Was This Sudoku Made As A Joke!!?

[@aronlide]

Hi, Simon! I only published this yesterday, so I was surprised to see it here so fast without me recommending it. Thanks a lot for featuring it and for your kind words! I haven't watched the solve yet, but I do hope that it made your day a little bit better. :) Oh, and to answer your question in the title: It was made as a challenge to myself to see if I could make a slow thermo puzzle with only straight thermometers. I had a similar thought when I set Raw Spaghetti. :)

[@Paolo_De_Leva]

Hi, thanks for this very fun and well designed puzzle. I believe that pencilmarking the thermometers with *min/max* values is quite useful in this case to understand the constraints you imposed.

[@davidrattner9]

Another beauty from you! Much respect for how you constantly set!! Wishing you a joyous happy fulfilling 2024...along with more phenomenal puzzles from you. 🙂

[@martysears]

outstanding, and so elegant! Crazy that that solves with such a random-looking solution, from such a simple and organised starting grid. Thoroughly deserved feature

[@aronlide]

Thank you all, I really appreciate it :)

[@etienneschramm83]

That was a fantastic puzzle! Not too difficult, with a wonderful flow. Congratulations.

[@nathaliea_girl4616]

It speaks worlds about Simon as a person that his car was towed and his kitchen flooded, but he still records 2 videos for us to watch. Thank you very much Simon, I hope things get better soon! Love your vids, thanks for getting me into variant sudokus

[@benphelan88]

Music nerd here. A kalimba is an African thumb piano. If you Google it, you will recognize what Aspartagcus is going for with this construction. Just gorgeous.

[@biaberg3448]

I googled kalimba and can see that the thermos look like a kalimba.

[@thescrewfly]

Yep! Thumb pianos of various designs have many names in different parts of Africa, such as mbira, sanza and likembe. Easy to play, difficult to master.

[@SomethingWellesian]

Haha another music nerd here and my daughter used to fall asleep to kalimba music, but I didn’t even look at the title before I did the puzzle🙃

[@kevinbrownsword9558]

Not a music nerd but a father of a 3 year old, so I know the Kalimba from Moon and Me.

[@LithmusEarth]

I hope you get more upvotes.

[@bjslater4199]

I love that Simon looks at a 34 pencil-mark followed by a 2 on the thermo and then moves somewhere else.

[@studgerbil9081]

this was a fairly approachable puzzle, and that is Kryptonite for Simon.

[@andremouss2536]

He falls inti that kind of blindpots all the time : he is sooo eager to pursue some wild quest that when he makes some progress he never tidies up looses ends an leaves either blatant impossibilities or trivial deductions unsettled.

[@CrankyOtter]

Classic. Also “this cell can only be 4 or 6”, solves for 4 looking at that cell & looks to a 45 pair to justify removing 4 as an option. Classic Simon.

[@sirgeremiah]

Simon misses so many things I think are simple and obvious, then goes and solves something that warps my mind, without using paper and pencil where I need an entire whiteboard.

[@kellwillsen]

I'm an avid pencil-marker, so I compromised by putting the highest and lowest possible digits on the thermomenters, and reading '38' as 'from 3 to 8'. The narrowing in was a thing of beauty. Thank you, Aspartageus -- and CtC for showcasing this lovely puzzle.

[@sirgeremiah]

When Sven added the ability to compress pencil marks (1-9, rather than 123456789), it made my life on this kind of puzzle so much easier. I pencil-marked the fool outta those thermos.

[@user-pp5gm2lg5e]

Wait how do you do that?

[@LorisLaboratory]

I'm sorry you've had a rough day Simon, I hope it improves and thank you for still taking your time to improve ours with these vids 🥰 Looking forward to watching this puzzle, and tomorrow's stream! 😁

[@margaritashcheglova8670]

Normally I prefer watching the longer videos but this one is just hilarious, couldn't miss it! Thanks!

