Bonus Sudoku Walkthrough - Yoke by Bill (2024-12-25)

[@ImagineMeAndYou1990]

I loved this puzzle. It had interesting logic stringing steps together in a way you don't see too often. Managed a time of 25:34, happy with that

[@karmazz5009]

55:49. Fun puzzle, probably the hardest I've done without looking for help when I'm stuck

[@tubasaur]

1:21:40. Four colors for the lows helped. Never forget about the negative constraint.

[@dwebb2805]

37:21, fun puzzle! i did take the other break-in on the 18 diagonal so it does in fact work! as others in the commnets mentioned, having a color for the 1469 group and another for the 2378 group is very helpful, and i also had individual letters for each "digit" as well

[@Kirbyfan87827]

Tried it last night, couldn't do it. Started over today, finished in 19:56. The second 12 clue was the break-in after mapping out some of the grid. Great puzzle!

[@leickrobinson5186]

Pro tip: this puzzle is WAY easier if you remember the negative constraint. 😄 (I forgot for quite a while so it ended up taking me 43:30.)

[@angelina_sabrina]

Thanks to your "pro tip" - 18:41 for me 😀

[@gabrielanderson3522]

I did the same thing! I felt silly when i re-read the rules 20 min in and realized my error

[@SolverTom]

Very fun colouring puzzle

[@rickyspanish2313]

30:30. Coloring cells helps greatly with these kind of sudokus.

[@garlicgalore]

Super cool! 🎉🎉🎉

[@adamlthorn]

Nice puzzle! My break in was a bit different ... Start with the observations about placing 5s in r2,c2,r8,c8 which gives the make-up of the two-cell little killers (same as in the video). But then: 1. Each of r2,c2,r8,c8 has a set of three "outie" cells that sum to 20 (45-X-X-V). Given the 5s, this must be either 5+69 or 5+78, with the disposition further restricted by the little killers. 2. This leaves two options for the middle cells of boxes 1,3,7,9 . 3. After staring hard at the four sides of the XV ring, ask where 9 goes in row 8 (there's only one position that doesn't break the XV options). 4. The XV negative constraint lets you finish r2,c2,r8,c8 and then everything keeps unwinding from there.

[@arthurgershon477]

the coloring trick was fantastic... i used row and column sums to reduce the phi-murphy-l ring (😅) to two possibilities before using the 12 little killer to disambiguate as you did... and then the rest followed your solve, if not as cleanly... it was so tough to get through solving this one, it is absolutely mind boggling to me how you geniuses come up with stuff like this... many thanks for all you do for the puzzle community (and for wannabe puzzlers like me) and wishing all the best in the new year

[@JigmeDatse]

That super secret one? Give it a try if you want. I was pretty sure I couldn't be doing it right. I wasn't 100% confident, but it was, "um, I don't know what else to do."

[@CineMiamParis]

I started making it more complicated than it needed, with 4 colours for 1234. Turns out separating highs and lows is all it took, almost. Brilliant puzzle this, had fun!

[@mister-8658]

I spent 20 minutes on it and I couldn't get anything but pencil markings watching the video now.

[@SandyCat39]

Can someone please explain the logic at 4:30 of why the 5s need to go in one of two possible configurations? I get why they can’t go in the ring but that still frees up 6 of the 9 squares in the corner regions where they might go at this point. Is there some advanced rule that I’m missing here?

[@GenuinelyApproachableSudoku]

I gotchu, there's only two places in rows 2&8 and columns 2&8 where you can put 5. If you were to put 5 in any one of those spots, it rules it out of a spot in another row or column. Try colouring it in to visualise it

[@SandyCat39]

@GenuinelyApproachableSudoku Aha, I get it now. Thanks so much! As a Sudoku novice, this was a fascinating walkthrough and that was the one piece of logic I was stuck on. The colouring techniques were particularly interesting and so satisfying to see the numbers click into place.

[@yandyyay]

wow what a puzzle, probably the hardest one for me so far, my time well lets just say it wasnt even worthy of a dinosaur LOL

[@RADZIO895]

25:19 for me

[@JohnBodoni]

if you think i'm gonna take a run at this, you're nuttier than squirrel scat. i'll gladly watch from the cheap seats.

[@psiphiorg]

I just used two colors, one to indicate 1469 and the other to indicate 2378 (although I didn't know which was which to start with). I had all of rows 2 and 8, and columns 2 and 8, colored when I decided to explore the corner diagonals. What I was planning to do was to assume that one set of four corner cells were 5, corner-mark what I could reduce things down to, then go back and assume the other group were 5 and corner-mark those possibilities. The hope there was that I could find some cells that were the same in both possibilities, and at least eliminate some possibilities in other cells, because they didn't show up in either option. However, when I was checking the first option, I ran into a contradiction. That proved that the other option was correct. I'm not sure if this counts as bifurcation in the traditional sense, because I wasn't looking for a contradiction, but to my mind, this is a logical technique. Anyway, my time ended up being 18:07, solver number 24.