The Incredible Sudoku Problem

[@roseslattery6606]

My favorite quote is always when Simon is stuck and says with mild chagrin “Do I have to do Sudoku now?”

[@Bluhbear]

"Do I have to do Sudoku somehow, here?" ~Simon Anthony, 22:31

[@SapioTV]

tbf a lot of these puzzles don't "feel" like sudoku puzzles because there is an extra bit of deduction to be had before the actual sudokuing takes place but i get what you mean haha

[@martyshrekster]

@@SapioTV Yep, I have to remind myself when Simon is missing something very obvious on the actual Sudoku end, that he's probably just in "killer cage mode" still and isn't scanning for Sudoku at the moment.

[@stevieinselby]

I've never seen anyone have such an existential crisis over whether 1+1+2+4=8 😂

[@DarioPicaTips]

Then you should do more sudoku!

[@RichSmith77]

@8:17 Are we absolutely sure it can have a 4, though. "Don't go mad, Simon" 😂

[@glenn_25]

"And that is absolutely useless" always makes me smile

[@glenn_25]

Thats extraordinary unhelpful

[@waterfrodo4304]

I'm afraid I'm going to scream "8 is red!" in my sleep tonight 😂

[@roland9189]

Me too. And then he kept doing reds, EXCEPT the omne in that Box. Then he kept doing stuff in that Box, EXCEPT that Cell. Gah!

[@KoyasuNoBara]

I'm so proud of myself for spotting that one LOL

[@jonhansen9622]

31:15 the joy and excitement in his voice is pure and very infectious!

[@justacynic]

For the first time, I was ahead of Simon's pace! Which is a *definite* indicator that he was not following the quickest path. ;-)

[@eytanz]

Same here! He was unlucky in that he chose to focus on the high digit colouring problem before resolving the low digits; you need the low digits placed to solve the high ones but not vice versa.

[@mollberg3501]

Felt the same way.

[@firebyrd7933]

While it took me longer than him I have to agree.

[@MrAardvark23]

Thank you Simon! Your videos have helped keep me sane through the covid/holidays. I honestly hope you and your family are doing well.

[@stephanmathys62]

22:00 Simon: How do you do this puzzle? Me: watch Simon?

[@fuxpremier]

24:59 for my solve. It's very unusual for me to be quicker than Simon and this time it's by far. I'm very proud of my time! I broke into the puzzle differently by looking at the 1 or 2 digit in r6c8 and r7c6 and wondering where it could go in box 7. It must go in row 9, but it can't go in r9c3, which is the ghost of r8c4 or in r9c2 because there is already a 1-2 pair in this column. It must therefore go in r9c1, where we already have a 1. Therefore it's a 2 and the 1 in column 1 is accompanied by a 3 and a 4 on its arrow. Very very cool puzzle, it flows very fluently with nice but easy logic steps. I did really enjoy it!

[@StefanPettersson]

Maybe the software can be updated with colour patterns or colour shading of some sort. Several puzzels have been a bit limited by the lack of colouring possibilities. It might however be tricky to see the pencil marks.

[@butomakansabun]

Agree. The colour options could be modified too with colours that can be easier to differentiate and/or not so painful to look at :D

[@3possumsinatrenchcoat]

maybe a slight angled stripes or other basic pattern?

[@sineaddoyle9428]

Could not agree more. And just swap the black out for a color you can read the text in haha. But the patterns idea is really great. My only concern would be for the puzzle to look too busy and for it to become difficult to read the candidates

[@wariolandgoldpiramid]

I agree. More colors, as well as Color Pencil Marks, would be really useful.

[@prahas777]

It'd be really slick to have pencil marks and all numbers actually adapt their color on the fly according to the color placed in the background of the cell.

