One Of The Cleverest (& Easiest??) Sudoku Puzzles Ever

[@ademjaziri7692]

Thanks Simon for the feature and the great solve! I am really happy to see you and other people from the comments enjoying this, that filled me with joy! By the way the title is also a reference to One Piece x)

[@Landis963]

I thought that title sounded familiar!

[@derekfox7696]

I came to the comments to find out about the one piece reference. Thanks for that. Great puzzle too.

[@R_frozen]

Finally a reference I can understand :D Beatiful puzzle, thank you

[@DarkChasm]

yeah that's really cool and smart, top one ❤❤❤

[@sampathkumar-ej7xl]

Thank you for this. I attempt puzzles by youreslf , Qodec, TallCat and some others with great interest (provided video length doesnt run past an hour) since there is a clever break in and a beautiful solution path. This one was very enjoyable too.

[@carl13579]

The other way of getting that green and blue are the same is to note that neither can be in the 6-cell regions. But there must be 6 numbers in these regions. This is only possible if blue equals green.

[@penningmeestercgkdelft9159]

Exactly!

[@Stompound]

I'm pleased that the grand line divides the symmetrical grid in half and is ALSO filled with 4s which is the middle digit of a 1-7 sequence. Chef's kiss.

[@gregr28]

21:34 Not often that I beat Simon's time. But as soon as you placed the blue and yellow in separate 8 cages, neither could be a 4, making it a 2/5 pair. Then purple and grey were 3/6, making green a 4.

[@ericpraline1302]

Sometimes I feel I appreciate a puzzle more while watching Simon solve it than while doing it myself!

[@ShadowBeatzInc]

The way that the Grand Line was the first thing to be figured out but the last digits to be filled in was immensely satisfying. Like storytelling in a sudoku.

[@bones7708]

That was quite different in my solve path. I had placed six digits and coloured less than half of the grid, before I filled in the line of fours. Hard to think leaving the diagonal as the last digits was the intended solve path, when it actually was quite easy to fill it early on.

[@gi0nbecell]

Interestingly, both of those Clever & Easy puzzles feature a line of 4s, without them being intentionally connected, and without Simon knowing about that implication beforehand. Sometimes, chance just has it…

[@delimelone]

I am so happy I recently discovered this channel. I really love solving the puzzles alongside you and learning new ways how to think about patterns and such.

[@Piatato]

Certainly not the easiest, but very clever!😊

[@Michael-kp4bd]

One of those times where I appreciate just how much intuition Simon has- how much he can “see”. Because this was easy for him, but for me watching, I had to stop and go back to actually understand his reasoning much more often than usual!

[@st0rmforce]

I gave up after working out the diagonal was one number, then playing around with numbers for half an hour and not getting any other ideas. Couldn't even get to simon's blue and yellow marking that placed the 1

[@AhsimNreiziev]

To be fair, Simon used some pieces of reasoning that made the solve quite a bit harder than necessary. First of all, the easiest way to know that green and blue on the "Grand Line" are the same digit is to see that neither green nor blue can appear in the 6-cell regions. So, if they were different digits, the 6-cell-regions could only contain 5 different digits. This is clearly impossible, hence green and blue are the same, hence the middle cell of the grid is also green/blue (green in Simon's case). Then, it is far easier to reason where r1c1 can go in the bottom-right 6-cell region, as well as where r7c7 can go in the top-left 6-cell region; than to do it with r2c2 and r6c6 respectively. Continuing on from that, I moved on to 1s (abandoning 7s for the moment) far faster than Simon did. Then, a bit later, I noticed that blue and yellow had to add up to 7 (in the 8 and 14 cages), and couldn't include 1s. So, they were either a {2,5} pair or a {3,4} pair. Yet, in the 9 and 15 cages, they were both involved in a 2-cell sum summing to 8. So, if blue and yellow were a {3,4} pair, one of them would be a 4. But you can't make 2 different digits add up to 8 if one of them has to be a 4. As such, blue and yellow had to be a {2,5} pair. From there, the cells that Simon made purple and orange had to be a {3,6} pair. At this point, green sees all of {1,2,3,5,6 and 7}, and so has to be a 4. At this point, one needs considerably less colouring than Simon did to start putting digits to colours. (Specifically, once you've got a [2/5] option in the 6-cage, which specifically was yellow in the bottom cell of the 6-cage, and you also know that green is 4 (and hence can't appear in the 6-cage), that [2/5] option now has to be a 5, i.e. yellow is 5.) From there it's a fairly easy Sudoku solve.