[@BrentHurst13]

Finished in 60:04, which I'm incredibly happy about because this is my first CTC sudoku that I've been able to solve on my own. When I first started watching CTC, I would try to start the puzzles, and even with taking some hints from the videos I never could get very far, so I decided it was better to just enjoy the logic of Simon and Mark solving, and that's what I've done for the past year or two. But Simon said this was 2/5 stars for difficulty, and I thought I could see the break-in, so I attempted it, and I'm thrilled I did. I feel like a little kid that's just learned how to ride a bike. Thanks to Simon and Mark for teaching sudoku skills in such a great way and for making enjoyable logic videos that so many of us look forward to regularly, but especially during rough days. And thanks especially to Simon today of all days for putting out this video even though you were having such a rough day yourself. I hope things improve for you. Thanks to Aspartageus for setting such a beautiful yet approachable puzzle. (Also, I'm from the US, but I found today that my internal monologue when solving sudoku definitely has a British accent and sounds a lot like Simon haha.)

[@aronlide]

Congratulations and well done! Glad you liked it! :)

[@zirco77]

Can you imagine... I'm not even an English speaker and half my internal monologue when solving is British english! and congrats for solving it on your own!

[@Bunchofrandomsymbols]

If you were able to solve this one you should be able to solve one Simon did earlier in December that was compromised of 25 codependent puzzles. I couldn’t find the break in for this one but the other one I was able to solve myself (took me a few hours but I solved it without help)

[@BrentHurst13]

@@Bunchofrandomsymbols Oh awesome. Scanning back through the past month of videos, I can't tell which one you mean. What's the title?

[@Chalky2023]

Talking about the comedy thermos without mentioning the 1,1,1,2,2,2,3 thermo? shame simon, shame!

[@sirgeremiah]

"...some ludicrous ability to be 2" is just one of the many comments that made me smile watching this.

[@Sasha-1313]

Thhhhherrrrrmmmmmooooss! Huzzah! Sorry about your beastly day, Simon. I admire your fortitude in posting two videos despite the universe having it in for you.

[@13vatra]

You shouldn't feel obligated to put out videos when you have real life problems to worry about. We understand that sometimes life happens and you need to take a day. We'll survive a day without a puzzle.

[@LardoCulo]

Yikes…. Quite a phallic thumbnail today 🥴

[@OverkillSD]

New from CTC, the "Bad Thermo" line of merch!

[@emilywilliams3237]

I watched this video several days ago, somehow did not leave a comment. I loved it, and I loved the puzzle, too! I solved it before watching the video. Thanks, Aspartageus!

[@aronlide]

Thanks, Emily. Your comment was not for naught. :)

[@randomsammieable]

I enjoyed your video as always today. I saw the 234 ruling each other out in box 6 but second guessed myself when you moved past it the first time Great puzzle, great solve. 😊

[@grahamania]

00:17:36 for me. I went a bit Goodliffey with the pencil marking :) Loved the puzzle! Kind Comment.

[@Samutroll]

I do heavily use pencil marks when solving sudokus. The first thing I do when I start is to put 123456798 in every cell and then I work my way down the sudoku deleting the numbers that cannot be there.

[@theskyisteal8346]

30:06 Probably the best time I've ever achieved in comparison to video length. This was a very fun puzzle with some really fun logical deductions somewhat reminiscent of some of the circle puzzles I've played. (Goodliffing helped a lot)

[@josephdlist]

What a wonderful video. I took a double take on your spicy thumbnail before I realized it’s a thermo. lol

[@michaelmatter1222]

Slow and comedic thermos? This puzzle must be the Joe Pera of sudokus 🙂

[@alanclarke4646]

20:08 for me. First time I ever did bettered Simon, and under HALF his time!! 😁😁😁😁

[@jasono8783]

17:20 for me! Lovely puzzle, coloring + max/min pencilmarks on the sudoku made this one go by like a breeze.

[@mrrobotman5299]

I think the most ridiculous part of this is that there is a 3 on the tip of a 7 cell thermo

[@MadMetalMacho]

Way way easier if you just pencilmark every thermocell completely!

[@praematura]

Sorry to hear about your day, Simon, I hope things are going better! I surprised myself by not pencilmarking this one too much (felt it would confuse me more than it helped), and I think I made a wise choice, as I completed it in just 16:02. Really amazing puzzle, props to Aspartagcus!

[@jonhansen9622]

Ooooh this looks like another one to try out before watching!

[@OverkillSD]

We love you Simon! 16:22 was my solve time. What an interesting puzzle, even if a little farther on the tedious side than I would have liked. I pencilmarked the thermo cells with the min/max values instead of the full range and it helped a ton.