[@davidmonnerat8598]

I did the same "mistake" as Simon, colouring high digits. When i got completely stuck, I cleared most of the grid and coloured low digits instead. Then, with what I had learned on the 1st try, the puzzle was almost easy! It is so intuitive to start with the high ones, I wonder if the setter may have intended this trap. I also wondered after may solve, if Simon would fall for it, and tadaaaaa! I suffered with the poor guy during the vid :)

[@mremumerm]

late on this one. I've been doing many of the Simon's video recently, so i'm now over doing colouring ;-) and since the first thing i could colour was the 1/2s on the 5 square arrow, i was lucky and never looked back. So when i watched the video i was curious if the other way was better.... all that said, it still takes me more time then Simon, but at least it was easier.

[@kevinyoung796]

This is the first time I actually did a puzzle before Simon published the video. Completed on logic masters and very satisfying to watch Simon complete it.

[@danielrhymer1762]

20:13 for me! Just seemed to get into that one really quickly. Think high/low colouring helped a lot

[@sunil-pt7ez]

I did with high and low digit colours and still took around 2hr

[@MitchellD249]

I think this has to be my favourite sudoku that I've done from this channel. I'm normally left banging my head against the wall for hours trying to find a breakthrough, with this one I had pretty good momentum throughout without it being too easy.

[@adamtaylor5040]

There was a lot of logic with the 12 pairs. At 9:35 r8c6 and r7c8 must be the same and then that digit in the bottom row in box 7 can't go on the arrow. It can't go in r9c2 as there has to be 1 & 2 on the arrow in r2-4 c2, so it has to go in r9c1, and must be a 2 due to the arrow above it, which becomes an 8 total.

[@Coyotek4]

27:03 ... could have been faster, but I had to backtrack after making a faulty assumption. Luckily, I was able to fix and make it to the end. Fun puzzle; I liked how I ended up coloring twice (once for 1-5, and then again for 6-9).

[@peterthreadgold2798]

“I haven’t got 9 colours “.......software update coming?

[@AFastidiousCuber]

The new software actually does have 9 colors, but Simon doesn't like using all of them. In particular, yellow is hard to see and can be confused with the curser, and black makes the text difficult to read. What we really need is the ability to put letters, instead of just numbers, into cells. Then there would be no need to use coloring and you could associate way more than even 9 labels to cells. I use letters all the time when solving by hand and it really annoys me that the software doesn't allow this.

[@ammalyrical5646]

@@AFastidiousCuber or change the colour of the numbers on top of colouring the background of the boxes. Of course, yellow needs to go in lieu of a more visible colour than, but that can be easily solved. But it would work because then you can colour in boxes black (although grey might work better for that. with black as a base.

[@AFastidiousCuber]

@@ammalyrical5646 This feels like a band-aid solution, what do I do if I want more than 9 labels? Eventually you run out of easily distinguishable colors. Plus, there will still be issues with colorblind people. Perhaps the best solution would be to just do both. Have colors and letters as options.

[@ammalyrical5646]

@@AFastidiousCuber You have a point, especially since adding in so many colours that it can work for colourblind people (the ones that aren't completely colourblind, mind you) is just way too chaotic.

[@AaronPriceColby]

@@AFastidiousCuber Letters would be fantastic, there was a few times I was labelling colors and I thought this could be Red or Green but not Blue or Yellow, how do I represent that?

[@HunterJE]

9:28 Fun small deduction here - the middle of the 3-length arrow on the right cannot be the 3; whichever of 1 or 2 is repeated on the four-length arrow to the left of the grid must be in the middle cell of the three-length arrow to the right to avoid repeating in its row

[@mubutukinkeke]

This marks what I'm quite sure is the first time I've solved a puzzle in a shorter time than the length of the video. Excellent!

[@SSGranor]

There is a _much_ easier way to start sorting out the low digits (without even having to do any high/low coloring). Essentially, the longer arrows restrict the 1 in box 7 all the way down to a single cell. The 1s in columns 1 and 2 need to be on the 7/8 arrows, which rules out all three cells in c2 as well as r9c1. The 1 in row 8 in the 12 pair on the 9 arrow, ruling out r8c1 and r8c3. And, that also rules out r9c3, since its arrow means it's the same as r8c4. Finally, 1 is rule out of r7c3 by the x-wing on 1s in row 6 and 7. Thus, the 1 can be nowhere other than r7c1.