[@Raven-Creations]

At the start, the easier way to see that blue and green were the same, is that neither can appear in the 6-cell cages. If they were different, you've ruled two digits out of the 6-cell cages. Although we made some common deductions, notably R1C1=R6C6 and R2C2=R7C7, our solves were quite different. I used different geometry to place groups of three cells. The constraints in the various cages meant that it was possible to reduce several cells to two options. Once I had two 25s with 36s, but they had to be different (i.e. one was 26 and the other was 35), this let me get 4 as the diagonal. That resolved the 6 cage as 15, and it quickly collapsed. I don't think either method was more efficient, although your finish, by clicking on each colour was quite pleasing.

[@_Baku]

I solved it almost exactly the same way - I was surprised to see how different Simon's solve path was.

[@BedWords_]

@@_Baku same! although simon did it about twice as fast haha. the color patterns that came out of both solves were mesmerizing. i had to save a gif of mine lol

[@NoblemusclemaX]

One of the best (& cleverest) puzzle I've solved so far! Thanks Simon for sharing this puzzle with us! :)

[@Malakree]

It took me over 70 mins and I needed some of Simon's initial observations, specifically the central diagonal, but that's the first time I've managed it!

[@blobdffoo819]

66 min and i also needed that first 3 green cells, after that it was fun !

[@thorbjrnhellehaven5766]

It helped quite a bit, after I remembered 8 and 9 weren't an option. Suddenly the cages made more sense 😊

[@lukeanthony9904]

This was also the knowledge bomb that really helped me solve this puzzle.

[@lukeanthony9904]

This was also the knowledge bomb that really helped me solve this puzzle.

[@TheClawNinja]

These are the difficulty that I enjoy the most. Certainly not GAS, but still doable for my normal brain ;) Thanks!

[@Adrian_Grey]

I spent 40 min stuck on this thinking "how is this easy??" before I re-read the rule about digits not repeating in cages. You know, the standard rules of the most basic sudoku variant there is. 😂 Super fun and approachable once you read all the rules!!

[@pickledcucumber8693]

This was a nice somewhat approachable puzzle that I could complete, I loved seeing how the cells interacted with each other based on the help in the cage sums

[@Screm01]

12:07 an easier way to spot that green and blue are the same is: If they are different, both 6-Cages miss 2 digits. Green AND Blue. But they can only miss 1 Digit. Therefore it breaks so they must be the same. I could only come so far ^^

[@Babinzo]

Astonishing setting, truly incredible to see such symmetry (and to see it being solved!). Seriously underrated skill to take such a complex finished product and to force it into existence (uniquely!) with an almost blank starting canvas and a basic set of rules, all while maintaining a gentle solvepath. Incredible.

[@y_prime]

solved in 14:19 - very good use of cages, and coloring made this very cool

[@chipsounder4633]

Just when the game is upped to the max, some puzzle gets created that while difficult to get the idea of how to solve it, once you figure it out, it is seen the sheer magnificence shine. Fantastic. Best half hour of viewing in recent times.❤

[@coffeedude]

That last 6 cage putting all the digits into place is godly

[@VeritasUnae]

Really delighted from this puzzle. I got fed up with trying all sorts of colouring arrangements until I stumbled onto asking where the corners went. And then all the deductions tumble beautifully, just as Simon illustrates. I loved the way the totals in the cages are just perfect to split the sums of the colours and disambiguate the grid. Took me about 45mins or so but what a bus trip, haha!

