Beauty And The Beast

[@81Cells]

Oh my. I did not submit this puzzle myself because I was not sure it was worth a featuring, so imagine my surprise to see this. Cheers to the players who thought it was good enough, and apologies to the ones who unsuccessfully attempted it! For the bit of trivia, this is one of a few killers I designed recently while playing with the idea of having as little cages as possible (with a symmetric or nearly-symmetric layout, and obviously no given digits). Some turned out way too hard... and some were just hard enough - this here puzzle belongs to the second category. As you saw, it plays around a number of funny geometric ideas; you missed a few of them which could have sped up the solve, but nothing to be ashamed of - there were many. My thought as the author was that it is an interesting puzzle but not a paragon of elegance, which is why I was reluctant to submit it; so I am really glad you enjoyed... suffering through it. I promise my next puzzle will be at least slightly easier. Oh, and thank you once again for the kind words. You are way too nice. :-)

[@ninao8460]

It might not be your best puzzle, but it's nice to see a very difficult one that doesn't require you to know very difficult tricks. After Simon mentioned the ring I quickly found out there had to be 8&9 in the green cells, and that also helped me to figure out the cage in box 1. Result was it took me 90 min (very impressed with myself because Simon took an hour) but the difficulty level throughout the puzzle was really steady. Just the last few cells were easy, but I still had to think for the 70th cell for example. So I really enjoyed it :)

[@Kelarys]

This was one of the easier ones? I so dearly want to see Simon break his record from CTC: The Movie, and would love to see him attempt one of those behemoths

[@jameswiebe8956]

It took what seemed like forever to get started, and then required paying attention throughout the rest of the solve for me. About 90 minutes in all, and although I can honestly say I enjoyed it, I wouldn't want to do another one like that for a couple of days. *grin*

[@jrparker811]

I just created a sudoku with 6 cages, 2 givens, and 1-9 on the diagonal. I was thinking of submitting it to CTC, but also am looking for where I can post it, and others I create, online for anyone to play. Suggestions? Links?

[@RyanAtOptimism]

@@jrparker811 might check out the CTC discord server.

[@Lunaphire]

Simon: "It's very easy to focus on the wrong things in these puzzles." Me, still staring at the mismatched color-coding in box 5: "No idea what you mean by that."

[@Ruddigore]

A fantastic solve as always but my heart sank when Simon coloured that last pair of eights and nines wrong. I could hear thousands of voices shouting at the screen...

[@blancabt]

We were shouting, indeed!

[@svevo]

Oh, I'm going to start and have my grandkids help me finish. BTW, I don't have kids yet.

[@billiamswartz2355]

same dude

[@plamkin01]

😂

[@pmonk1487]

45:53 "Lets colour them in so we have consistency." Sorry, Simon.

[@HunterJE]

When he did that I thought "hah, wonder how long it will take him to notice and fix it?" XD

[@laulau7354]

finally consitency like always :) but then... nope.

[@yamani999]

"Let's colour them in, so that we have consistency" Proceeds to colour them with the wrong colour coding.

[@SneakyFatKid7]

After waiting 20 minutes for him to color them in I died laughing at this

[@tomsweldinganddesign9763]

@@SneakyFatKid7 me too. XD

[@joeloedeman5160]

Breaks all OCD viewers 🤯

[@remybeauchamp]

@@joeloedeman5160, it KILLED me!!! I have a headache now lol.

[@alvaropallete]

@45:49

[@briannelson605]

That 8 and 9 being colored the wrong colors was quite bothersome

[@srwapo]

He colored them in "for consistency", lol!

[@christopheranderson4398]

I just could not get past that mistake in coloring. It threw me off the rest of the video. Ugh.

[@Xelger]

To be clearer, the 8 and 9 in box 5 are colored opposite of the rest of the 8s and 9s, hence the mistake Brian was talking about.

[@RyanAtOptimism]

Terrible! :)

[@kitsterling8665]

I would genuinely love to see you each set a puzzle for the other, and have that be your solve for the day. Maybe to celebrate a certain milestone like the anniversary of the channel, subscriber special, or even just your birthdays.