[@Paolo_De_Leva]

That's the best notation in this case. Simon's way was quite inefficient.

[@serenely]

I did the same

[@Raven-Creations]

This was fun. I also looked at 1s and 9s, but then once 2s and 8s dried up, I went to town pencil-marking. Rather than Goodliffe everything, I just mark the lowest and highest possible value in each thermo cell. This immediately revealed several easy wins, placing more 2s and 8s as well as some other digits. Once they were fed up and down the thermos, other wins were possible. Before long, I was down to just two choices per cell, so switched to normal pencil-marking to finish off. @ 9:35 - "nine, nine, nine" - I would have loved it if Alexa had rung the emergency services for you. @ 22:20 - "3, 3, 2 would work" - no it wouldn't. Why pencil-mark if you don't use them? You've got 2s pencil-marked in R6 in box 6. @ 31:50 - "This cell is 5, 4, or 2" - it can't be 2 any more. Once you placed 2 in box 7, that option went away. Although your method was slower, I quite liked it compared to my more mechanical solve.

[@frankjiang1857]

Finished in 19:22. Straightforward puzzle. Enjoyable!

[@Jindychick]

I was 19:33 and thought so too. I haven't watched the video, but guessing Simon did an overcomplication somewhere while trying to explain logic. Happy New Year all CTC family x

[@vanciervancier]

The only sudoku on this channel I could see myself building. However Aspartagcus missed a golden opportunity to put a 9 on the bulb of the thermometer in box 4! Aesthetically it still would have fit within the design of the sudoku to have a 3 cell thermometer all with value 9! Then to really make the ludicrous joke stick, in box 8 have a thermometer that's just a bulb (value 4), would that be allowed?

[@FelipeFrotaBass]

loved this one! took me 209 minutes, that 5 on box 3 got me stucked for so long! you got it so quickly that I didn't even understand how you saw it haha

[@martinyyt]

Very enjoyable puzzle. Took me 65:34 on my second attempt. First attempt crashed at ~45:00 probably due to misinterpreting the non-limitations of slow thermos.

[@zirco77]

Late night solve here... sooooo enjoyable and just the right difficulty for me at this time. Very nice brain twister when you are used to "normal" thermos. Thanks @aronlide for this puzzle! And Simon, I hope the kitchen is "dry" by now.

[@immicz]

If we left-right mirror the puzzle it would be a lot harder. We are more familiar to 1-9 from left to right than the other way round.

[@r0bbiegill]

I really enjoyed this puzzle, and it’s probably the first I’ve ever done faster than Simon. My strategy was to first thoroughly mark each cell and work with the 1s, 9s, 8s, 2s. After each deduction, I’d methodically work up and down each slermo.

[@santisis]

Same here, I'm generally not fast and I suck at scanning, but I've managed to finished much faster than Simon. I suppose that the key was the strategy.

[@anaayoung9142]

What a beautiful puzzle. The start was slow, but super interesting. I am happy that I try it and did it! Thanks for the solve! 🤗

[@chocolateboy300]

I finished in 71 minutes. I really liked the break-in for this puzzle. Utilizing max/min in the center box was really nice to spot. I couldn't help myself and had to pencil mark the thermos, although only the minimums. It's really easy to mess up with this slow thermos. I mismarked r8c3 at least three separate times. Great Puzzle!

[@xxgn]

Took me 75:23 . Usually a CtC video that's this long means I'll get stuck, but this puzzle looked incredibly friendly, so I decided to try it. It was slow going, but I didn't encounter many sticking points. Partly, this was because this puzzle was very amenable to the use of pencil marks as a means to get un-stuck. An excellent experience!

[@Aliessil]

Finished in 33:57 using centre pencil marks as ranges (had to keep reminding myself!!). Loved the puzzle, was a lot of fun 🙂

[@stephenvale2624]

Oh my! I actually got many numbers before Simon!!! First time EVER! I think maybe Simon has increased my IQ by a few points over the past year.

[@eddieharwood7788]

Another great puzzle and I managed to do it in around the hour. Many thanks.

[@whatisnikkidoing]

i think this might be the first puzzle featured on CTC that i've actually been able to solve on my own and it was so fun!! most of them i don't even attempt but this one looked interesting without looking too intimidating. i'm glad i tried it!

