that r4c4 was a 5, given it could go neither in the 16 cage, eliminating 12346, nor the 33 cage, which had two possible ways to be formed, 36789 or 45789, and eliminated 789. Only the 5 was left, which told me both the central digit and the makeup of the 33 cage.

[@GregJonson]

Once again, a very scary looking grid leading into a very satisfying solve. Hats off to Pesto!

[@attker89]

We love a fully pencil-marked grid without a single placed digit :3

[@crashtextdummie]

Squishdoku is probably my favorite Sudoku invention of recent times. A true stroke of genius by Jay Dyer. And marvelously implemented by Math Pesto!

[@subinmdr]

Wonderful puzzle! Took me 85 minutes, which I'm happy with as a beginner. Gave up on pecil marks 15 minutes in and decided to do just by colours. Found 8 different colour cells and potential 9th colour cells in and around the 16 cage, and used them to fill the grid, somewhat similar to how Simon did. Then only took 5 minutes or so to figure out the numbers. In hindsight, it might have been easier to assign 9 colours to the central box and start from there, but I might be wrong.

[@jansteyaert1]

depending on what "mode" you are when you click a cell it highlights all the same cells, for example in this puzzle your orange and blue had the same center pencil marks. Now if you want to select all same colors while in "center pencil mark mode", you remove the pencil marks from one of the cells and double click it, then it will select all cells with the same color (without having to switch to color mode). It's a bit weird at first... but it makes sense after a while.

[@allendracabal0819]

Or just click over to the color mode, instead. That way, you don't need to remove any pencil marks.

[@jansteyaert1]

@@allendracabal0819 but if you need to fill in a number in all those cells... might as well remove them in one cell xD

[@allendracabal0819]

@@jansteyaert1 But for any other operation, such as removing a single candidate number from all cells of the same color, it is more efficient to switch over to color mode.

[@jansteyaert1]

@@allendracabal0819 yeah yeah, totally agree. I just meant it for selecting them all to fill in big numbers :)

[@MelissaW09]

There is a color select option?! 🫠😵☠️

[@Babinzo]

I love a good colouring puzzle, a true delight!

[@missioncardiac7599]

One of the rare occasions that I have managed to solve a nearly 40 min video puzzle. Enjoyed it immensely.

[@danielszanto2955]

Now we finally know that the opposite of clockwork is windmill. :)

[@v0id_d3m0n]

So beautifully symmetrical!

[@SailSmBi]

so cool, such a unique puzzle. Had to restart 3 times before I got my head around every digit appearing in a box but not every row/column

[@srwapo]

53:54, I totally didn't see the break in, hit play on the video, and was reminded of the knight's move constraint. Flowed quickly from there, lol.

[@glasseyebird]

havent seen it mentioned in the comments yet (apologies if it has) but if you fill the central box with 9 colours, you can find that the four corner 2x2s are each constrained to four colours. then the non-repeating 16 cage breaks one of the 2x2s and youre away! so cool that it can be solved in so many different ways

[@MarushiaDark316]

Simple, elegant, and clean. Very nice.

[@TheTastefirst]

I think you can deduce the central cell is 5 almost immediately. No matter which of the two layouts the central cell ends up in the "windmill", that digit will be not be in either the 16 or 33 cage and yet sees via Sudoku the entirety of both cages. 16 cage must have 12346, 33 cage must have 789. Only 5 remains.

[@Sinisest1121]

I made same lucky mistake. Central digit can be 7, 8 or 9 if you look Simon final solution then you see one windmill candidate cell light green is inside 33 cage and that gives possibility that you cant immediatly leave these out. 16 cage and black cell doing same and saying 12346 are also possible as middle cell digit. So it leaves out that middle digit can be 1-9 but very likely 5. Both cages have 1 cell what dont see same time both windmill candidates of that middle digit.

[@markp7262]

Yes, you can deduce that the 5 goes in the middle through this logic. Whichever option you use for the windmill "blades," either one or a combination of two will eliminate themselves from both cages. And as you stated, this leaves a 5 in the center. Incidentally, this also establishes early on that the 33 cage is 9-8-7-6-3, instead of 9-8-7-5-4. It can definitely make for easier color placement as you continue the solve.

[@Green9Monkey]

This was exacly my break in, and it was so clever I felt sure Simon would get it. Once you get it the 33 cage is further restricted to just one set of digits which helps greatly in partitioning the digits as some appear in both cages ,some only in one or the other.

