How To Solve a Masyu Puzzle

This is a video about solving masyu puzzles. This one comes from this year's US Puzzle Championship, and it was the third puzzle! It was designed by Nikoli for the competition.
Link to puzzle: wpc.puzzles.com...
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Intro song: Tekvision - Mycoplasma
Intro template: /SDJGRedstoneDJ
FLEB is a family friendly channel devoted to teaching people about the puzzle world, solving techniques, and all the different ways to have fun with puzzles!

[@donnypassary5798]

I'm so glad you did a video on Masyu. This is my favourite type of puzzle so far, always solve it first in every USPC. Hope you'll tackle more other type like kakuro or slitherlink.

[@FLEBpuzzles]

I think I will solve some of those, eventually! Thank you for watching, Donny!

[@jowitakhider3691]

I get such great satisfaction from the words ‘And there you have it!’ Always makes my day, I love your videos!

[@FLEBpuzzles]

Thank you very much Jowita! It always makes me happy to read comments like yours!

[@jowitakhider3691]

Glad to hear it 😊 keep up the great work

[@suppeops3730]

@@FLEBpuzzles why not like his comment then?

[@jdstearman]

Man, I LOVE these kind of puzzles! I'm going to try to find a whole book of Masyu puzzles!

[@adamtowne7089]

Thanks for sharing how to solve this kind of puzzle! I have an app on my phone that has several different kinds of logic puzzles, and this was one kind I didn't understand until you walked through an example. Thanks again!

[@petrescuework-difficultcas6581]

Fleb: "Yeah this has to go there, this has to turn here..." Me thinking: "Makes sense, maybe I will understand this kind of puzzle once and for all..." Fleb suddenly speeding up drawing "random" lines. Me: nope I'm out

[@Raptorialand]

and a little x goes there...

[@emschlef]

This is my favorite puzzle and video thus far, good job again Fleb!

[@charlotteriverr]

For some reason, these loop based puzzles are some of the most satisfying to me. Do you think you will be doing a video on Yajilin puzzles?

[@juliawhitmore3991]

Usually your videos fly way over my head (which I'm perfectly fine with) but puzzles like this one and Star Battle I actually understand, which is nice for a change. Feel free to keep logic-ing!

[@Oranges_Love]

I really like these Sudoku-esque puzzles. Nikoli made a bunch of games for the DS for each different type of puzzle like this. Watching this makes me want to try and find those old games.

[@hawk0485]

very satisfying, free logic is great for relaxatian, thank you

[@benchandler4298]

This reminds me of The Witness, a puzzle based video game I've been playing a lot recently. It has really wonderful puzzles, highly recommended.

[@etopowertwon]

It'll be great if you solve more Nikoli puzzles!

[@danz107]

krazydad also has online Masyu puzzles for free. I love these logic puzzles. Great ways to pass time when I'm not doing something else.

[@Morgiliath]

What's kinda hilarious is that I just started doing this type of puzzle, and then you make a video on it, I find it neat that we use similar methods to solving it, though it makes sense given the constraints of the puzzle.

[@marcelvdberg]

Amazing stuff! I had to watch it two times to understand it completely because you go really fast sometimes. You are obviously very experienced at this. Thanks for sharing!

[@FLEBpuzzles]

I'll try to slow down next time! I'm just trying to keep these videos under 20 minutes lol.

[@marcelvdberg]

No worries, not everybody is as fast as yourself :-)

[@katiekawaii]

Loving your channel

[@hikingpete]

The latest couple puzzles I've watched on your channel remind me of a selection from the collection by Simon Tatham. Uh. To be clear, he's got a computer program implementing them.

[@katarzynaw4664]

I really like that one because the rules are simple, yet require some working memory and practice to use them with logic. I would like to get with this type of puzzles some links with challenges for beginners and some harder ones as well ;) I've bought recently couple of books with japanese style logical puzzles and I'm preparing to use them at my work. Just love to find new ones to think about ;)

[@SimonClarkstone]

Katarzyna Wojowska I would recommend an app called Simon Tatham's Puzzles. (No relation) It's free and can randomly generate this type of puzzle as well as many others. It has adjustable difficulty but (I presume) doesn't produce a human-like puzzle.

