Noughts & Crosses: That's Not Sudoku

** TODAY'S PUZZLE **
We've corrected the link! Here's where you can try Noughts and Crosses Somedoku by Blackjackfitz: app.crackingthecryptic.com/91...
Fill each cell with a digit from 1-9. For every row 'n' and column 'n' there are exactly 'n' unique digits. The remaining cells are filled with repeats. A digit in a circle indicates exactly how many circles contain that digit. Cells separated by an X sum to 10.
** JAMES BOND SUDOKU HUNT OUT **
Do you know your Drax from your Goldfinger? Make sure you've got your licence to kill renewed to enter our latest competition: a brand new James Bond-themed sudoku hunt!
Apart from the new James Bond sudoku hunt, there's:
- Simon's latest forays into the world of Islands Of Insight
- his solve of Region Geometry by Emre Kolotoğlu (3hr 36min long...!)
- Mark's solve of The Times Club Monthly cryptic crossword
/ crackingthecryptic
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ALSO on Amazon: Search for “SudokuPad”
▶ Contents Of This Video ◀
0:00 Theme music & puzzle intro
1:37 Happy Birthday apologies!!
2:15 James Bond sudoku hunt
2:28 Rules
3:38 Start of Solve: Let's Get Cracking
▶ Contact Us ◀
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email: [e-mail]
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(Please note to use our real names rather than 'Cracking The Cryptic'.)
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[@RichSmith77]

@19:50 Enters the fifth circled 5 "...which doesn't really do anything". You might come to regret that hasty statement.

[@qazwiz]

YEAH i logged it as 19-44 then deleted comment when i saw they already agreed with you by pinning your comment ... CONGRATULATIONS

[@irrotational]

The puzzle was a fascinating study into Simon's very clever mind and dogged determination, taking almost the entire puzzle as far as he possibly could, whilst not having/using the info that column 3 could only have one more digit (after the 5 and 6). A master class in persistence (and eventually re-checking your previous work/assumptions).

[@Dodrebur]

By the 30 minute mark, I was just repeating variations of "fill in the circled 6s, and look at column 3." lol Glad they saw your comment.

[@RichSmith77]

@@Dodrebur To be fair, I wasn't the first to comment on it. @MaierFlorian probably deserves the honour. His comment has more up votes and was made earlier. But, hey, I'll take it. 😁

[@ouwebrood497]

It's so fascinating how these things work. I tried to start the puzzle and didn't get further than what are the orange cells in the vid. I tried everything (I thought) and couldn't find a break in. Then Simon showed the break about the numbers in the circles in and I couldn't beleive I hadn't seen it myself. And after that I was shouting through the screen: count those sixes!

[@wfwhm3906]

Fascinating...I need five 5's and six 6's in circles. I've got all five 5's, so let's move on and never look back...

[@DanielsDartsblog]

LOL

[@Daymickey]

Quotes I’m adding to my out of context Simon quotes list: “That’s beautiful… and that’s my fault”

[@maht0x]

I didn't want to Like your comment as it already had 6

[@arsalanahmed3184]

Lmaooo the 6 sixes were giving me anxiety. Can't believe it took that long

[@hensen2338]

Once in a blue moon I see something on the screen for a looooong time that Simon just misses and I get really frustrated. Then I remember I wouldn't get anywhere near that point in the puzzle if he hadn't done the work and I calm down haha.

[@arsalanahmed3184]

@@hensen2338 🤣🤣😭

[@MaierFlorian]

Simon could have done this puzzle in like 20 minutes shorter time if he realized at the very beginning that he already has 5 circled 5s x)

[@MadsOcto7]

If you're an avid viewer of the channel you're used to such things 😝

[@ianmcvicar491]

I was screaming at the screen for half an hour over that one... 😅

[@bobh6728]

He keeps checking the 1,2,3,4 while 6 keeps shouting, “Hey, look at me”. 6 the outcast.