[@Coyotek4]

15:22 ... not exactly 'GAS' material, but indeed, exceedingly clever Nice puzzle!

[@falconredux]

The elegance of your problem solving and the eloquence of your descriptions are inspiring. Thank you for what you do

[@jesperwillems_]

Very clever puzzle! Was personally quite stuck at the logic as to why r1c6 and r7c2 couldn’t be the same digit, but ultimately figured it out with some convoluted logic!

[@penningmeestercgkdelft9159]

Many colour pairs are showing perfect rotational symmetry! Beautiful solve :-)

[@mstmar]

Theres a slightly easier way to find out that r1c1 is the same as r6c6. that is, by considering where r1c1 goes in the bottom right corner (it has to exist in there since it contains everything but green) instead of where r6c6 goes in the top left. it has to go in c8 of the top right most 7 cell region, and in r8 of the bottom left most 7 cell region (by sudoku) and so can only go in r6c6 (again by sudoku).

[@Bonehead777]

That was a cracking puzzle. The interaction may not be easy to spot, but was superbly conceived.

[@riluna3695]

As soon as I noticed the possibility of putting 7/1/7 in the 15 cage and 1/7/1 in the 9 cage, I had myself convinced the puzzle was going to play out that way, but was irritated that I couldn't figure out the next step in the solve to actually PROVE it. ....Turns out the next and only step forward was to notice 1) that digits cannot repeat in a cage, and 2) that I'm kinda dumb :P

[@oliviamartinez25]

29:29 I laughed out loud

[@thenatundi9009]

Wow the flow of logic was just brilliant!

[@Kinada]

Neat puzzle. I feel like I made it harder than it should be, specially after getting the central line pretty pretty quickly I should have noticed the corner swaps much sooner than I did.

[@Stereomoo]

The blue/yellow logic was a lot quicker the other way around; if blue's in the corner of one 6-cage, then the outer corner 7 cells need blue in the end row/column, so in the opposite 6-cage, it's in the one cell that's not on an edge of the puzzle.

[@awebmate]

11:10 gotta love Simon's convoluted way of making simple deductions. If green and blue were different, it would rule out 2 numbers of both corner cages,

[@Tepalus]

22:29 for me! That was a great brainteaser before going to sleep. :)

[@ronjohnson6916]

Simon is wrong. Most of us will happily watch his long videos. Or the shorter ones. Funny. I can remember Simon apologizing back in back in 2020 as the length occasionally crept up. Those "long" videos would be short by today's standards.

[@penningmeestercgkdelft9159]

Indeed I do enjoy watching long CtC videos very much, but the point is that my life's agenda simply doesn't allow me to do that too often... Only during covid lockdowns I could do that practically every night. So in practice I am usually happy when a CtC video turns out to be short, because at least I can afford watching them slightly easier...

[@abj136]

You are not everybody. I hit a limit of 45 minutes, longer than which I am liable to skip parts

[@yaboyJJJJJ]

videos under 45 min are usually not really worth it for me these days. I use these videos to fall asleep with and the short videos puzzles are just way to easy to get my brain tires

[@ronjohnson6916]

@@abj136 Hence the choice of wording. "Most" acknowledges that not everybody will see it that way. And you can watch at higher playback speeds too. Simon in chipmunk voice is an amusing little twist (at least occasionally). I really do understand that you just might not have time for longer videos. And I also understand that Simon doesn't need to grind through the six out of five difficulty puzzles every day.

[@abj136]

R2C2 is in Row 1 in the right, Column 7 on the lower, Column 1 lower, Row 7 right. So R2C2 == R7C7, and likewise R1C1==R6C6, and the remaining cells of the two cages are 1 and 7. Such an amazing deduction!

[@longwaytotipperary]

Unthank should definitely join Simon and the Simon fans in the corner at the party we are all hoping to attend! What a conversation we would all have!