[@crystalgehrt8861]

Simon, no need to apologize every time you aren't perfect. When you are working your magic, we're sitting here with our mouths open in amazement. When you miss something, we get to feel good about ourselves for possibly the only time in the video. Besides, when someone sees something before you, it's probably the case that had you spotted it, they'd have spotted something else while you were doing it. You can't do everything at once.

[@simonplanting5948]

Please don’t apologize ! Your struggles are highly entertaining... the longer the better. Thanks, very enjoyable.

[@dazzling_belgian]

The larger digits are more readable independently but I find that once we have a lot of pencil marks in, the whole grid is less readable and seems too ''crowded''. Fantastic solve of a fantastic puzzle, as always!

[@Lunaphire]

I agree, they seem too large/crowded to me as well.

[@michaelstranieri7075]

I'm always amazed at how Simon's lack of downward scanning is so apparent in these solves 😅 brilliant nonetheless

[@thegamingbadger1190]

Wow Simon. You humble me. That may have been difficult for you but would have been impossible for me. Bravo.

[@Matze110388]

I got a "Simon solving a Sudoku"-Bingo 07:20 Simon explaining the digits 1 to 9 add up to 45 13:43 "Bobbings" 14:00 "Waaahhh" 16:05 "Things we learn at CTC 28:35 "I got a Digit" 30:18 "What do we do next?" 32:05 Simon apologizing for being slow 47:56 "Good Grief" 1:02:24 "And If I haven't made a Boo.Boo" And a Star Wars Bonus was in there, too 10:02

[@blackcobrea32]

From 33:24 to 45:45, I was yelling at screen he already knew the color and then 9/8 pair because of the pair in box 8.... And then realized he colored them in wrong...

[@bertbergers9171]

his scanning up and down is truely bad :P

[@RyanAtOptimism]

SO FRUSTRATING!! :)

[@darreljones8645]

The "beauty" is in the cage layout and the logic. The "beast" is in actually trying to solve it!

[@mceajc]

I was utterly bamboozled, but I got a good laugh at the mis-colouring three-quarters of the way through. I'd have to sit with a pencil and paper to work out all the possible digits for sums - Simon's mental arithmetic and memory are quite something.

[@brendabalzan1994]

Was trying to crack it with your help last night, got to where you are at 58 minutes in the video after 1hr 41min 14seconds and fell asleep. I am not gonna try to go back to "finish it" as I would have to start from scratch again considering my phone restarts in the middle of the night and I was so close to the end. Love how the puzzle doesn't crack easily but at the same time I also love that there is so much given to aid the solve.

[@thatpuzzleguy]

This might be my first-ever successful solve of a puzzle on an hour-plus video.

[@fbrume]

That was brutal, but very satisfying. I did get a bit of help from something Simon said and then discarded. Per Phistomofel's theorem, I was able to conclude the corners could have at most collectively three 8/9 cells (at least one for the 21 and two for the 23) and there only three possible cells in the inner ring (C3R3, C7R3, R7C3). In addition, there could only be one 6 and one 7 and the 6 was used, which burned the 678 value for the 21. Getting the 579 configuration helps immensely as a jump start.

[@topbizniz]

Fantastic solving. Bravo. Have to admit i did get a little sadistic pleasure seeing Simon going through the wringer on this one. Ive sometimes felt in some of the solves its a little too perfect in what type of lateral thinking is required, i, e if highlow parity is needed he does that straight away or odd/even, checkerboards etc. So it was nice today to see a couple of "nope lets rip this up and start again". Makes us mere mortals feel no so bad when weve thrown everything including the kitchen sink at puzzles.

[@TaismoFanBoy]

That was so fun!! It didn't use any complicated techniques, so as long as you stuck with it (and used some coloring) it was pretty accessible, even if a bit long. About an hour 15 was my personal time, far faster than most puzzles that takes this channel an hour to finish.

[@nathhje]

I'm once again amazed how many ways you can solve a sudoku. The first digit I placed on this puzzle was the 1 in C1R9

[@adamheywood113]

"Ooh it's just normal killer sud- *sees the video length*" I might sit this one out lmao

[@Grikkez]

No need to sit it out. I would say that this killer sudoku has a fairly usual difficulty rating for CtC. It might even be a bit easier given that the break-in isn't too hard and there are really no places to require especially difficult or unusual logic. I solved it in a bit over twenty minutes and was very surprised by the video length. I haven't seen the video yet, but I'll watch it later to see why Simon spends so much time to solve it.