[@zealot2147]

@@Sinisest1121no? Lol whichever way it rotates, the center cell (CC) will see the entire 33 cage, thus not being 789. CC sees r2c4 by sudoku, and either r1c5 or r3c7 is in box 3 with every other cell of the cage, so it can’t be 789. Again whichever way around it goes r5c1 or r7c3 sees 3 cells and CC sees the remaining 2 by sudoku, so CC can’t be 12346. Now if my counting is right it can only be 5

[@Vedvart1]

I didn't notice that - what a beautiful deduction!

[@archiereed2198]

I really enjoyed tinkering with this puzzle! You can use the squishy and knight constraints with some very careful colouring to reduce the grid into two disjoint sets which each have two unique solutions. The placement of the 16 cage and 33 cage resolves them into a single solution, and finally you can fill in the values of each colour with a bit of maths from the cage totals.

[@piarittersporn]

Absolutely brilliant and colourful puzzle.

[@Paolo_De_Leva]

Beautiful. 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 Thnak you Jay Dyer, Math Pesto, Simon and CTC community

[@Ruddigore]

A great solve. It amazes me that Simon never considers 'White' to be a colour. having used 8 different colours there was no need to use black, white was perfect as is. I'm surprised this is only classified as a 2 star rating.

[@spin-rg9ib]

you can plot all the coloring before even doing any of the sudoku part(with the numbers). you can determine where all the digits go. after that its just a matter of figuring out the value and with the constraints the boxes make, its pretty simple. Edit: as long as you know to do the coloring its simple.

[@crashtextdummie]

In these "color everything" type of puzzles, white is not an ideal color to use because a box pencilmarked with color white is indistinguishable from an entirely unpencilmarked one.

[@AngryKettle]

​@@crashtextdummie Plus, it can't be selected by the software. A small point, but enough of an excuse to give in to our compulsive need to colour everything in

[@Hannah_GBS]

@@AngryKettle ah but you CAN colour boxes white, as opposed to leaving them uncoloured, the same way you do to "half-mark" boxes, and the software will then be able to select all boxes coloured white, separately from those uncoloured.

[@AngryKettle]

@@Hannah_GBS This is true, but comes with its own problems. You can't tell between coloured and uncoloured and it might interfere with halfmarking other colours. Colouring white at the end is an exception which mostly solves the above two, but why change habits for just one exception.

[@anaayoung9142]

I remember that you solve another puzzle like this one. So I give a shot. Amazing puzzle!! 😊

[@Socialdogma]

Amazing idea and puzzle!

[@ladyarlyss2932]

I love these coloring puzzles. So satisfying to watch the logic unfold until the whole grid is colored, without needing a single digit, only for the sudoku to resolve almost all at once at the end.

[@gazhenshall]

At approx 34:30, I think both Orange & Blue were highlighted when clicked because Simon was in the central pencil mark mode and when you double click a cell it highlights all cells which match the contents of said cell in that mode, so buy coincidence the only cells which contained than combinations of central pencil marks were Orange & Blue. This works in all modes and it quite a useful feature 😀

[@emilywilliams3237]

This was great fun! I will give this puzzle a try, I suppose, though I do like the old familiar 9x9 ... Thanks for the video, Simon!

[@someonesomewhereTR]

The squished knight restrictions indeed put some really strong restrictions on the grid. Some observations: 1) The central box is incredibly powerful, once you have chosen colors for the central box there are only 4 coloring patterns possible for the rest of the grid. 2) On property of these patterns are that if you divide the grid in a checkboard pattern of black and white cells, the black and white cells come from two disjoint sets of numbers.

[@angec9908]

Your puzzles are always so pretty

[@brebostic8700]

absolutely amazing video 👍🏿

[@michaellautermilch9185]

13:30 - that is actually an x-wing with itself! The yellow digit being double counted in boxes 2 and 3 is doing the work of 2 digits, which allows for self-ambiguity.

[@SCCH286]

Wow! What a puzzle. Very nice,

[@spunc8820]

I found that center cage had to be 5 right away, the 16 cage needs 12346, the 33 cage needs 789 and the center digit is not seen in either of those two cages

[@reubenmckay]

As soon as Simon said "sukodo theorist", I began to wonder how/if the Phistomephel ring would work in a puzzle like this....

[@koenth2359]

34:10 Simon, if you click on a cell when in colouring mode, it will select all cells containing the same colour. When in digit mode, it will select all cells containing the same digits.