[@katarzynaw4664]

Thanks, I really like the app and it will be helpful in my work also ;) I would also like some sites with printables if you know any ;)

[@bemfawkes3214]

I like it, never seen it before

[@mlfan5986]

I've actually played these before! I picked up a book of them, and this was easily my favorite in the book. I'm glad I have a name for them, now, so I can look them up!

[@FLEBpuzzles]

Interesting! Do you know what the book was called?

[@mlfan5986]

I meant that I found a book full of various puzzles, and this type of puzzle was my favorite. Sorry for the confusing original message. It was just a book I got from a half-price-books, nothing special. You know, great place to pick up puzzle books for cheap!

[@FLEBpuzzles]

Okay, cool. I'm always interested in finding out about new puzzle books and publishers, which is why I was asking!

[@mlfan5986]

It's currently at my house, and I'm in a dorm. If you wanted, I could get it to you by Friday.

[@user-ux9xw4kh5s]

MLfan do you watch Steven universe.

[@GretgorPooper]

This would be so awesome as a mobile game. Someone implement it! Come on! :D

[@MrDanielx1234]

Cool

[@brunomorsch6910]

Awesome!

[@andreemery4964]

At 6:13, why can't the line from the black dot go left. Edit: Ah, nevermind was looking at the black circle to the left of the one you were talking about.

[@salimabdi1366]

thank you for providing great content.

[@FLEBpuzzles]

Thank you for watching Salim!

[@stumbling]

This is one of the games in Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection: www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/ (called "Pearl" there)

[@FLEBpuzzles]

Huh! I've never seen this. I'll have to check it out.

[@bg6b7bft]

I think you'd enjoy the one called Galaxies.

[@dykam]

Down below are ports to mobile, been playing Magnets a lot to waste time commuting.

[@xyz39808]

This app has quickly become one of my favorites. We should try to get star battles on it too!

[@DiningTablePrintPlay]

I recognised the puzzle type (from the Android port of Simon Tatham's puzzles) from the KZbin preview - that's probably the single most-used app on my phone of all time. Do you - or anyone else reading these comments - know of any other similar apps (mobile or desktop)? Obviously the computer-generation has limitations, and once you've worked out all the techniques the generator knows to solve a particular class of puzzle, they become a little stale; a different generator might have different assumptions and therefore require more thinking!

[@dragonmaid1360]

This is very cool

[@Maggie365]

I love watching people solve logic puzzles, but would be totally lost myself!

[@KyosBlog]

Is there a typo in the last segment? How would row B have 12 horizontal lines? They probably meant 2

[@allardboumans4428]

Wow! I would like to try one myself

[@FLEBpuzzles]

I put a link to this puzzle in the description, and also Nikoli and GMPuzzles have a TON of them!

[@donnathelightningbug]

Hey Fleb, I have a puzzle for you! Every year, the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD create a christmas puzzle. They just released the 2017 version earlier today. It consists of 42 questions, riddles, and puzzles, and it's really hard. It's in Dutch, and a lot of the questions look like they require knowledge of Dutch, but I thought you might be interested anyway. Here's a link: www.aivd.nl/onderwerpen/informatiebeveiliging/het-nationaal-bureau-voor-verbindingsbeveiliging-nbv/aivd-kerstpuzzel-2017/opgaven-en-antwoordformulier-kerstpuzzel-2017 Click on 'opgaven' to go to the questions. 'antwoordformulier' has the answer form.

[@FLEBpuzzles]

Some people in my family speak Dutch, so I'll try to get them to translate this. Thank you for sharing!