[@Grikkez]

So, I've now watched the video. Simon's solve is decent, but he spends to much time trying geometric tricks at the start without taking care of the easy pickings from regular sudoku. This means that the solve doesn't get on the right track until 18:00. In addition, Simon is often unlucky here with the order he looks at things, which slowed down the solve considerably. As he says at 58:28 "it's very easy to focus on the wrong things in these puzzles".

[@bertbergers9171]

48:37 can we do anything with sevens? Yes you can place one in column 7 :) 49:30 places 6's in column 4 and proceeds not disambiguating 67 pair in box 5. Sorry to say you were your own adversary a lot today. And don't forget is till respect you a bunch for attacking such monsters and through brilliancy and plodding on still finishing it!!

[@Lunaphire]

Poor guy. "Got this x wing on 6s, it's a shame is not useful..." I was like NO WAIT GO BACK but then he found it shortly thereafter a different way, lol.

[@1fosters]

My break in on the 8s and 9s was noticing how the killer cages severely restricted 689s on the Phistomephel Ring. It forced the composition of the 21 cage in box 1.

[@jasonwuthrich4101]

I wonder if somewhere out there someone is putting together a supercut of Simon saying "bobbins."

[@regand2388]

In one of his videos, simon mentioned that someone made a soundboard out of his common catchphrases lol

[@100greggyt]

I was able to use Phistomofel to deduce pretty early on that three corners had to be 8s and 9s, and then use some logic that in rows 5 and 6 exactly one 8 had to be on one of the outside dominos and exactly one 9 had to be on the other outside domino in each row. That got me the 8s and 9s sorted in a different way. Did need a hint somewhere in the middle of the puzzle, and it was certainly nice seeing how Simon solved this one.

[@bucherrabemittendrin9344]

Today I waited for the video. Wouldnt go to bed until it was published. Good evening everyone, let's enjoy the puzzle 🤗

[@awilliams1701]

I've been doing the sandwich app lately and there were a couple of puzzles where I just shouted out "THIS IS BEAUTIFUL!!" lol

[@PH34RB]

That was a pleasure to row along! Glad to see Bastien back on the channel, looking forward to the killer app. Not a fan of the darker blue shading however, especially with the contour of digits in the new software. Not sure how to describe it, but the fuzzy outline buzzes wrong in the eye.

[@jameswiebe8956]

49:50 - "Which are the last two sixes we need to place" --> 67 pair in box 5 whimper softly. And while I am at it, Simon is talking about sevens while not even asking where 7 can go in column 7. Only has one place by now. And to be honest, it took me over 45 minutes to get more than 2 numbers in the entire grid, and about the same to actually finish, so please don't think I'm being snide. I'm just tired and noticing things that look obvious to me. :)

[@DrBiscotti]

Simon didn't explain the sum of all cages being 45 or the Phistemophel ring 🥳

[@hiey19]

In other hand he explained it for the colomn tho

[@faykguru]

what? i want my money back!

[@fuxpremier]

In the old days, he even used to explain Sneijder notation ;-)

[@timothyjsduff]

By not sticking with the Phistomofel you missed some of the most beautiful logic in the whole puzzle. Interactions with the 23 and 21 cages give you the 89 pairs in the corners of the Phistomofel ring and subsequently rule out the 6 from the 21 cage once you realize there can only be one 6 in the non-corner ring squares which is already taken up by the 23 cage which also rules out a second 6 being in the last corner of the ring, thus giving you 579 in the 21 cage and giving you all the 8's and 9's. I know that might be hard to parse, but it is beautifully circuitous once you see it and was an absolutely joyous break-in for me.

[@stevieinselby]

It wasn't just you ... that was an absolute monster! I got _most_ of the logic myself but I didn't find everything without help. Interestingly, I got started a lot quicker, because I just went straight for digits in cages and looking for pairs, triples, quads and quins, rather than looking for clever logic - it seemed fairly unlikely that Phistomefel would be the key, given that two of the four corner 2×2 blocks were completely empty, and I don't like killer geometry so I left that for a last resort - in this case, I was right to concentrate on cages, although I know that doesn't always pay off!