[@compiling]

29:54. That is a really cool puzzle. It didn't look like there was much to go on, but then some colouring revealed that the tiles are actually very constrained in how they appear in the other boxes.

[@Unbounded7]

Surprising he didn't get the 5 right away

[@johnh2052]

From my perspective, Simon looked at this very oddly. I marked the restriction on the centre cell, then looked at the restriction on R2C4. This immediately resolved the windmill for the centre cell. It also meant the centre cell couldn't be in either big cage. This meant the 34-cage had to be 36789 so there was a digit for the centre cell. And suddenly, all the 5s are placed.

[@nedb147]

Brilliant puzzle. Shade over 20 minutes for me. Just lucky to have looked at the right places. In constant fear of finding a conflict. Brilliant puzzle

[@biaberg3448]

What a fun puzzle!

[@bibliopolist]

I didn't get far with this one, but I did notice that the 33 cage needs 7, 8 and 9 - something that Simon took ages to notice, in his usual mingled way.

[@markp7262]

27:17 finish. I love this new type of squished puzzle, and look forward to seeing what else people can come up with. Excellent!

[@grimnekropolis8500]

Doing logic puzzles is one of the things that makes my work day better. Been having fun with Battleships puzzles during breaks and the occasional sudoku during lunch

[@Gonzalo_Garcia_]

10:11 for me. I really like this new 'squishdoku' idea. Great puzzle!!

[@MaierFlorian]

Why is simon referring to "yellow must be in row 5"? Actually, it has to be in Box 6, same deduction, but you can't assume there has to be any digit in any row or column in this puzzle, can you?

[@RichSmith77]

It looked like he was eliminating options for yellow in box 6 and realising it had one cell it could go in, which happened to be in row 5. Then simply misspoke when saying it had to appear somewhere in row 5. (Timestamp 12:50)

[@Yttria]

2 quick but interesting puzzles in the same day that were solved entirely by colors before placing a single digit! (Mark's magic square puzzle today being the other one). Finished in 18:53 with a pretty smooth solve path.

[@jaredbitz]

53:51 for me. I love the satisfaction of simultaneously filling in a bunch of different colored locations all at the same time once you deduce their value.

[@BruceSchwartz007]

Super fun!

[@christophdietrich4240]

Very interesting! I solved it the other way around starting with the central digits in all the boxes (box 2 with the 33 cage was my break-in). Notice that all digits with the same colours are on the same bishop's colour so this puzzle is basically broken up into two partitions

[@paulgobel6224]

The second featured Sudoku I’ve ever solved. Took me 70 minutes but it was great fun! I used the 33 cage as a break-in though. Sudoku Pad seems to have issues with Squishdoku. It tells me that my solution is wrong, even though it‘s the same as Simons.

[@henrym5034]

Coloring the cells make them look like disco dance floors :D (24:52)

[@timcampbell9871]

I think 2* is unfair assessment, this took me far longer than many 4* puzzles take me because I didn’t ask where yellow goes in box 4 at the start, leading to me breaking the entire grid into two color pairs. I wonder if some portion of 2* voters made a logical leap in ruling 5 out of the 33 cage. Very approachable puzzle, but be prepared to put some effort in if you don’t see the key deduction right away!

[@MattYDdraig]

47:58 Lots of colours and letters as placeholders to fill the grid and then highlight and replace. This felt like it should have been a lot easier than I made it. The shared squares and resultant lack of some digits in rows/columns makes it very easy to overlook the straightforward.

[@ejvalpey]

That was pretty satisfying

[@TheRedReid]

19:34 for me. I'm surprised that Simon didn't catch the beautiful '5 in the central cell' break-in.

[@titusadduxas]

39:35 - That was gorgeous!

[@gildasletallec3312]

I made a faster start using col 4 row 2 then 4 then 6, and row 4, row 2 then 6. After that, you were quite faster than me. Thanks for your fun videos, I like to discover rules with you, and get saome help when I'm stuck.

[@CauchyIntegralFormula]

41m05s. It took me quite a while to realize that this was a coloring puzzle, and then quite a bit longer to convince myself that the coloring was unique. But once I had the coloring in place the thing fell pretty quickly

[@thenatundi9009]

I colored in the entire grid before entering any digits; very satisfying ending for sure!

[@Speedster___]

4:12 minor knitpick a knights move is often called a jump not a bounce

[@user-gj5uc4yx3i]

The squishyness of this grid turns jumps into bounces. The jumps will return in the next solid chess constraint puzzle.