[@davidrattner9]

For sure it would be the talk of the community!! 😁

[@longwaytotipperary]

@@davidrattner9 😄

[@Gobboleone]

That puzzle was really fun to solve! Thanks for sharing!

[@PerStarback]

Nice puzzle! I think it has been wise of CtC to not talk so much about 'easy' puzzles, and to use expressions like 'genuinely approachable'. So I'm surprised about this saying that something might be the easiest puzzle of its kind twice in a row now. I would prefer something like "... and still not too hard!". Saying it's the easiest one is obviously not true and can make it feel less of an accomplishment for some who make it, and disturbing for those who don't.

[@coffeedude]

Once you start coloring it's manageable but realizing you can do that and where is kinda hard

[@emilywilliams3237]

This was a very fun irregular sudoku. Sometime I find them just too fiddly to really be fun, but this one was delightful. Thanks for the wonderful, colorful solve, Simon!

[@JamesStocks]

Tried this myself and was pleased to find I had the same logic as Simon - until I got stuck when I didn't spot that the top left corner was the only cell that could be blue

[@RichSmith77]

I guess it amounts to the same thing, but I found it easier to give r1c1 a colour and then derive where that had to go in the opposite 6-cell region. (And then repeat for r7c7).

[@brucecarter8960]

I have a planet fact: Mars is only inhabited by robots. There are also robots in orbit!

[@poppyholly1759]

Linux kernel is the most widely used operating system on Earth and Mars :)

[@chitraagarwal8259]

This took me a while coz I used letters instead of colors but so happy to have gotten through it! Relieved to see Simon getting stuck at exactly the same points I did :)

[@santiagoruiz7490]

This took me over an hour, but it was pretty satisfying to finish. Your take on it was insane, mine was far more complicated and not very straightforward tbh

[@tobiasSscf]

28:00 at this point in my solve I looked at what the yellow/blue double can be to add up to 7 - it‘s either 2-5 or 3-4 and it can not be 3-4 due to the 9 and 15 cage because neither of yellow and blue can be a 4 as one would have to repeat the other digit in the 9 or 15 cage then. So the yellow/blue double is 2-5 and then by pencilmarking the rest of columns one to three one can deduct that green needs to be 4 and then everything starts going - the six cage is the next to look at and it‘s off and running.

[@eddieharwood7788]

Wow I did not find that easy. I watched Simon's solve afterwards and by and large I did it the same way, although a bit of pencil marking of the 6 box gave me a simpler end. But it still took me 2 hours!!

[@longwaytotipperary]

Absolutely fabulous puzzle!! ❤❤❤

[@srwapo]

25:04, took a bit to see where the grid was most restrictive and I accidentally used 8 colors instead of 7, but enjoyable solve. It didn't just fall apart once I had the break in like I anticipated.

[@inspiringsand123]

Rules: 06:09 Let's Get Cracking: 07:24 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Knowledge Bomb: 1x (27:05) The Secret: 1x (02:09) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! By Sudoku: 10x (09:22, 09:26, 11:58, 16:12, 16:15, 22:04, 22:33, 25:25, 27:23, 32:05) Hang On: 7x (09:51, 12:32, 14:46, 14:59, 14:59, 24:38, 29:06) The Answer is: 5x (15:25, 15:31, 15:53, 16:27, 22:50) Beautiful: 4x (12:00, 20:23, 30:28, 31:48) Clever: 3x (12:00, 17:22, 23:25) Ah: 3x (10:33, 14:46, 15:53, 15:53) Symmetry: 3x (10:03, 16:33, 31:48) What on Earth: 2x (05:49, 13:15) Naughty: 2x (07:17, 08:53) Discombobulating: 2x (06:10, 09:51) Shouting: 2x (01:58, 02:19) In Fact: 2x (05:30, 20:25) Obviously: 2x (00:50, 08:38) Wow: 2x (33:07, 33:07) Nature: 2x (23:21, 32:25) Pencil Mark/mark: 2x (21:50, 26:30) Sorry: 1x (13:10) Stuck: 1x (29:09) Break the Puzzle: 1x (14:43) Ridiculous: 1x (22:22) Gorgeous: 1x (20:36) Take a Bow: 1x (33:50) Magnificent: 1x (01:11) Stunning: 1x (33:18) Whoopsie: 1x (32:21) We Can Do Better Than That: 1x (20:18) Let's Take Stock: 1x (26:22) What Does This Mean?: 1x (12:06) Cake!: 1x (02:23) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Fifteen (4 mentions) Seven (66 mentions) Blue (54 mentions) Antithesis Battles: White (2) - Black (0) Column (15) - Row (11) 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!