[@alvoi4379]

he was clearly doing some sort of challenge

[@williammorris7279]

Do a) the length of videos and b) the level of comments help the algorithms? A number of his habits lead me to ask this question. Not saying that is bad: we all have to make a living. I just would like to know.

[@angec9908]

You were killing me with row 2. It was set as soon as you placed the 5th circled 6 back near the beginning

[@sacredsock8031]

Simon forgetting what the circles mean for large portions is making me scream at the monitor

[@onijester56]

I was ranting to the stuffed animals I'm cuddled up with, "He's forgotten the circles! Simon, look at the circles. You're so close. Circles!"

[@arnoudh6203]

19:50 Simon not resolving the blue 6's: uh oh Skipping to 49:50 and he still hasnt seen it 😂

[@Nuewts]

I was SCREAMING

[@MattYDdraig]

36:18 Intriguing puzzle and fiendish in how it breaks normal scanning, constantly reassessing which row/column has what remaining properties. Very cleverly done.

[@felixhagemann1831]

24:32 „That can’t be a 4“ brilliantly deducted from logic but completely ignoring the X 😂

[@MaryVidal-pt8bx]

It feels as if I'm in some sort of loop. My husband is watching the Masters while I watch Simon - but I'm guessing as I (in the US) watch Simon's solve, Simon will be watching the Masters in the UK.

[@RealGrouchy]

So strange to be seeing 5s on either side of an X clue!

[@gobsvensen]

I don't get the deduction at around the 8 minute that blue plus orange = 11. Why can't another circle in the grid be blue or orange to make blue plus orange more than 11 at that point in the solve?

[@RichSmith77]

It could have been more than 11 at this stage. I wasn't sure if he was just misspeaking, and on some level knew it was 11 or more, but it did appear like he genuinely thought there couldn't be any more blue or orange circles. Fortunately, it didn't affect the next deduction that there had to be six different digits in circles, which therefore had to be 1-6, and then blue + orange did have to be 5+6=11.

[@gobsvensen]

You can make that deduction when you add in column 6. If r1 and r2 are the same, there are five more colors in that column's circles, if they are different, there are at least 4 more colors in circles. Either way there are a minimum of 6 colors, so they are 1-2-3-4-5-6 and blue+oraange can't add up to more, but it seems like a logic leap that happened to be right.

[@hisham_hm]

at 11:50 he deducted that there are 6 different values in circles

[@stevieinselby]

At that point, they absolutely could have added up to more than 11 - it was only later after he showed that he needed six different circled digits, and so the highest number there could be in a circle was 6, that 🟦+🟧 was legitimately fixed at _exactly_ 11.

[@johnnyw4life]

This bothered me so much as well that I had to come to the comments. Ty for relieving my puzzle anxiety 😅

[@In_42_Space]

Absolutely loved that puzzle and Simons solve. They made me smile, laugh, shout and exclaim. Beautiful and just what my day needed. Thank you.

[@richardfarrer5616]

The link is to Copycat by Phistomephel, not the puzzle in the video. While the former was an excellent puzzle, I don't really want to do it again, however apt that would be considering the title.

[@frankjiang1857]

Finished in 55:56. Still trying to get a hang of this ruleset, but eventually I get to the solution. Fun puzzle!

[@piarittersporn]

What a crazy puzzle. Not easy ... especially the start ... so I had to watch Simon for a while.

[@SamAHill]

This is the second "n unique digits in row/column n" puzzles I've seen and I quite enjoyed both of them; someone ought to give this style a name.

[@chrissolnordal9421]

After over 4 hours and several restarts I stopped the timer as I didn't want to know how long I was spending on this, but I knew I could get there in the end (and I did!). My visual approach was completely different to Simon's. Once I'd deduced the 5s, I considered the remaining 8 digits as 4 pairs (each with their own colour) and outlined each set of cells connected by Xs. This made it easy to deduce which pairs/triples/quads (connected by Xs) had to be different. It still took me untold hours to solve, but I absolutely loved it. Thanks to blackjackfitz, and to Simon and CTC for featuring it.