[@ServantOfSatania]

15:43 For me, beautiful puzzle, pretty approachable too despite its daunting appearance (If you know your knight's move at least)

[@roccov3614]

34:00 When I saw the 346 pair I know it was actually a 36 pair because the 33 cage is made up of 789 + (45 or 36). So, the 346 pair could only be the 36 pair.

[@user-gj5uc4yx3i]

Absolutely. 4 was my first placed digit, and this is the way.

[@roccov3614]

@@user-gj5uc4yx3i I started with 5 like Simon.

[@six_5000]

Massively sleep-deprived but figured I’d try it. Did a bunch of coloring til my eyes were watering, got nowhere. Abandoned that plan and tried big ass letters, got there in 96:14

[@veggiet2009]

In the page if you have color numpad up, then when you long click on a cell or double click I forget which on a desktop, then it will select all of that color, but if you have the small number numpad up it will select cells which share digits

[@youthmindude3826]

Watching with just enough time until TS new album. Seems like such a great way to have a countdown!

[@Mephistahpheles]

@12:55 Gotta be careful: each row only has 7 digits, so it does NOT have to appear in row 5. It does, because of the (valid) box logic.

[@xerodeus2337]

I had no idea where to even start with this one, didn't seem easy at all :( But it was fun to watch!

[@deniseiln]

I think "squishydoku" is my new favorite word. It's a squishdoku, with an extra layer of squishiness.

[@pbush071987]

Spent two hours trying to solve while having forgotten about the knight's move rule. Gave up. Started watching the video. Remembered the knight's move rule. Took 20 minutes from there because I was very familiar with the grid at that point.😂

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

First I solved it entirely with letters with very little regard to the values in the cages, using them mainly just for the fact that numbers don't repeat inside. Then I replaced the letters with colors and used the caged values to get the numbers. Solved in 28 minutes.

[@johnbell9074]

Did in 16 mins. I used letters A to I in the center grid, and the entire grid resolves. Then just math to convert letters to numbers.

[@DuncanBooth]

I did the same. I started with colours then switched to letters and solved the entire grid. Looked at the digits that were common to some boxes to work out there was only one solution to the 14 cage and it all fell into place.

[@TheFactsWin]

Had to restart this, my colours got too confused the first attempt. Second time, I went for pure colouring stating with the middle box.

[@eddieharwood7788]

Challenging until I got the idea. It was great to see my different colours easily morph into digits at the end.

[@wiler5002]

29:21 for me. I solved the grid with letters and did the maths on paper to deduce which letter had what value.

[@stephenfairchild546]

I had a hard go at it last night and had to reset. This morning I mapped out the constraints and worked it backwards based on possible colors and only took 26 : 36.

[@haniapopowska8966]

Squishdoku fricks with my brain in an ungodly way. I sort of, almost understood it a little by the end of the video. I think.

[@sacredsock8031]

so how does the phistomefel ring / aard squares etc of SET work on a puzzle like this?

[@delta3244]

It's worth looking at the natural restrictions on the digits which appear in the central + tetromino of a squishdoku & knight's move combination. Every single one of them has the windmilling property around (most of) the rest of the grid, where there are only two possible configurations for (almost) all the rest of their appearences to be arranged in. EDIT: The last sentence of this comment is (hopefully) no longer nonsensical. It's hard to phrase it so it can be understood! EDIT 2: added bracketed words, which apply to the four ends of the +. They aren't quite fully filled in by windmilling, they merely come close

[@archiereed2198]

You can actually go further and reduce the grid into two distinct sets of digits in a checkerboard pattern!

[@delta3244]

​@@archiereed2198Can you? I can't work that out in my head quickly, so I'll take your word for it. That's neat! Though knowing that fact probably tends to make this combination of rules less interesting.

[@archiereed2198]

@@delta3244 It takes a fair bit of work to get to - I purposefully wanted to see how far I could push it with colouring logic. And yeah, I guess it makes it less interesting in terms of setting new puzzles but I found it very interesting to work out aha I think the combination of both constraints is so powerful because the squishy ruleset already greatly increases how many digits any other can “see” (especially digits on the borders of the virtual cages) and then the knight’s move constraints take it up another notch further.

[@Bart_was_his_name]

34:14 Baffling how Simon doesn’t know that double-clicking or long-clicking is based on what tool is active (in this case the centre mark)

[@Sinisest1121]

I think Simon knows that but if you have so many pencil marked numbers inside then usually such way is not working. At moment it was licky case that both colors had exactly same candidates so software wanted to highlight both colors. Usually you dont have 2 different colors with 5 candidates and both have exactly same. And usually Simon dont like to write so many candidates.

