It's Critical to Remember what your Colouring Means!

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Normal sudoku rules apply. A clue outside the grid gives the sum of all cells that contain a digit equal to the distance of that cell from that clue in the row or column. For example, a 3 in Row 3, Column 2 would count towards the 15 clue in column 2, and any other number would not. On a green line, adjacent digits differ by at least 5.
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Hi! We're Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe, two of the UK's most enthusiastic puzzle solvers. We have both represented the UK at the World Sudoku Championships and the World Puzzle Championships. We're also "cryptic crossword" aficionados. Mark is the twelve-time winner of The Times crossword championship and twice Senior World Champion in Sudoku, and Simon is the former record holder for most consecutive correct solutions to The Listener crossword. We hope we can help your puzzle solving while also introducing you to some of the world's best puzzles.
Thank you for watching!
Simon and Mark
▶ Contents ◀
0:00 Theme Music & News around the channel
2:28 Rules of today’s puzzle
3:50 Start Of Solve - Let's Get Cracking!

[@SonicGamesPlayer]

Thank you so much for the feature, Mark, and huge thanks to you and Simon for the birthday wishes! This was probably one of the best birthdays I've had, and seeing my puzzle here just made it even better :D Loved the solve! You did a fantastic job here finding all the intended steps and making the use of all the logic. I will admit, it took me some time to realize that The Secret™️ is relevant to the Hit Points constraint (much much longer than you!), so hats off just for that! On top of that, I am seriously impressed by your ability to recover from mistakes. The fact that you were able to figure out what went wrong and when it went wrong so quickly is fascinating. It's also really interesting how you resolved 12 vs 3 in the horizontal clues - I've never even considered that way, and in my opinion it's absolutely fair and not hideous at all. -Black_Doom

[@sampathkumar-ej7xl]

A great new idea for a constraint. The solve path was nice once the breakin happened.

[@brandonjosey-wq2wv]

I'm always shocked when I spot something that Mark and Simon miss. The 1-2 center pencil mark in r5C8 should have immediately let him know that the missing 3 sum in the row could not come from a 1-2 pair in the row. It had to be a 3 in column 3. He worked it out, but in a much more sophisticated manner... naturally.

[@RecreationalCynic]

That's a good catch. When I solved it I didn't see that. Instead I realized that if it was 1+2, the 2 would be on the whisper and there wouldn't be another low digit that would have worked in r4c3 (1 and 2 in the box, 4 is in the row, and 3 would have gone on a different hit-point row). It's like the opposite of Occam's razor: the simplest solution is often -the best- impossible to see even though it's staring you right in the face. Edit: and I just resumed the video at the part Mark figured it out

[@navster100]

I usually see simple things they don't but they always find the complex parts that I could never figure out

[@biaberg3448]

@@navster100Just so!

[@sorellla]

I find incredible how quickly Mark grasps some concepts that even after he explains it takes me some time to convince myself that they are true. Also how easy it is for him to figure out where he made a mistake!

[@debrawilden1971]

If I'm understanding the rules, not having tried the solve or watched it, only the intro, I think they could have been worded to be more clear.

[@laurv8370]

Ha! I stopped the video and thought for 10 minutes, then wanted to comment that you got lucky with that 3 in row 5, but then decided to watch further before commenting. I was so sure that, if you can solve it, than this puzzle has two solutions. 😃. I am so proud of myself right now 💪

[@AustinOnSugar]

What a speedy recovery, Mark! Really gunned for the trouble spot. Would've taken me generations to find where i messed up. With its minimalism and creative break this truly is the Ultimate Puzzle!

[@Scojo486]

Happy Birthday Black_Doom, and congrats on having this excellent puzzle featured! I've been crediting Walker for the introduction to the "Hit Points" ruleset, as his GAPP a couple months ago was the first I'd seen it used, and was what inspired the setting prompt for that week. I don't know enough about the pencil puzzle world to know if Walker invented the genre or just showcased it, but it's proven to be a really great addition to the sudoku variant catalogue!