[@letbloodline]

Those 6 sixes made me skip like half video searching for when he realized it

[@MariaVlasiou]

8:45 I don't see it now. Why 11 and not at least 11? Why can't we have some other circle having the same number at either a blue or orange?

[@LednacekZ]

you know what might help with the solve? Removing marking you already used up.

[@chipsounder4633]

Beautiful setting.. loved that x on row 6 column 1/2.. it could only ever be one thing 🎉

[@nevilleenglish]

Very strange. I keep coming back to Simon's video for the next hint and it takes me in a different direction from the one Simon takes.

[@monosoloq]

I think there’s a logic error which luckily didn’t have a consequence in solving: Simon kept mentioning blue+orange = 11, cuz that’s the total of circles of row/column 1/2, but it could be more than 11. Since either blue or orange or both, can still appear in other circles in other rows and columns. But luckily since circles numbers are only 1-6, it’s impossible to add to more than 11.

[@nicka3697]

One he has deduced that there are 6 different circle numbers in the puzzle they have to be 123456 from the total number of circles, so you can't make a total of more than 11 from the two digits allowed in the first two rows/columns.

[@torericson2089]

I did not get that piece of logic either, thinking like you..... Did we think wrong?

[@maximix5447]

​@@nicka3697 he did not yet deduce that there are 6 different numbers when he made the claim that blue+orange=11

[@torericson2089]

@@nicka3697 That comment do not make sense since it is the deduction that it is 6 digits that we do not understand. Why cant it be 4 or 5 digits. I think he has not shown that so far in the puzzle?!?!

[@maljamin]

​@@torericson2089At around 12 minutes, working on column 6, he has to have 6 unique digits. He works out two ways the coloring could go and both imply 6 distinct circled digits. Basically 4 new ones in addition to the blue and orange already found.

[@LithmusEarth]

31:13 I just caught you got all the circled fives. I caught the 678 in row 9 and was shouting that one for a minute too that orange would be 5 because of it. Not too shabby of a different kind of puzzle. Liked the variety.

[@mlahut]

Started off on the wrong foot by erroneously assuming that the two distinct digits in column 2 were the same as the two distinct digits in row 2 (and so on, which would have implied that r9c9 was the only instance of its digit in the puzzle). This led to a variety of contradictions at the coloring stage before even placing any digits. Used the video for hints until he worked out which digits had to be in circles, then resumed my work with a less ridiculous color scheme and solved the puzzle in 38:15.

[@chrissolnordal9421]

Yep, me too :/

[@CrackingTheCryptic]

We've corrected the link and puzzle ruleset in the Description field! And here is the link again: app.crackingthecryptic.com/917ci3wr7m

[@Gonzalo_Garcia_]

28:41 for me. Wow, what an interesting ruleset. Really enjoyed this one!

[@anaayoung9142]

You did a similiar to this one not so long ago, so I tried and almost did myself. Needed the tip on column 6. Great one! 😊

[@redstonekid2222]

Solved in 73:51, so much fun and so ridiculous at the same time, what a great combo!

[@markp7262]

26:54 finish. This is definitely a fun style of puzzle, with some nice logic involved. Looking forward to more of these!

[@SCCH286]

Very nice puzzle. I got so confused and made so many mistakes so I had to check the video several times to correct mistakes. Pattern recognition is a thing! I would enjoy more puzzles with similar rulestes.