[@matthewender3473]

A small useful thing I noticed, in row 9, you need the 57 and the 6 to make the five digits, so the row 8 ones in the cages need to be 8/9. I'm not sure if it aids the actual solve, but it does help reduce possibilities!

[@matthewender3473]

Also that R7C1 being 689, and seeing all of the 37 cage (which needs those) except R6C2, it needs to match that. My first use of that was linking up the '89 match' there with the R1C6/R2C4 one (via the 21 cage in box 1).

[@BarendM1]

This is a great puzzle indeed, though I did need a little push twice from Simon, it was really great to find some other little holes to the next series of digits myself.

[@WillSmith-wv6he]

This one as quite challenging (probably a sever understatement). At one point I got stuck and use the Phistomefel ring. Because the ring could only have one 6 and the 23 cage had a 6, then the 21 cage (in box 1) must not have a 6. It wasn't immediately helpful, but I found it interesting. At 59:00 the 3/4 pairs were very powerful. Starting with r3c4 and r4c3 (as Simon did), it follows that those have to be the same digit and "by sudoku" you can actually match that pair with it's counterpart in all 9 boxes. This includes r1c5 (which has no 4), allowing you to place all the 3s at once.

[@DNXTMaster]

I'm amazed at my speed this time around, I suppose the stars aligned tonight. This is the first time I solve a puzzle faster than Simon by such a large margin (my solve was 46min). I solved it without color coding so I guess that was part of the time save.

[@1fosters]

Colours really do seem to affect Simon's scanning. Still brilliant to watch AND listen to.

[@jackrudolf1745]

45:49 "Let's colour them in so that we have consistency..." *Procceeds to colour in it in the wrong order.* XD

[@derekfordyce9]

I appreciate your tenacity, Simon, and how you kept attacking this puzzle.

[@matthew456turner128]

Unbelievable puzzle and solve!!! I would certainly love to see Simon take on one of the extreme puzzles. I would pay for a solid 2 hour solve video. Well done sir!!!

[@AJMansfield1]

16:04 "44 is close to 43, another knowledge bomb from Cracking the Cryptic" ok lol

[@forgottenfamily]

Needed the hint of the 89 in box 3. Blew up 4 times and had to roll back. Rage quit once, nearly rage quit a couple of other times. End result: 2h40 Side note: I've started finding one of the best ways to avoid fully rage quitting is to just play the video - even if it's 30 digits behind, Simon's calm reasoning just mellows out the emotions

[@chilly5]

Nice solve Simon. you could have used Phistomephel on the break in - the 23 cage has an 8 and a 9, and the 21 cage needs one of 8 or 9, so there are three instances of 8 or 9 in the ring, and only 3 places where an 8 or 9 could go (which you found later anyway). It also helped to place a 6 as there is room for only one 6 in the ring once the 8s and 9s are placed - so no more 6s can go in the 2x2 squares.

[@matthewender3473]

That *was* a beast, yes! Amazing how Simon may miss several things I managed to see, and still do much better than I did.

[@pdiddymob]

I used the Phistomofel Ring to solve this one. Very nice puzzle. I enjoyed it

[@tsuzumiC]

As always a very entertaining video! You are doing a great job at this Simon! No need for apologies! There is one suggestion for improvement I can give you and that is to try to finish off each step that you take. I have seen the same rush in quite a few other of your puzzle videos. For example; Like many have noted before about the forgotten red and blue in box five, and later coloring them in wrong, could have been avoided if you made sure to color in all red and blue in the boxes before looking for something new. Great job, both at solving amazing puzzles and also bringing great entertainment! Thank you Simon and Cracking the Cryptic community!

[@danielrhymer1762]

45:49 for me! Like killers. Like that one a lot and had a feeling with the clues that colouring for low/high would be a big help

[@Frie_Jemi]

I love it! At 20 plus minutes into the solve he happily exclaims I got a digit! I think that's the most excited I've seen Simon for the first digit... You did seem to miss one bit of logic when you were coloring your reds and blues row two column five had a red eight nine, and the bottom cell in that column is also an eight and nine. It must be blue the top of the column cannot be in 89, therefore the other eight nine in box eight must be red and that identifies the parity of the eight nine colors in box five!