[@alistairkeppler2225]

27 min. Spent 5 minutes trying to workout how to get a 9 and 1 in box 5. I then had a brain freeze as I spent another 10 minutes thinking I had broken the puzzle as there was no where to place a 2 (in box 5). Very cool puzzle. Felt strange to see high numbers so low and low numbers so high on a thermo.

[@scdearden311]

Please say that thumbnail isn’t AI. You guys are so excellent about crediting and giving personality to hand-set puzzles, and the thought of you using stolen art in that way is really disheartening from one of my favorite KZbinrs.

[@markp7262]

32:50 finish. A fun puzzle, as long as you don't forget the slow rule. Excellent!

[@GreatUSTreasureHunt]

The British: "We've got a flood in the kitchen. Bit of a disaster. Right, let's do a sudoku."

[@juhaloukaja5078]

28:59. Got an 8 on a thermo early in but failed to recognize that that eliminates everything but 8 and 9 in subsequent thermo cells :facepalm: well, managed to solve it, still.

[@ChrisWCorp]

I'm not sure how to officially get my birthday into the videos, but it's my birthday today and this was a very nice sudoku today. Thank you for these videos every day for the past few years. It's sparked my (any others I'm sure) interest again in sudoku and puzzles. Keep up the amazing work!

[@GaliFreyan]

Happy birthday 🎉

[@alanclarke4646]

Many Happy Returns

[@sh22real]

Very interesting puzzle, props

[@R.a.t.t.y]

I am really sorry to hear about your flood. I wouldn’t want it to spoil your recording. Would it help if I sent you a snorkel?

[@Coyotek4]

24:41 ... I'll admit to going a little mental during the solve Nice puzzle!

[@dangrene617]

Amazing puzzle! Looks daunting, but just taking it step by step and pencil-marking heavily left it rather approachable. 13:05 solve time.

[@st0rmforce]

I love puzzles like this, that look like they couldn't possibly have enough information to solve. But they do

[@philipmetcalfe4736]

fantastic!!...I like thermos and the new feature that the numbers can repeat....wicked

[@dingodonkey]

Got this one in 37:43, in fits and spurts. I'd stumble on a fruitful line of inquiry and knock out a bunch of cells, then stare a while until I stumbled on the next one. A few times I forgot to back-propagate after filling in a digit (oops). Fun gimmick, I like it a lot!

[@darthrainbows]

Wow! I crushed Simon's time; that never happens. Solved in 21:14.

[@acantilado]

I loved The Case of the Golden Idol - very similar in feel to The Return of the Obra Dinn

[@lassepartanen7300]

27:18 while being a 'Drunken Monkey'. I'm always scared when Simon do a video, but I managed

[@fulltimeslackerii8229]

I’m surprised this wasn’t a mark video.

[@mahuhude]

Please let Mark solve it as well. I’m looking forward to see how he approaches it.

[@dominikw9617]

What is your Gym Routine? 😊 Love the Videos, they are so calming and Wholesome

It's a very nice one. It benefits from nonstandard markup, where you'd just put a digits that's lowest+highest it can be, instead of carefully marking every possibility. That makes the logic really obvious without excessive markup.

[@srwapo]

21:45, some neat jumps in logic, seeing how the various thermos affect each other. Super enjoyed doing a LOT of pencil marking.

[@nilsp9426]

16:22 for me, in which at first I tried regular thermo and had to read the rules again :D

[@Xiuhtec]

Solved in 34:26, really fun puzzle! Definitely worth liberally pencil marking for me, but nothing really tripped me up too badly.

[@brianarsuaga5008]

Sometimes the star rating on these tricks me. This felt MUCH harder than 2 stars to me, but maybe only because slow thermos are so new to me?

[@derekkrull3383]

Yeah if you're more used to regular thermos it requires a lot of second guessing.

[@AndreAy1975]

Solved it without any help from the video.

[@Scott2148]

slow and methodical - I got it. I loved this one.

[@sanctionbuster]

44:39. Took a while to get going, but I pencil Marked the heck out of it and just kept chipping away.