[@jtucker87]

I was very sad, and rather frustrated, that he didn't see the 12 arrow pair in C6C7 that meant that the 2 arrows above couldn't be one or two. I thought that was really beautiful.

[@andrewness]

I spotted that, and felt very pleased with myself, but then made very little progress and had to come back here for a few pointers.

[@seanmcdonough2683]

Was absolutely fascinated when you first started coloring the high digits as I had sorted out the 1/2/3s first when solving and thought you were going to find a way to sort the high digits out first.

[@Felixkeeg]

54 minutes, filling in the possibilities was easy, but resolving the 6789 was the hard part EDIT: I'm a lucky moron, I thought a 4 on the arrow from r5c2 was impossible, so I ressolved that quickly.

[@satriomalif8801]

Same with me, thought 4 cannot be in arrow. Lucky

[@Kinada]

Took me an hour and 46 min to do the puzzle. I had to take a couple of short breaks and when I came back I was able to see what I was missing each time. Really interesting puzzle.

[@jameswiebe8956]

That was quite fun, and once I recognized the limitations on the short arrows pointing into the centre box, the rest of the puzzle flowed very well. A bit over 45 minutes for me and I never felt frustrated or that I really didn't know what to do next.

[@joelbaker210]

That 1-2 merry-go-round around the grid was some sick voodoo! I wonder if Simon ever discovers some voodoo like that and the puzzle creator later tells him that the voodoo was not intended.

[@wbball15]

Could make generic "high" numbers in light grey

[@onegerard1]

that's just logic w for president

[@onegerard1]

i love light grey!

[@onegerard1]

it's so much better than just plain grey but i must be honest and say i like that too

[@onegerard1]

my fav. colour..? why?

[@leoncarpenter958]

Yes I was screaming that too

[@gengar678]

and that......is absolutely uselss. . Love it. Brilliant.

[@EasyBacMath]

Hi Simon thank you for this beautiful puzzle I took another way to resolve the puzzle after 21:43 , and here is what I did the number in (r7c8) and (r8c6) is the same and it must be 1 or 2 now in (box 7) this number must go in (r9c1) or (r9c2) (since we can't repeat it in (r7) or (r8) and we know that this number in not green) but (c2) already contains 1 and 2 (because of the arrow) hence (r9c1) must be "the one" contains 1 or 2 and by using the fact that the arrow in (c1) contain 1 therefore 2 is "the one" in (r9c1)

[@markadler360]

Same logic I used.

[@steviedmrbk5179]

I haven't watched this solve yet, but I'll be waiting patiently for the digits 1 to 9 equals 45 soliloquy 🤗🤗

[@dudbike]

Jokes on you ... he didn't give it!

[@steviedmrbk5179]

@@dudbike that's 2020, baby 🤦‍♂️😆

[@Jodawo]

I think the only thing that kills your efficiency is the pencil marks. You get a number in the grid but you don't follow it through in all directions some of the time. Sometimes it's a breakthrough when you get that number because it leads to another part that ends up getting disambiguated. It's not a big deal because it becomes very entertaining for us to see something that you're not seeing. So at that moment, we all feel we are on the same level of genius.

[@topilinkala1594]

He's doing it live on camera and describing at the same time. Try it out and you find out that the simplest sudoku will give you problems. So let him do those scanning mistakes because unlike you and I he only looks into one spot. There has been a suggestion that Simon should get eye tracker into these, so that we can see why he does not see some easy singles.

[@clarematthews4051]

The frustration of having all the 1-5 placed and then staring at the apparent impossibility of fixing 6-9. For a while at least. Took me 39 minutes to finish. Lots of fun and a great distraction from the studying I'm meant to be doing!

[@Zhon66]

36:16. I think that's the first time my time has ever come in under the length of the video. It's still slower than Simon, but I'll take it.