[@stronggreenflame]

Simon the fact that you could finish that at all is amazing. I could not. And just because you didn't do it as cleanly as possible doesn't mean you didn't do an excellent job. Although that color mistake was bothersome. Love you guys so much thanks for so much of entertainment.

[@marshallprice8503]

I really enjoyed the journey on this puzzle, it is so much fun to do these with you.

[@pandora5855]

At 33:42, the 1-3-8-9 quadruple forces a 1-3 pair in column 4 (Specifically in rows 5 and 7 of that column) I didn't try this puzzle myself, but getting that pair early may help save time in solving the puzzle.

[@asaenco]

Simon happy with coloring cells while the rest of the world is shouting at their screens.

[@Coyotek4]

Hour-plus videos always make me wince, but I always try them. I got off to a solid start, then bogged down for about 10 minutes, then saw a key feature involving 6s, and ... long story short, I made it to the end, no guessing, in 42:25. Not too shabby. :) Nice puzzle!

[@Fernando_Cabanillas]

To take into consideration: If you had continued with the ring, you could have noticed that you needed an 8, a 9 and an 8 or 9 in the corners, which would have desambiguated the corners faster, just a small thing i noticed =)

[@dudbike]

At the very start you can get the 89 pair in row 8 with simple geometry with the last row. You got there just a little longer way. Then I believe your coloring at the start would give you something.

[@1fosters]

I tried the alpha app but couldn't get Sludge in the colour options :(

[@yevhenkuzmovych4494]

It appears when you color green cell (set by the puzzle) with red or purple (I think).

[@ericpraline1302]

This was a great puzzle and I was gratified to find that my approach wasn't as far away from Simon's as I thought it would be. I always watch the videos to see the various elegant deductions I missed. Although I picked up on Phistomofel's Ring I realised I ended up not really using it.

[@blobdffoo819]

That's again some amazing solve ! I've figured some things and kept telling them to the screen ahah, but anyway i'd probably not have been able to solve it on my own !

[@davidmonnerat8598]

I am very surprised Simon didn't use the Phistomefel ring. I am probably even more surprised this puzzle is solvable without... The different solving paths join around 45:00 in the video. After that it is still tricky, but everything before was much easier with Phisto, which disambiguates the 21-cage right at the start without any colouring and parity considerations. Thanks for the puzzle and great solve!

[@andrewnelson2525]

I did use Phistomefel's Theorem. Quite early I could see the Phistomefel corners had at least three 8s and 9s (the 23 and 21 cages) and the Phistomefel Ring had at most three 8s and 9s which could only go in the corners of the Ring because the 45 and 28 cages could take no more 8s and 9s. That give me three more cells with 89. Didn't crack it but it helped. I did NOT beat your time. I made a pencil mark error that broke the puzzle and only pure stubbornness kept me going long enough to figure out how.

[@stevepinard5826]

I finally got around to this -- I was putting it off because of the video length. You know how it goes: "If it takes Simon an hour, I likely won't finish". I'm pleased to say that I finished it without help....in a whopping 2:02:58. It was worth it, because this puzzle is absolutely brilliant!

[@markp7262]

54:23 final. I actually made a lot more use of the Phisto ring in figuring things out. For example, at 46:50 when Simon determined the 6 in box 3, I had noticed that there was only one 6 in the ring, which was already paired with the 23 cage in box 9. At that point, I had determined that the Phisto ring contained 1-5 inclusive, 1-7 inclusive, 3x 8-9 pairs, and the cell r7c7 (which already had a 6 in its box). Therefore, 6 couldn't be in the corner four of box 3, and had to be in r3c9.

[@angelosorce996]

59:45 "Now look this square must be a 5, which is rather pretty. Now, look that PLUNKS five at the top." The comedic value of those sentences was great. Nice solve!