[@SonicGamesPlayer]

Thank you for the birthday wishes! I too hope this constraint becomes more common eventually, very fun to work with

[@jasono8783]

45:12 for me!! That was a incredibly difficult break-in, then even after that a truly fascinating puzzle. Lovely! Always enjoy a new ruleset.

[@kayleighlehrman9566]

Seeing three rows ans three columns adding to fifteen, my mind immediately went to the 3x3 magic square. Which was the focus of a puzzle Mark did not too long ago.

[@eddieharwood7788]

I don't think that I'd ever have spotted that break in. So I watched the first little bit of Mark until his first realisation. After that it went quite smoothly - what a great puzzle.

[@awebmate]

You don't need to spot it, column 2 and 8 does it. Can't have 4 or 5, and can't have 1-2-3, as that puts 4 with a 9 on the whisper and removes 9 as the 4th digit in the 15-sum.

[@MattYDdraig]

14:49 Very interesting puzzle. The break-in took a moment to spot, but from there on the internal self-referencing took care of everything in an elegant and straightforward manner.

[@orsonzedd]

Shadow the Hedgehog reference?

[@trashianna]

I'm happy I'm not the only one who noticed that

[@orsonzedd]

@@trashianna I'd have called it by its name if the name wasn't so forgettable that I, a Sonic fan who played the damn game, can't remember it without looking it up.

[@SonicGamesPlayer]

Indeed! I really like Sonic the Hedgehog series, and while I am not a fan of the game in question, I just figured I wanted a username that is connected to that universe (I picked my username a long time ago though!)

[@mememcqueen5052]

OH The puzzle's by Black Doom! That's awesome

[@penningmeestercgkdelft9159]

From 17:27 onward, the (very) light blue colouring is hardly visible for colourblind people... Yet it was a joy to watch this solve!

[@Paolo_De_Leva]

Well designed minimalistic construction and interesting ruleset. Masterful and insightful solve by Mark. 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 I was not able to see the 1-9 extra regions formed by the "counting" cells, but surprisingly this puzzle was relatively easy for me to solve.

[@Paolo_De_Leva]

Mark should have got rid of *both* yellow and purple @17:10

[@titusadduxas]

58:20 - Lovely puzzle with a gorgeous break in.

[@grahamania]

00:27:51 for me. Great puzzle. Loved the Hit Point rule! Kind comment.

[@piarittersporn]

Great puzzle. It took me a while to unterstand the rule completely. Watching Mark for some minutes was very helpful finally.

[@chris5619]

I brute forced my way into the break-in, not even thinking of the math/SET part of it at all until watching Mark's solve. I made an aide memoir of alllll of the possibilities, and was actually still able to solve it relatively easily. The whisper restrictions limited the line possibilities pretty quickly. And then, unbeknownst to me, the fact that we had the set logic working as well, really limited each additional possibility.

[@soremekun]

This was my thinking as well as Mark explained the rules.

[@chocolateboy300]

I finished in 34 minutes. This one was so fun to solve. It's surprisingly straightforward and quite easy to understand once you start. I really enjoyed this one. Great Puzzle!

[@ericpraline1302]

That was very clever of Mark, I didn't spot that 45 trick at all.

[@Bweigelt13]

25:12 for me because I made the same mistake as mark and ended up at the same spot with the 1 2 3 in the wrong place and had to do a quick revaluation.

[@_-_-Sipita-_-_]

14:17 for me. interesting rules.

[@BotchFTW]

r5 c1-2 could have been 1&2, the yellow coloring was preventing r4/5 c2 from being 4&5 for the 15 clue in column 2, it was not preventing r5 c2 from being a 2 for the 15 clue in row 5, same for box 7 with r8c2

[@RichSmith77]

He realises and rolls it back at around 16:00.

[@jinkela7295]

20:08 if row 5 uses 1 2 5 and 7 to make the 15 total, it breaks the r5c8 cell

[@LednacekZ]

20:08 today. You either get the 3x15 or you dont. the rest is just manual labour.