[@66Morti66]

My solution path was a bit different: at 16:17 you can see that there is always a 1 in c1r6/7 as well as in c2r2/3/4, hence there can never be a 1 in r9c1/2. Also, because of the 1-2 pair in r8c6/7 there can't be a 1 in r8c2/3 -> the 1 in box 7 is in c7. This fixes the 2 in r7c8 and the whole 9 arrow with it, which works back into the arrow on the left handside, rather quickly ruling out the 36 possibility in the killercage. From there it is rather straight forward with the colouring technique. Enjoyed your solve anyway, well done :)

[@bitcoinisrael1000]

Starting at 16:12, there's a very simple deduction you can do: Where does the 1 go in box 7? It can't be in C2 because there is a 1 somewhere on the C2 arrow. It's not in R8 because of the 12 pair. It's not in R9C1 because there is a 1 in the C1 arrow. It's not in R9C3 because it's green. So it must be in R7, which means R7C8 is 2. This gives you *a lot* of progress, and spares some of the more convoluted deductions. Among other things, it allows you to find that R9C1 is 2, which resolves the C1 arrow.

[@DamnItOdiliaa]

I’m going through the backlog, and this one is a joy! Used a lot of colours, and that really helped me. Finished in 35.24.

[@yichen6313]

Nice solve from Simon! I finished all the 12345's (with some coloring among them) before starting to play with colors for the 6789. It's a nice puzzle

[@adamheywood113]

22:00 "Maaaah!" Ads immediately followed. I did laugh.

[@marcosharlequin]

I think there was a much quicker way to break in via the 3 in r6c1 that Simon reached via much more complicated ways at about 29:00. For me, the very elegant way was that the circles at r4c7 and r5c7 both saw BOTH r6c8 AND r8c6 which had to be 1 AND 2 (they couldnt be both 1s, or both 2s). This meant that they were both 345 only, and specifically, that the circle at r4c7 had to repeat in r5c6 and r6c1 via sudoku. Since r6c1 could only be 123, it must have been a 3, and the rest of the puzzle followed. My guess is that noting the cells that saw both of the 12s on the long arrow was the intended route to solve this.

[@matthewender3473]

One small starting move I noticed which might be of value after filling in the basics: The R4C7 and R5C7 arrows see R8C7 and R8C6, so can't be 1 or 2. It didn't *get* me anywhere quick, but it was a nice little step.

[@65Superhawk]

The young man climbed to the mountain top and met the wise guru. "Guru," he said, "what is pain?" The guru smiled and said, "Getting 45 minutes into this Sudoku and having no cel charger and a 1% battery" (phone died and it happened to me just today). Uggh

[@FirstLast-gw5mg]

For me it's getting 50 minutes in and realizing that I accidentally put 10 into the 9 cage, and instead of finding a contradiction it ended up coming all the way down to uniqueness: two possible solutions with no way to disambiguate them.

[@AFastidiousCuber]

@28:23 There was a much faster way to see that you couldn't have a 1 or a 2 in those cells. If you did then you'd have either two 1s or two 2s in columns 6 and 7, which would break the 1,2 pair in row 8.

[@peterc.hayward8067]

Haha yeah I noticed this before he even started colouring in low numbers. Would have saved him about 5 minutes of elaborate paths!

[@tobermorywomble23]

21:48.. Way fun. Coloured hi-low from the start, which helped.

[@alvaropallete]

28:45 what a clever deduction from Simon, this puzzle is really cool but has many hidden secrets 🙈

[@notchmath9642]

I got that an alternate way, very early on. Note that in the left sum-to-seven, if you put a 2 in either cell, it forces a 1 in the other cell. Now look at the top cell of those two. If a 1 or 2 is there, it forces an identical, 1 or 2 into c2 r2/3. But then in column 3, where can it go? It can’t go in boxes 1 or 4, and in box 7, rows 7 and 8 already have a 1-2 pair- and if it was in row 9, it would also be in row 8 where the aforementioned 1-2 pair is!

[@andrewgcooper1]

I think the quickest way is to pick up the logic at the start around r2 c3 and colour the cells that are the same as r2 c3 - the logic to break this is centred there and not around the 6789s so in the video Simon finds the way in after he picks all the colouring (I was lucky - started by just colouring 12345s as one colour 6789s as another and then coloured all those in r2 c3 as a third that end up as 1s). Hence finding the logical break much earlier.