[@inspiringsand123]

Let's Get Cracking: 03:41 Simon's time: 56m12s Puzzle Solved: 59:53 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Maverick: 2x (06:05, 06:07) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Ah: 12x (08:22, 15:14, 16:07, 18:11, 18:37, 18:37, 22:20, 24:08, 35:30, 52:27, 53:52, 57:07) Sorry: 11x (01:57, 06:22, 13:48, 27:29, 33:51, 34:55, 36:33, 38:12, 50:21, 53:00, 56:17) Brilliant: 7x (00:38, 26:06, 26:08, 56:11, 59:57, 1:00:04, 1:00:07) Hang On: 5x (09:54, 09:54, 09:54, 35:14, 35:32) In Fact: 5x (05:40, 09:05, 12:45, 31:12, 53:41) What Does This Mean?: 5x (09:30, 14:22, 36:03, 47:17, 53:08) That's Huge: 4x (36:54, 37:01, 52:31, 53:49) Pencil Mark/mark: 4x (13:25, 19:58, 21:09, 33:24) Beautiful: 3x (06:05, 52:36, 52:42) Obviously: 3x (06:37, 36:46, 43:11) Wow: 3x (37:12, 44:53, 52:33) Unique: 3x (00:53, 02:43, 05:47) Triangular Number: 3x (04:22, 12:55, 1:00:26) Weird: 3x (54:27, 1:00:07, 1:00:10) Good Grief: 2x (59:45, 1:00:00) What on Earth: 2x (43:38, 57:40) Goodness: 2x (54:59, 59:53) Useless: 1x (54:37) What a Puzzle: 1x (1:00:53) Apologies: 1x (01:43) Fascinating: 1x (1:00:17) Take a Bow: 1x (1:00:00) Bizarre: 1x (40:59) Surely: 1x (53:08) I've Got It!: 1x (45:40) We Can Do Better Than That: 1x (13:30) Ad Nauseam: 1x (48:57) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Eleven (9 mentions) Two (100 mentions) Orange (29 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Even (5) - Odd (3) Black (3) - White (0) Column (79) - Row (73) FAQ: Q1: You missed something! A1: That could very well be the case! Human speech can be hard to understand for computers like me! Point out the ones that I missed and maybe I'll learn! Q2: Can you do this for another channel? A2: I've been thinking about that and wrote some code to make that possible. Let me know which channel you think would be a good fit!

[@StefanPeterffets]

Wow, this puzzle was intense. It took me nearly two hours to solve, but I managed to do it completely on my own.

[@robertlong3561]

I usually follow along nicely, even though I’ve never been able to solve one on my own. This time however, I was totally lost from start to finish. You are a wizard!

[@chipsounder4633]

Hidden in plain sight.. it's amazing what we don't see. Learnt about Scotomas when i was 18.. there was a paragraph where you count the Fs.. It was fascinating as different people gave different answers 😮

[@longwaytotipperary]

Wow! This looks interesting!! Going out for more 🍿😉

[@flsal27]

This puzzle deserves a follow up, to see how it can be solved with the 6s uncovered.

[@Timlagor]

How the heck did you get "they add up to 11" (and not more) at the start?

[@Lillith.]

52:31 he finally realises the 6s

[@nedb147]

THE CIRCLES ARE ALL 6’S!! Haha so frustrating, bless him.

[@ang4062]

good thing i'm still awake at 5am to catch this video right as it came out! 😃

[@MadsOcto7]

Marks videos come out at midnight in my country and I've accidentally molded my sleep pattern around that 😅

[@thescrewfly]

Very hard not to try to do sudoku whenever concentration is relaxed for a second. For Simon, obviously, but also for me mentally trying to help Simon...

[@xerodeus2337]

I didn't understand the logic on why the circles in R1 R2 and C1 - had to add up to 11. Why could it not have been 5 and 7 - with a 7th circle in a another circle somewhere else

[@simonewers4369]

I must say that I found the phrasing of the puzzle ambiguous. I thought, at first, "unique" meant that there is a single token of a digit. So that, for example, 211111111 would have been a valid solution for row one, because one digit (the 2) is unique in the sense that it appears only once. "Different" instead of unique would have been the better choice imho. Otherwise, very nice puzzle.