[@shoezomaku]

This one stands out to me in the pantheon of Cracking the Cryptic's videos as the one with the most digits that I saw a significant amount of time before Simon. This is not included digits that I saw first, but Simon saw a few seconds after because I don't think that's fair to count against him. However, I must say that I never would have solved this on my own. I doubt I ever would have placed a single digit if I had to on my own from the beginning. I've come to notice that Simon can't do high logic and regular Sudoku at the same time. I wonder why that is. He sees some piece of absolutely insane logic that connects to 5 different boxes, 20 different cells, is a reference to a previous puzzle, is somehow my grandmother's social security number, can be used as a proof in an non-euclidean geometry equation, is the 200th digit in graham's number, and can be used to translate alien languages... yet doesn't see that he could have placed a five in the grid 10 minutes ago.

[@anker9315]

I marked the Phistomefel ring straight away (the counterparts of the 89 of the 23-killer and the 8 or 9 of the 21-killer had to be in the corners of the ring) and could actually use it till the end: I have come very far sudokuwise

[@gogogogollll]

Some feedback on the new software: 1. Changing mouse selection breaks Redo: to reproduce, (a) perform a few actions, (b) undo some of them, (c) select some cells with the mouse and (d) try to redo. It won't redo, but it works just fine if you skip (c). 2. It feels quite sluggish, specially towards the end of a board. Most noticeable when selecting cells with click + drag, but also when adding pencil marks or deleting stuff. I'm on a 2015 macbook pro and the old software runs perfectly fine on it. Thank you for the daily content and all the apps, I've been consuming all of it since the pandemic started!

[@MisterM2402]

I'm always in awe of Simon's solving abilities but I notice his scanning often slips up when it comes to pointing pairs. At around 50:00, after pencil-marking 6s in box 2, a quick scan down the column shows it affects the 6-7 pair in box 5. He can spot the most complex, obscure logic but then misses pointing pairs somewhat regularly. Of course, all this nit-picking is just to make myself feel better about my own (lack of) solving abilities!

[@NijiRanger]

I didn't actually find this all that difficult. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the steps are tricky (and oh so beautiful and satisfying). But compared to other puzzles you have called very difficult, i've struggled much more with most of them. Absolutely loved it. 11/10

[@alienrenders]

I did it in 1h20m. Now, there are three starting things that can help at the start of this puzzle. 1. If you add the cages on the bottom row, you get 59. The smallest digits you can put in the remaining two cells in the bottom row is 1 and 2 for a total of 62. 62 - 45 is 17. So the two non cage cells ARE 1 and 2. And the two cells from those cages on row 8 are a 98 pair. 2. You can use the Phisto square a couple times here. If you notice, the 23 cage has a 89. And the 21 cage has either a 8 or a 9. So you have three 8s or 9s in some combination in the corners of the puzzle (the sixteen corner squares) which means they must also be in the phisto square. But where in the phisto square can 8s and 9s go? They can't go in either the 45 or 28 cages, so they must go in the corners of the phisto square. But which corners? Well, the box with the 23 cage already has an 8 and 9, so not that corner. The three 8s and 9's go in the other three corners. 3. Now to figure out the digits of the 21 cage. Again with the phisto square. Notice how the 23 cage has a 6 in it. Well, where can a 6 go in the phisto square? It can only go once in the 45 cage and nowhere else because the only other free cell is in the same box as the 23 cage and that means you can't repeat a 6 there. So only one 6 can ever go in the sixteen corner cells. Hence, the 21 cage does NOT have a 6 in it. Thus it must be comprised of 579. And since it has a 9, the cell in the same box that is the corner of the phisto square must be an 8. The other two corners are 9's and you get 3 digits right there. Unfortunately, none of this helped my time. But I was glad I saw these right away.

[@brettaspivey]

That was a great one, on my list to do again

[@WhoStoleMyAlias]

For my solve I did use the Phistomefel ring. If you inspect the digits that go inside the cages that are part of the ring, one thing that sticks out is that you cannot put an 8 or 9 in any of those cells. One 8 and 9 are already given though as part of the 23-cage in box 9 and so these must sit in the corners of the Phistomefel ring. Which only leaves one remaining position for either a second 8 or second 9 and at least one of these must be in the 21-cage in box 1, which therefore has to be precisely one and you get 8-9 pairs in both column 3 and row 3. This also gives you the 6 in row 7 because this must be in the 37-cage.