[@wokkawicca]

Great puzzle. I started by coloring the repeated 12 candidate, which also appears right away in r3c9.

[@andremouss2536]

I don't know if this could be useful, but there is an early chain if exclusions starting by trying to put a 1 in r4c4 and ending in breaking the puzzle. That gives defintively a 1 in the center cell.

[@jkadoodle]

Do any puzzles include starting numbers anymore?

[@pewterhacker]

At around time=12:30, what ever you put into Col 1, Row 6 is also forced into Col 7, Row 4. This forces Col 7, Row 4 to be "123" to make a "123" triple in row 4.

[@vietphan3767]

31:00 Could have been faster, but the logic was awe-inspiring for me; getting an arrow clue then leads to getting another clue, which links back to another arrow clue and so on...

[@maxscherzer9521]

I'm nowhere near as good as Simon, but I'm happy to say I figured out in the first minute that we needed high/low parity colors.

[@danielrhymer1762]

Other neat way of breaking into this one. Where the 9 arrow is, the 1s and 2s are set into geometric pairs. The one of interest isn’t the one Simon spent ages plotting through but the other one. As it’s in R7C8 and R8C6, the only positions it could go in in row 9 were columns 1 or 2. As we know a one is pinned in column 1 and 2 by being on the two arrows, neither of which enters row 9, R7C8/R8C6 must be 2s and that gets a whole string of 1s and 2s as a result 😃

[@gordonglenn2089]

I prefer the "quiet" of yellow or green for the generic high/low coloring. (Could have used grey, except that makes the arrows and circles disappear.) These seem to fade back and not distract me from the 6789, for which I used brighter colors of red, blue, orange, and pink/purple.

[@DaShikuXI]

This puzzle really did not go the way I thought it would. I thought the Phistomefel ring would end up disambiguating what the central cell in box 5 would be. Especially since the killer cage was in the perfect position to help with that.

[@Coyotek4]

Interesting ... in my solve, I colored the 1-5 first; after sorting those out, I uncolored those and refocused on 6-9. Simon went the other way with this.

[@GSBrofly]

I coloured 123 45 and 6789

[@jonahkoehlert8747]

wow what an absolutely amazing puzzle, i havent watched the video to see how simon solves it but it was incredibly fun coloring everything in for me

[@deathgambit6466]

Hey Simon! I love the vids keep it up! I also have a question, are there any new coming sudoue's on the miracle sudoku app?

[@map-reduce]

Oops, I started solving this is a thermo and get VERY confused. Then I realized!

[@prahas777]

Me too, but I didn't get too far. :-)

[@FirstLast-gw5mg]

Been there, done that. Managed to prove to myself that the puzzle itself was definitely impossible, then realized I was using the wrong ruleset. Luckily not on this sudoku though.

[@dubbz1356]

42:05 for me, but that also included finishing the grid coloring lol

[@dwarfigplays9806]

34 min for me. Very good puzzle. Coloring (12345)/(6789), then (4)/(5) was truly helpful. And I'm so close to Simon's time! (usually 1.5-2x) Nice... :)

[@nmmoussa]

I started with row 5, in which I wondered where to place 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and noticed they cannot be placed on the first two cells and last two cells of the row (r5c1, r5c2, r5c8, r5c9) because the arrows were too long, so that gave me 6, 7, 8, and 9 to place in these four cells and 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 to place in the middle (and that gave me loads of clones as well), and then I got the 9 clue you started with in the video.