[@RichSmith77]

That interpretation would make row 8, column 8 pretty difficult to fulfill.

[@simonewers4369]

@@RichSmith77 True! That interpretation doesn't work for many reasons, but it took me a second to figure that out. Perhaps I'm just slow...

[@blackjackfitz]

I think this is a fair concern, I’ll be re-working how I write the rules for future versions of this puzzle to make sure it’s clear. Thanks for the feedback

[@LednacekZ]

41:00 for me. made a couple of mistakes and was second-guessing myself for the whole solve. Somehow it ended up in correct solution.

[@MyriamTT]

Brilliant puzzle indeed!

[@McMinecat]

This is the first time ive been this early i usually catch the videos the morning after, watching with some tea

[@biaberg3448]

Me: Simon in the evening, Mark in the morning. Every day! Today however Simon had an extra puzzle in the morning, so I enjoyed that too 😊

[@angec9908]

Maverick again taking off just as you start recording

[@donaldsnyder1543]

For those that aren't aware there is an easy way to count circles , assuming they don't have numbers in them already. Go to options and turn on cell sum calculator , double click a circle to select all circles then enter 1. Also don't forget to remove said 1 😎.

[@alexanderbaldwin9916]

This is so stressful. I'm part way through the puzzle, trying to get just one clue to help me get to the next step because Simon is much smarter than I am, but I'm over here screaming about the 6s because you need to figure that much out before you can help me. How are you this far in and haven't seen what was literally the first thing I saw??

[@qazwiz]

22:20 at this point you have found row 7's two duplicates but not noticing this likely hurt you more than the pinned comment.... between both i bet you could have cut 20 minutes (likely 30) off the time

[@RichSmith77]

For the correct link, replace the puzzle ID in the URL with 917ci3wr7m

[@saiifhsloth]

thanks!

[@torstenaan]

Thanks

[@ahouyearno]

I love this idea of a Somedoku and I hope someone else makes a cool puzzle based on that.

[@michaellautermilch9185]

CTC featured another puzzle like this one several months ago. I can't find it.

[@thenatundi9009]

Man I blundered this one hard... still a very neat concept and a great puzzle to solve!

[@michaellautermilch9185]

There was a puzzle featured on CTC with a similar ruleset several months ago but I cant find it now. Does anyone have a link?

[@michaellautermilch9185]

It was another puzzle that involved putting N unique digits into row N or column N.

[@blackjackfitz]

The treacherous sudoku= name of video, puzzle was called Duplicates

[@qazwiz]

25:36 a quad 234 means the column 6 234 is the duplicated box so the 1234 is a 1

[@Vic-hy2ml]

anyone has the right link? I really want to try it!

[@svensorensen7693]

What a puzzle!

[@AndrewMooreMar]

Link in the description takes to "Copycat" by Phistomefel

[@Al-lh2oo]

Sorry but that was one of the hardest puzzles to watch being solved. Once the 6 circled 6's were finally discovered it only took 7 minutes to solve

[@swimfit57]

Brilliant

[@Cassius40k]

I am confused by my interpretation of the rules. R1 and C1 must contain 1 unique digit, and the remaining cells are filled with repeats, with the understanding that 'unique' means it only appears once. But the solution has nine 5's, and there is no unique digit.

[@chrissolnordal9421]

The setter has agreed that the wording was ambiguous, see comments above. It took me a while to figure out the ramifications of the ruleset, and indeed what it actually meant.

[@bait6652]

Could prove that circle count is sum of 5-6 digits....and that if assume 6 digits, can solve the design but couldn't invalidate a few of 5 cell 21-sums

[@NinjarioPicmin]

Yes i remember a similar puzzle to this one too, anyone remember which one it was or which video?

[@RichSmith77]

The video was called "The Traitorous Sudoku". It was also by blackjackfitz. I'll try posting a link in another comment. (I'm never sure if KZbin will delete my comments with links).