[@flwi]

I really like this software. It's very well done!

[@fresnik]

I can understand the confusion though - when you're in center-digit mode and double click a cell, then all cells that include all the digits in that cell are selected, not just the cells that have the exact same set of digits. And regardless of which mode you are in, if you double click an empty cell, then it depends on if it is a colored cell, a cell with a digit, or a cell that is part of a cage, etc., what gets selected.

[@Rach881101]

52:39 for me. Nice puzzle!

[@roccov3614]

OMG! I don't know how Simon did it yet, but I just managed to fill the whole grid with colors representing all the digits before identifying a single digit.

[@CrankyOtter]

Can’t seem to wrap my head around each 3x3 box having all 9 digits but not all rows/columns do.

[@TurquoizeGoldscraper]

36:42 for me - I made a mistake and had to back out almost all the way to the beginning, I would've been better off starting over. Very interesting puzzle.

[@Kirbyfan87827]

Finished in 36:34 with help from the video and a killer sudoku calculator.

[@user-zu8vc5ef6w]

Squishudoku are the best. It's like the real 9 x 9 sudoku but without the standard sudoku's downside being huge. While all the logic is still packed

[@andrewgrant6516]

I took one look at this puzzle and went "5 in the middle".

[@davidh.4944]

Well, I thought I might be able to handle this one, but I struggled the whole way through. I managed to get the color pattern right, but I somehow got the digit combos wrong, with the 33 cage ending up being impossible. I had to redo all of my pencil marks and confirm everything through the video in order to get to the solution. My final time is therefore irrelevant, but somewhere around 100 minutes, all told.

[@emptyset1312]

Very approachable coloring puzzle, though I wasn't able to finish particularly quickly. 43:23 for me. Enjoyed this one.

[@fulltang1]

I wish there werre a dark version of these videos. Im getting flashbanged over here

[@george5954]

Oh my god, I was losing it that Simon had coloured in half the puzzle and blind to the most obvious symmetry happening before him lmao. I spotted the yellow and blue diagonals almost immediately and then the rest of the patterns revealed themselves so naturally. It almost solves itself. Leave it to Simon to figure it out the difficult way instead though lmao

[@ChadEichhorn]

Boy I was trusting the built in calculator to have my back on the cage sums, but it wasn't using the digits 8 or 9 (due to it being a 7x7). I got very far and then it really screwed me over. A real bummer.

[@HunterJE]

33:02 Would also work to just say "white is the 9th digit..."

[@Raven-Creations]

Why did you not think about the contents of the 33 cage for ages? It had to contain 98763 or 98754. Once you got purple, which sees all of the cage, it had to be 5, which meant the cage was 98763, and green (which also sees all of the cage) has to be 4. Grey becomes 9, yellow becomes 36, red becomes 78. The 14 cage means red can't be 8, so must be 7, with the corner cell being 14, but there's already a 4 in the column, so it's 1 and yellow is 6. Blue is reduced to 12, since it can't be 4 or 6, and it sees all of the 33 cage which includes 3. Had you done more colouring, you could have finished off at this point. I used colours for the 16 cage cells, and letters for the 33 cage. I then used other letters for the non-cage cells in box 3, since they all see the whole of the 33 cage (apart from your grey, which was already marked A. This let me equate most letters with colours, and it was over in a jiffy. This was an interesting puzzle. My very first deduction was wrong, because I asked where can X go in column Y. I fortunately realised that was a mistake, and after the inauspicious start I got going properly. Although you couldn't put numbers in them, the geometry of the 33 cage was much better as far as all of its cells being seen, which made it easier to assign unique colours (or letters) to them.

[@DarrenNakamura]

Finished in 33:01. That was a strange puzzle, but I liked it.

[@AndreAy1975]

Solved it with some help from the video.

[@AkshayKumarX]

My English is very poor, could anyone kindly tell me what was the word said at 16:32

[@Poet13xRatedRKO]

So nice puzzle. 28:16 for me.

[@bennypmo]

argh beat me by two minutes... My breakthrough happen when I dermine the center digital had a special relationship with the cages. And I was speeding through thinking I could beat Simon, foolish dream.

[@SVURulez]

I have no idea why people said this was approachable. I've been playing around with the easier puzzles for awhile but I had zero luck with this, not even watching the video and trying to follow along Simon's coloring exercise.