[@stevesebzda570]

@22:00 Simon: "AHH.!?!", "How do ya do this puzzle?.." Ya got me, Simon, lol. ;)) 😂 [[Oh, ya could fill-in "6789" for the "high" cells, (being you were asking about that). Then ya could at least take out what doesn't belong there (like the 6 making a 789 in r8c9). That would be my advice though, (being there are much fewer of them). Lol though, ;)) 😂]] [[[Yeah, "the tipping point" , (getting one more deduction, Simon said ) because "1,2" can't be in r5c7(and conversely its equivalent cell in box 5) from the beginning because they all see the 1,2s all along that arrow (the equivalent cell in box 5 also). That only gives ya a 345 , (so yeah, I have no idea how to do it, lol). 😂🤔 ]]] [I wasn't clear, 12 (in r7c6) on that arrow sees that cell in box 5 (in r6c6). So they're 345s in two cells on that row 5 (along with that equivalent cell in box 5 r6c6). The 1 is on an angle in box 5 but I have no idea which one though, (if only that was a 1,2 on an equivalent cell on that arrow up in box 1 (and 2) but it isn't, (yet) lol . Good luck, Simon lol;) 😂 [[@37:25 in box 4 that's a 69 pair (in those two white cells) and the 6 is in row 5 of box 6 (so the 6 has to be in the top of box 5 ) fixing the "69" in row 5 of box 4 to a "9". That's what I'm gettin' 1st, (because those 698s are all going to be fixed by this). That's a little bit of "Sudoku" instead of just coloring though, (although that was needed to take 9 out of the reds and the 6s out of green and orange all around the grid in different ways though) lol. ;) 😂 (@38:24 ,there's the 6 in the top of box 5 I was talking about) The coloring helped. No idea how Simon put a 1,2 way down in box 8 (in r9c4) way at the beginning though, (that's a little 'out' there , lol). 😂

[@CalvinNeufeld1]

Managed to solve it in 35:43 and man am I proud of that time that's almost comparable to Simon's time XD never have I even gotten close to their speed. Amazingly fun puzzle great tricks and patterns.

[@TrekBeatTK]

I took a totally different path. Once the long arrows are fixed, you know that there must be a 1 in certain rows snd columns. So I went through and found all possible 1s, did the same for 2s, and quickly deduced all the 1,2,3s. 4 and 5 soon followed.

[@andrewnelson2525]

If Simon was inefficient, I was more so. I used green for 1234, blue for 56789, and when I got a 5 made it red. When I solved all the low green digits and the red 5s, then I started separate colors for 6,7,8, and 9. I think including the 5 in the lows instead of the highs was better. Disambiguating the 78 arrows seemed to be the key step and I did that a different way (if the crucial 12 was a 1, you couldn't put a 1 in the center row). Great puzzle.

[@greenansatsu4097]

I feel like this puzzle comes down to getting r6c1's number, but getting the logic for it was like doing a triple backflip with a springtwist to get there.

[@boydegg]

1 hour 1 minute and 29 seconds. What a beast!!!

[@Squishy3757]

5:28 The 1/2 pair in row 8 rules out a 1 and a 2 in r4c7 / r5c6 since the latter pair must be the same.

[@Squishy3757]

Also rules out 2 in r5c7 / r6c6

[@markadler360]

At 23:00 you were so close to taking the quicker path I found to disambiguate the 1's and 2's. r7c8 and r8c6 must be the same so you know that that digit must also appear in either c1 or 2 of row 9. There is a "virtual" 12 pair on c2 since one of r2c2 and r3c2 must be a 12 and r4c2 is a 12. That puts a 12 in r9c1 and the ones on the arrow above it force it to be a 2.

[@jaeusa160]

@29:00 I ended up at the same 3 to disambiguate everything but the way I found it was via r5c6. It was the only place in box 5 that r6c1 could appear in, and the only shared digit between 123 and 345 is the 3. Everything fell together steadily but carefully after that. :)

[@JeremyButlerquarterthru]

17:52.. Proud of that one.