[@NinjarioPicmin]

@@RichSmith77 thank you, yeah KZbin deletes links but I can find it with that, thanks

[@MrCoxmic]

between the 5&6 and the yellow 669 in column 7, my anxiety was shooting sky high

[@henk-ottolimburg7947]

Brutal!

[@MegaKotai]

Wrong link?

[@Ardalambdion]

30:00 It's a game of looking at rows and columns...

[@carly09et]

19:50 'and that doesn't do anything' yells out count your circles...

[@oreo3910]

How are people commenting on an our long video that came out 25 minutes ago?? Also, I do love watching your videos simon I appreciate every day when you post.

[@Tahgtahv]

Most of the comments were about the wrong puzzle link, and you don't need to have watched the video for that. Also there are people who watch the video at faster than 1x speed, or might comment without actually seeing the whole thing.

[@ayakoa2096]

Wrong link in description😢

[@GaimeGuy]

I'm a bit confused why the first two numbers have to add up to exactly 11 instead of at least 11.

[@Raven-Creations]

I'm late coming to this. I thought the same thing. There was a good reason, but I don't think Simon saw it. The reason was because C6 required either five other circled digits if R2C6 was the same as R1, or if R2C6 is not the same as R1, there had to be four others. Either way, this meant there had to be 6 different circled digits, which meant they had to be 1-6. I really don't think Simon saw this, because he took a pretty long time to realise R1/2 were 56.

[@GaimeGuy]

@@Raven-Creations Yeah, I saw it myself while solving the puzzle but I couldn't follow Simon's logic when I went back to see his solve at the time he made that statement. I often find that even when I solve puzzles I wind up using lookaheads to see if a particular path is possible, so my solution path often deviates from the "intended" solution.

[@Squishy3757]

The 1 in r8c7 looms for a long time.

[@BleachWizz]

Am I the only one here looking at those blue sixes on the 2nd row? lol xD

[@xerodeus2337]

34 mins and I could not figure out how to break into this puzzle at all... :( this was a tough

[@srwapo]

62:32 with a lot of help from the video, but I'm also sitting with a broken thumb waiting for it to get fixed, so I don't care if I needed the help, lol.

[@Raven-Creations]

Once you made R2C2=5, why would you not makes all the other circles in the row 6? You knew you had four circled 5s, so only one in R2 could be circled. You placed the 5th 5, and in true Simon fashion said something like "What does that do? Nothing", when it did so much, but you didn't actually check. Had you done that, it would mean you had to have a 5 and 6 in C3, so the xs had to be 46s, meaning the column only contains 456. All of the other columns to the right must contain 5 and 6, reducing the options in them. The puzzle was nowhere near as tricky if you'd only been diligent about checking the impact of your placements.

[@choppybuggy6291]

i have to admit i was also sort of yelling at the screen for a while to check the fives and sixes ahah

[@theredstoneengineer6934]

29:30 for me

[@Sinisest1121]

Lol placing 5 into circle and saying but that dont do anything. You got final 5 in circle and entire row is only usolved circles so they all must be 6 now :D

[@MikeKing001]

19:50 oh how wrong he was.

[@Sajatzsiraf]

this is... bonkers... :) well, I will leave this to people more worthy than me

[@brianj959]

I loved the puzzle; but the solve…unfortunately Simon’s tendency not to do basic housekeeping really rendered him unstuck today. On other days, I often marvel at the complex and lateral way he proves a simple sudoku point. But not today lol.

[@mikepictor]

Read the rules...can't figure out how to resolve R1 and C1 without having 17 identical digits.

[@user-kg3hx3tt5m]

I don't think that's the right description...

[@pardox28]

Link goes to the wrong puzzle.

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

59:30 for me. i was pretty lost, so i guessed the top 2 digits and then the rest flowed

[@nightwishlover8913]

Somewhat lacking in Sudoku-ness...