[@Gonzalo_Garcia_]

13:11 for me. What a fantastic break-in!! Awesome puzzle!

[@ianoz1]

4 attempts before I realised I hadn't broken the puzzle when going vertical to horizontal... the 2 in row 2 DOESN"T count towards the row 2 total. D'oh!

[@ThePolymathlete]

24:43 fun puzzle

[@gabrieljohnson7997]

I could not get a handle on this ruleset at all.

[@stevesebzda570]

This is a mystery to me (what Mark's thinking or knowing) @ 11:14 : "That can't be a 4, because there's a 4 already in there," Mark approximately said. The mystery is, that's only because Mark looked at the columns 1st. If the rows he looked at 1st, the 4 would be 90° to the left of that "4" he's got in there. Can't the whole thing be turned 90° to the left if looked at the rows 1st? I'm stumped. Good seeing all that though, Mark. But why not 90° to the left? Thanks

[@TurquoizeGoldscraper]

23:44 for me.

[@dabozz88]

I don’t understand why the 2 in r2c5 didn’t count towards the total for the row. The 6 in r2c6 and the 9 in r2c9 counted. I kept getting stuck and I don’t think the rules were explained clearly enough.

[@unoriginalchannel6312]

“Shadow, how can the Ultimate Lifeform be this pitiful at Sudoku?” I recently 100%’d Shadow The Hedgehog and ever since I’ve found Black Doom or Doom’s Eye in this case in the most random places, never expected to see him in a Sudoku thumbnail, but imagining Black Doom creating Sudoku’s for Shadow to solve is hilarious to think about

[@skiesofarcadia4885]

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing

[@nates9514]

13:09 for me

[@emilywilliams3237]

That was very interesting - and I enjoyed your solve, Mark. I imagine I could eventually have discovered the neat thing with the way the digits had to be distributed among the 15s, but I'm not sure. Thanks, as always, for the daily string of wonderful, fascinating videos.

[@anaayoung9142]

Thanks to your brief explanation in the start I was able to understand the puzzle and try myself! The thumbanail reminds me of a flower that we have here in home: stapelia grandiflora, or startfish flower. She had always scared me! 😅

[@theredstoneengineer6934]

27:29 for me

[@DrewR2010]

Doom's Eye is a third eye so you need a very vivid imagination for these hard puzzles.

[@veggiet2009]

I really don't understand the initial break-in. I can see that the center column "could have" a 4 and 5 contributing to it's 15 and i see that column 2 can't have a 4 or 5... But i don't know why the middle column "must" have 4 5... It seems like a leap in logic.

[@brandonjosey-wq2wv]

The other columns were prevented from having either a 4 or 5 by the German Whisper logic. A 5 can never be on one, and both of the 4's would have required two 9's to be in the box.

[@tessabrisac7423]

That’ because every digit must be used once and only once in the 3 totals of 15 in the columns. But neither 4 nor 5 can be used in column 2 or 8, because they would be on one of the green lines, 5 can never be at all, and 4 would fall in the middle of a line and need a 9 on each side, in the same box.

[@kibels894]

Because the total of all digits is 45, so to make 15 three times you must use each digit once in the marked rows and once in the marked columns with these rules

[@frankjiang1857]

Finished in 27:31. The ruleset was very interesting in that it limited the break-in by a lot. So, it wasn't the hardest to solve once you understood the ruleset. Fun puzzle!

[@RoderickEtheria]

Once you understand the rules, this puzzle is not that difficult. 29:53 time for me.

[@GilWright]

Not a fan of the monthly puzzle being non-sudoku. I am guessing others will enjoy it but personally I don't enjoy snake puzzles even when they are sudoku :-)

[@Paolo_De_Leva]

Me neither. 🫤👎

[@Pritchie45]

33 minutes

[@CauchyIntegralFormula]

15m59s. I usually have some trouble with hit point rules, but the maximality of the horizontal and vertical clues really helped here

[@Baritocity]

So any sudoku with this rule is constrained by sets or subsets of 1-9. Wow.