[@alibabapirce9782]

at the beginning you need to see that 1 and 2 in arrow starting from r5c8 exclude 1 and 2 from arrows starting from r4c6 and r5c6, than looking at box 4 you see that you have 1/2 in r5c2 in arrow so you cant have 1 and 2 in r6c1 because if you do have it there it excludes 1 and 2 from arrows beginning in r5c3 and r6c3 which results in error in box 5 (you can put 1 and 2 only in middle cell in r5c5 and you cant put both 1 ns 2 there. there fore r6c1 is 3. and from there its pretty simple @edit; i have written it at 10 min in to video but even tho you did it bit different you came to similar conclusion

[@linggao2602]

I kind of knew the arrow in c1 is not 12 since it forms a deadly pattern with the 12 pair in c8, but I didn’t know how to prove it so I watched how you do it. When you went around the grid finding cells that are either 1 or 2 I assumed they’re all 2 and tried to figure out where the 1s are. Turns out there’s a contradiction. I did get stuck again when just the large numbers remained because I initially didn’t colour the same numbers, just the “general large number”, but it wasn’t for long because I remembered that you coloured in specific digits. Anyway a few mistakes and reworks later it was finally done.

[@WhoStoleMyAlias]

I did some weird bifurcation on the lower digits, or just a logic error, instantly got stuck on the centre box, corrected it and then spend over 30 minutes trying to figure out how the digits 6 to 9 had to be placed. Should have grabbed the colouring tool earlier, because once I did it all fell together amazingly easy.

[@RealCadde]

17:00 You should already know the color of the two remaining two cell arrows because the colors cannot overlap in rows or columns as that would clash. I.E put two of the same digit in one row or column.

[@alienrenders]

There was an easier break in than the 1's and 2's all around the board. You can just look at the two 12 pairs that join up to the 3 in box 9. If you'll notice the 12's in box 6 and 8 have to be opposite digits and they each look at the same set of arrows (including their circles) in column 6 and 7. So 1 and 2 can never be on the right side of box 5. There are only 3 cells left in box 5 that can take 1 and 2's. From there, you can continue on with the logic you had.

[@thejeqff]

I actually found that to be quite approachable. I colored the 12345 and 6789 cells and that helped me quite a bit, Then started coloring some of the pairs. Then solved it with colors which disambiguated a couple of cells toward the end. My solve time came in about 58:41 which is quite good for me. That was a lot of fun but I didn't find it terribly difficult.

[@ariondys]

I just thought it would be swell if the difficulty or fun factor if rated, could appear in the descriptions from now on.. just did an old one looked like a crossbow and FINISHED w/o mistake, then no idea how difficult it was(I suppose without going back to listen to the whole beginning)

[@rankinsean]

Super fun puzzle. Struggled with 6789 across the whole grid but managed it in the end.

[@KeithGrant]

29:21. My first time ever doing a puzzle faster than Simon! The breakthrough I had that seemed to save a lot of time: At 12:20 in the video, you can see that the digit in r7c8 must be the same as r8c6, so the corresponding digit in box 7 must go in r9. Putting it in r9c2 would break the arrow beginning at r5c2, so it must be in r9c1. Since a 1 must go on the c1 arrow, this digit must be a 2. After this, a number of 1s and 2s resolve on the grid and the arrow in c1 sorts itself out. *edit oh, beforehand I had noticed the 6789 quad in column 5, making r8c5 a 45 pencil mark. this completed 12345 in the row, so r9c4 has to be 6789, thus ruling out the 12 in r9c3 as well in the above logic.

[@markschaal6050]

Quite nice logic. I especially like it because I feel that emphasizing the 12-restrictions is more elegant than going full hog 12345-6789.

[@RichSmith77]

I used this logic too! Watching Simon's solve, I kept thinking my (our) solution path seemed much quicker. Somehow, Simon still beat my 41 minutes though. 😂 (Didn't need to have spotted the 6789 quad in c5 first, though. The arrow from r9c3 to r8c4 meant it couldn't be the same as r8c6.)

[@PuzzleQodec]

Great choice for a video title! That's hilarious!

[@DaShikuXI]

Would be interesting to see a puzzle where you have two cell killer cages as the circles on the arrows.

[@tbpotn]

There has to be a more elegant break-in than the virtual 12 pair. I think colouring high vs low might have been useful.

[@michaelhoffman2011]

Fun puzzle. took me 40 minutes. I ended up using 2 colours for numbers > 5 and

[@itsmeagain1745]

Why not just use grey as the generic high number colour (as you've used purple for the low numbers)?