[@npigwnl]

Cool, ik ga ook kijken ☺️

[@donnathelightningbug]

I think you might be able to do the tribute to Raymond Smullyan even with just google translate. And one of the other questions is "Create a sentence in which all letters that occur in it occur equally often, and at least five times." Those are the two I've been able to solve so far. Good luck!

[@skylerockspecial]

I can help translate too if you want :D

[@Disen454]

Fleb! You say the line you draw @3:00 must turn, which is true, but how did you know the topside of the line turned? Couldn't the bottom side just have easily turned left?

[@Hix108]

At that time, "it must turn" meant that there was no room for the top of the line to go in any other direction. It wasn't meant to be a reference to the rule about turning within one space of a white circle.

[@Disen454]

Ohhhh. Yeah, thanks that makes sense.

[@FLEBpuzzles]

Ah, I see. I used the phrase "it must turn" there for something other than the white circle rule, hence the confusion.

[@Iwoodlikethat]

The white dot 5 from the top and 6 left doesn't turn after one square out the left. Is the rule the line just has to turn eventually?

[@FLEBpuzzles]

It has to turn in one of the two squares next to it. In this case, it turn in the square to it's right, as it goes up.

[@Fl_GUI]

You might want to check out Simon Tatham's puzzle collection: www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/. It's a bunch of randomly generated puzzles , it includes this one. I play it on my phone all the time.

[@pussinbootsisawesome]

what the fuck why am i watching a man solve a puzzle ive never heard of and never will solve at 1 in the morning actually, i could be able to solve eaiser ones i should be sleeping why am i ranting oops um bye

[@happyghost8311]

Can you do one on slitherlink?

[@FLEBpuzzles]

That's not a bad idea!

[@I_leave_mean_comments]

Whats the deal with the letters?

[@SomeRandomFellow]

hey fleb i was considering getting into sudoku speedsolving. are there any resources you can link me to to get me started?

[@FLEBpuzzles]

I would check out the US Sudoku Championship. You can see it's divided into two parts: Classic and Variations. The classic puzzles will almost always stay the same, but you should start to understand how the variations change the rules. Link here: wpc.puzzles.com/ussq2017/ I would start by trying to solve through the different years of puzzles. GMPuzzles has a lot of sudoku variations, and there are a number of books that are good for practicing them: Mutant Sudoku and Sudoku Masterpieces come to mind.

[@SomeRandomFellow]

FLEB thanks a bunch! i really appreciate it!

[@bjornstadig3138]

sorry, but you didn't turn at 7:36

[@msqidrawsthings1625]

I really wanna do one of these but I'm afraid I'll rage too much lol

[@sing55out]

ハーイ、フレッブ。マシューパズル、初めて知りました。

[@Skadooshbag]

These are progressively getting harder lol

[@FLEBpuzzles]

We're getting further into the competition! At some point, they'll become multi-part videos, so I can introduce the puzzle type and then solve the variation.

[@catrosenight]

What does the A, B, C D mean?

[@FLEBpuzzles]

They're used for entering the answer. This is from the US Puzzle Championship, which is timed, and they need a way to automatically check answers.

[@catrosenight]

Thank you! And thank you for your videos! :)

[@dawge5999]

Lol it looks like a circuit board

[@quatreiquorizawa9885]

love the puzzle but hate the pencil noise. ='(

[@FLEBpuzzles]

Usually I use a different pencil, actually. I just couldn't find the right size lead!

[@thiesiet3507]

INVISIBLE FRIENDS WL HERE I COME

[@Draugo]

I thought this puzzle was wonderful untill I it included turns without any circles, especially since many of them would be solved with just a slightly different placement. For example moving the bottom row of filled circles down once would not change the logic at all (you already can't go down from those) and moving the bottom right filled circle to the corner while adding one more filled circle to the right side of fourth row from bottom edge eliminates multiple empty turns. This is of course only my opinion but as it is the puzzle doesn't look clean to me. Corners without either a circle forcing it or two perpendicular lines naturally meeting just looks wrong :D