[@Pacca64]

Watched a video about a yume nikki song called 'kalimba' and shortly afterwards youtube reccomended me this video! I see what you did there youtube algorithm X3 Little did it know, I was in the mood for a sudoku solve!

[@nancieerhard420]

Lovely! Thank you for your good wishes. I enjoyed this.

[@EmonEconomist]

Finished in 19:56, so I feel like I did alright!

[@ravenous478]

The Case of the Golden Idol would be a very similar and I'm sure equally fun game for you guys to play after Chants. I actually ended up playing through it after beating Chants to scratch the puzzly/detective itch.

[@Tepalus]

22:19 for me :) That was interesting. lol

[@gregorysantos7624]

Extraordinarily fun solve! (29:19)

[@ryanrinaldo9147]

I used center pencil marks on the thermos to show the a range and got the minimum and maximum on each cell on thermos. It was a little neater than a full pencil mark and worked quite well

[@alanclarke4646]

That sounds a really good way of doing it. Hope you don't mind if I borrow it for future solves?

[@bergnijlpaard]

Really enjoyed this

[@jonbrowne]

Simply fabulous!

[@stellasdoesstuff]

Took me 34:14. I always enjoy thermos, so this was quite fun for me to complete!

[@ommyotter4064]

I'm dreadful at sudoku, so I ended up messing this puzzle up twice before I got it on my third try, but I did it!

[@SomethingWellesian]

28:25 for me-first time beating Simon’s time! (Though I’ve generally had a pretty good day. Hope yours picks up, Simon.)

[@agoristtaxadvice]

Slow Thermos are so weird. An excellent puzzle, and an excellent solve Simon

[@michaellautermilch9185]

I think Simon is better on puzzles that are extremely difficult. This is one of the rate ones a lot of people could do faster. (Of course, Simon goes a lot slower in order to explain his logic at every step, so there's that to consider.)

[@robynrox]

This is the first one I've ever solved quicker than you, Simon - suggest you adopt the Goodliffeing technique 😂 26:15 for me!

[@richardglover314]

Wow what a crazy lovely puzzle. And what appealed to me the most was, I somehow knew I could do it. I just need to watch Simon's solve to see how it should have been done.

[@longwaytotipperary]

That was fun!😄

[@piarittersporn]

What a brilliant puzzle.

[@j.9481]

36 minutes for me. what an incredible flow of logic!! I kept gasping in delight at the twists and turns. :-)

[@fritzmonger1]

Surprised there was no novelty 999 thermo in columns 2-4 to troll Simon further

[@AWanderingSwordsman]

27:28 for me. Pretty fun one.

[@specialkalberta]

I solved this although only on the third time. Unlike Simon, my mistakes are not rare and (also unlike Simon) I can't figure out where and when I made them to be able to rewind when the mistake happens, so I have to start over.

[@chuckmanion1128]

22:35 I love thermometer puzzles. This was a fun one. I loved being able to follow the logic as it flowed up and down the thermometers.

[@drawsgaming7094]

20:52 Smooth sailing.

[@michaelhoffman2011]

Pretty fun puzzle. started playing a game of "which number next" but took me 23 minutes.

[@Rach881101]

21:15 for me. Nice puzzle!

[@margaritashcheglova8670]

Kalimba + Thermometer = Thereminvox actually, a Thereminvox would be a reversed Thermo, numbers increasing as they approach the "bulb" (the "antenna") * waiting for someone to set a Theremin sudoku puzzle *

[@chickendoodle32]

48:54 Damn fun puzzle!

[@stuartjoynson9908]

I had to try this one and I was very surprised that I solved it in around the same time as Simon. That’s never happened before!It’s my favourite puzzle for a long time.

[@aronlide]

Thanks!

[@kieranharwood7186]

Took me about an hour... Had the 1,2,7,8,9 in the center box and the long thermo as a 3/4, 4/5, 5/6 triple and the top left corner being a 3/6, so there were two possibilities and it took ages of poking around other parts to finally force it into one possibility. Despite pencilling along all the thermos to start, after the initial flurry, most of my numbers arose outside the thermos (like the 9 in box 4, the 1 in boxes 6 and 9, a bunch of 2s).

[@satibel]

I did it by using negative marking, i.e. marking what it can't be, that worked quite well, though that was my first sudoku in years, so took me 130min. Also using the colors for marking works quite well.