[@adrianputala9212]

Nobody knows

[@maxgamesst1]

He could place specific high numbers, like the red in box 8

[@prahas777]

65 min 36 seconds. "This is a coloring problem now...." .... and I'm off! :-) (and lots of other help too - thanks Simon!)

[@NettoTakashi]

I was surprised to find that I beat Simon's time on this one, and after watching 3/4 of the way through the video, I think I know how. I noticed early on that the 1-2 pair in r8c6 and r8c7 ruled both 1 and 2 out of r5c7 and r6c7, as those cells see one half the pair and copy cells that see the other half of the pair. Then I noticed that r6c1 could no longer be a 1 or a 2, as that would force both 1 and 2 in the central box to be in r5c5. This allowed me to get r5c4/5/6 far earlier in the puzzle than Simon did, which helped a great deal with other deductions... and also allowed me to color in 4-5 pairs alongside the 6-7-8-9 set Simon colored here.

[@simpleman4251]

Boy, I sure followed a different path at the start. The 1 and 2 in box 7 were among the first digits I actually placed in the grid!

[@100greggyt]

Ignorance is bliss. I correctly solved the puzzle my first go around without realizing there could be a four in column 2 on the arrow. I'm solving again with that knowledge and am pretty stumped. Super fun puzzle though!

[@AichoOshiro]

19:10 And we're off and running! ... Well, not really running, I'd say more trotting. 😂

[@tricia1072012]

Loved that too. 😂

[@brodyhyre4568]

Does anyone know where they get their puzzles from? A lot of times they say a puzzle was submitted, but where would someone submit a puzzle to?

[@peterhackett3815]

If you look on the community tab on their youtube page and scroll back you can find a post on how to submit a puzzle to cracking the cryptic. Other than that they use puzzles from well known setters or puzzles recommended to them from the cracking the cryptic discord server

[@RoderickEtheria]

This only took me 33:56, but I did use quite a bit of coloring.

[@MichaelGreen831]

I'm excited! He hasn't started the puzzle yet (paused) and in 4 minutes I've got 12 digits placed. Not sure where I'll go next, but already shaping up to be a fun puzzle. DOH! Nevermind. Still fun, but stupd brain.

[@indigorune]

just under 35 minutes! I think I could have been faster if I hadn't spent so much time picking which colors to use. :D I chose to start by coloring the digits 1-5. after i completed all of those, i removed their coloring and used coloring on the 6789 squares. i broke into the puzzle by deducing that r6c1 couldn't be 1 or 2, because 1 and 2 must be in r4c2 and in r5c3/r6c3 (you can never have a 1 or 2 in r4c7/r5c7), therefore you cannot put another 1 or 2 in box 4. this means 1 must go in r7c1 and r6c1 must be a 3, making the arrow add to 8 and giving r8c1 as 4. simon kind of did this, but he added a bunch of extra steps in between those deductions.

[@gregs2284]

It feels like there's a nice short logical solution path hiding in Simon's "If this was a 1" deductions just trying to break free. I think should have looked at where you had pairs on arrows to see where you could eliminate those digits because they see the alternate sides of the pair in cloned cells. Like in the bottom right arrow you had two 12 pairs so you knew there were two cloned 1s and two cloned 2s. So you could eliminate 1 and 2 from most of the central box because they all saw both 1 and 2 somewhere. If the same trick would work on the left hand side of the puzzle you could have gotten the 1 in the centre pretty much from the start.

[@tetsi0815]

If Simon did more computer generated puzzles of medium difficulty he would have spotted that whole 12-pair thing all over the puzzle 5 minutes earlier. At least the puzzle generator I used loved to generate those type of chains. :-)

[@sineaddoyle9428]

I've been holding my breath waiting for him to realize the center digit is a 1 for 16 minutes. This is the first time I ever noticed something before Simon it's the only thing I can focus on

[@josmulder3060]

Just under an hour, so proud :-)

[@GSBrofly]

Same here

[@thesundancekid123]

We're off and trotting! :D