[@markschaal6050]

38:30 Simon: That needs to be missing cells that add up to 8....it's either missing 3 & 4 or 2 & 5... 54:48 Simon: We needed the missing cells to add to 8...these are either 2 & 5 or 3 & 4... I think Simon might be missing a knowledge bomb today.

[@kimberlypreston6204]

I'm in over 16 minutes in. Simon, DO NOT be afraid to just give it a stare. I am a beginner and didn't think your ideas were going to work from watching your other videos. Just give it a stare Simon. I will continue watching the video. I know you are amazing and will solve it just fine.

[@kimberlypreston6204]

28 minutes in and I am happy Simon got a digit! He is brilliant! I didn't realize how hard this puzzle was so maybe i was harsh telling him to just give it a stare.

[@kimberlypreston6204]

48 min in. Simon, you're falling apart. you colored the 9 and 8 in the middle box the wrong color.

[@kimberlypreston6204]

51 minutes in and you're cooking with gas!! Go Simon.

[@Serzha]

Most frustrating bit for me was around 55:30 when he found the 2 and 5 in the 37 cage, and then absolutely refused to do the basic sudoku with them, which would've let him finish all the 2s and 6s due to the 10-cage. He eventually does it in a very roundabout way 5 minutes later, but it hurts!

[@googleaccount3555]

hey Simon, you're pretty good at this :P

[@JeremyButlerquarterthru]

I did this puzzle 3 days ago and it took me 2 hours. Always fun to yell at the screen when you know the next step, lol.

[@revanbrummel8828]

Some minor issues with the #CTCWebApp - only played this one puzzle so far so no real glitches found yet - gotta do some more: * Blue colour in cells does not look good for pencilmarks - the "old" blue was brighter I think and worked a bit better * Move the "Looks good to me" box lower - so it is closer to the check button * Center the puzzle in the window * Maybe add a zoom out - I did like the size of the old one - but others might prefer the new size - if possible give an option * When revisiting the page the puzzle is filled. But the timer starts at 0 - maybe add the timer value and state (paused or running) to the cookie so I could restart and compare my time or continue Otherwise a really nice sudoku - looking forward to the kille app! Keep up the good work, Cheers Volker

[@euanmcdougall1917]

I think the title of the sudoku refers to the fact that the Mark of the Beast appears as some of the first digits placed (666) Better Watch Out Simon! The Approachable Wars continue

[@joekerr3638]

“Mark” of the Beast...this insult is too hot to handle🤣

[@gryornlp9634]

Regarding the beautiful sudoku app: What I would love to have are negative numbers (displayed as a red digit in the cell) so I can annotate chunks of cells where I know that a number will not be present. That would sometimes be really helpfull. And about the colouring: A possibility of shading (lighter, darker) would be beautiful since some sudokus are working with groups and sup-groups which can get messy with the annotation. That would still be easier to annotate and to read than normal letters from the latin alphabet. The Shading could perhaps be implemented via a modifier button so you still only have 9 colours plus 0 to choose from. And thank you for those enjoyable sudoku solvings and the app. Would there also be a possibility to make the frontend open source / licensed in some way that we could help/participate or use it for our own sudokus (mayhaps against money)? I would like to solve other sudokus I am doing in this frontend, too.

[@Canadoscope]

i love how he says that that cell is red and proceeds to make it blue and the other red, and continues the whole video not realizing haha

[@Raven-Creations]

Alpha app feedback: like Simon, I had trouble with the auto-selection being too eager. I had previously reported an issue that appeared to be linked to drag-selecting, but it's actually to do with long-pressing. It would be useful if the auto-selection was a) removed from long-clicking, and b) mode-sensitive. The latter would allow us to decide whether we want to select by colour, corner mark, centre mark, or big number. It would also be good if double-clicking only selected exact matches, but a third click selected cells containing the matches. From the video, where I think Simon was clicking on a cell with 5 & 7 corner-marked, this would mean: first, select corner-mark mode, then double-click to select only those cells containing exactly 5 & 7. Triple-clicking would widen the selection to include all cells containing both 5 and 7, even if they contained other digits too (which is what happened in the video). Another suggestion is to make the delete mode-sensitive too. This would allow us to delete corner marks and leave centre marks intact, or vice versa. A delete in a cell that doesn't contain any of the currently selected type would function as it does now.

[@BigSnail23]

Simon is afraid of this man....i give up without trying bc i know my limits lol

[@DaShikuXI]

The new app definitely needs more colors. It needs at least 9 colors (that aren't black or white) so every digit can have its own color if need be.

[@Lunaphire]

Red, yellow, blue, green, purple, orange, cyan, magenta, gray?

[@ricardorazera8809]

Oh man, you were thinking about Phistomefel's ring in the beginning and just a bit more thought would have given you two 9's and one 8. Seeing you give up on the trail was just heartbreaking haha still nice solve though ;)

[@GrahamRSteele]

That was hard and I LOVED it!

[@codex4046]

Some feedback of the alpha app: The colors are way better in my opinion. As a colorblind person I had a lot of trouble differentiating some of the colors in the old app.

[@moonglum101]

A bad day at the office for Simon. Definitely made it more difficult than it was. I challenge Simon to do this puzzle again in a year's time and I bet things go much more smoothly and efficiently.

[@bradstrickler]

It's amazing how many commenters on here have never made a bloody mistake before. Must be a amazing to be you.

[@yichen6313]

Finally watched Simon's solve in the morning - my path is more or less the same as yours, which is reassuring. I don't think you missed anything important other than some little things that may speed up by a little. ps. I beat your solve time by 1 hour! ...but in the wrong direction

[@khazidhea790]

Of the harder puzzles, I found this one quite approachable, thanks heaps! I still got stuck twice (which is quite normal, got a nudge from the video for the first, the other towards the end I got through eventually with bifurcation before I went back and could see the logic involved).

[@savola3129]

bobbins! turns out it's not just the new software Simon has been using, he actually is 100x faster at this than I am. Also, love the double click feature in the new software.

[@btnskillsh0t810]

You could've gotten the 89-pair from the 29-Killer with the geometry of row 9 + the ,,ends'' of the 23 and the 29-Killer :3

[@moonglum101]

I've been having issues this past month or so with a lack of pinch zoom functionality when using Chrome browser on a tablet to solve these. This was odd because I never had the issue previously. It seems to be as a result of my browser loading a mobile version of the site because if I go to the Chrome options and tell it to load the desktop site, it reloads the site with pinch zoom functionality enabled. Is there a configuration setting missing in the style sheets in the mobile version of the app? Now that I understand the basic cause of the issue I look forward to trying the new version of the app more often.

[@StefanPettersson]

I really think the colour of pencil marks needs to adapt to colour of the cells. Red is really bad on my mobile. Green is better.

[@ipudisciple]

Is there a setting on your device which switches colours around, under Accessibility maybe?

[@StefanPettersson]

@@ipudisciple Not sure. I do not want to change my colours, I want Simon to change his. 😇

@@StefanPettersson Me too. The app developer needs to calculate the "relative luminance" of the cell color and select a light or dark pencil color base on that. I'll try to contact them and hope for a fix.

[@jackreeves8810]

Can you remove the colouring after you are finished with it, it makes it harder to spot other things going on as your eyes keep on getting drawn to the colours

[@danshep79]

If you lean hard into phistomophel's theorem, it helps with this puzzle a lot. The cages in the middle mean that the rim of the middle contains the digits 1-5 twice, one 6, one 7 (and therefore, the outer corners of the puzzle contain those digits) The 689 in the bottom right cage accounts for that 6, plus an 8 and a 9, so two of the inner corners must be 8+9. The top left cage therefore can have at most: the 7, the other inner corner and then the last digit can't be more than 5. Therefore the other inner corner must be a 9 to get to 21, so therefore it's a 975 cage. Therefore the inner corners are two 9s in the top-right and bottom-left and an 8 in the top-left. That logic jumps you pretty much straight to the 40 minute point of the solve. Then pay attention to 1-5 appearing in the outer corners twice each while doing the rest of the solve.

[@iampanandh]

I cannot believe you missed phistomefel ring. I got my first 3 digits in R3C3, R3C7, R7C3 using phistomefel ring within first 5 minutes. It is different matter that I couldn't finish the puzzle...