[@GeneralPenemonto]

Can you do "missing Simarkisms"? Like, we did not have a few in this video, it would be interesting to list the missing ones as well!

[@themorebeer3072]

Wasn't too difficult, though my decision to fully mark the grid before trying to resolve the cages really made things harder than they needed to be. Getting the early 1 and 7, and using those to eliminate other candidates for cells, looked to be an efficient solving process.

[@r0bbiegill]

Really enjoyed this one, too. My brain is much slower, and I can’t handle all the colors, so I used letters. Took me a while to get the maths right, but I got there.

[@ingvarsuigin609]

I wanna tell you a secret before watching, that digits 1 to 7 sum up to exactly 28

[@Gonzalo_Garcia_]

12:14 for me. Fantastic puzzle!!

[@piarittersporn]

Brilliant puzzle and absolutely funny diagonal.

[@airwalkalman]

AWESOME PUZZLE!

[@JohnRandomness105]

I admit, it took me a lot longer to figure out that both diagonal numbers were the same. That's not the problem. I forgot one particular rule. I deduced that the third cell in the 8 and 14 cages differed by 6, but I forgot that digits were limited to 1 through 7. Remembering that would have saved a whole boatload of grief, time, and effort. I began with colors, and gradually converted to letters, and managed to place most of them. But I was always stuck relating the letters to the various sums. Then I watched the beginning of the solve on the video, and virtually smacked myself once he discussed the 8 and 14 cages.

[@CrypticCL]

Worth watching, even though I solved it, because Simon's path was so much more elegant than my ham-fisted solve!! 😆

[@andremouss2536]

16:20 what a lengthy deduction.... 'twould be much quickier asking the question : where does R1C1 goes into the lower right region ? That would save two steps.

[@timgunning2319]

I used SET to solve this one. Got the diagonal line pretty quick, and after a lot of staring tried SET. The four corner regions including the two isolated cells are four sets of the digits 1-7. R1, R7, C1 & C7 are another four sets of the digits 1-7. Remove the overlaps and digits on the diagonal line and you're left with R1C1 and R7C7 are the same digits as R2C2 and R6C6. R1C1 couldn't be same as R2C2 so R1C1=R6C6 and R2C2=R7C7.

[@DjurslandsEfterskole]

Very enjoyable! Would recommend

[@georgewhyte7096]

Wonderful

[@Kelters]

A fun puzzle. Unfortunately I made a silly bobbins error with the colouring while still working on 7's and 1's. Had to start all over again after watching the video to see where I went wrong. (Brain weary after finishing the Planets Suite I suppose.)

[@Poet13xRatedRKO]

42:32 for me, pretty slow because I lost overview. It's so easy if you do it the right way. First find out that the diagonal is the same digit, then combine the edge digits by using the cage sums.

[@psiphiorg]

My time today is 29:02, solver #388. I ended up doing a lot of coloring, then charting to see how the different sums of colors could interact.

[@grithog5399]

I'm embarrassed that this took me as long as it did! Once you know where to look, and you don't try putting 8's in (!), it flows really nicely. I expect we'll see something with similar deductions in a full sudoku puzzle soon.

[@xChikyx]

this one was difficult to follow, but it was cool

[@Rach881101]

19:37 for me. Nice puzzle!

[@TurquoizeGoldscraper]

13:20 for me - I loved this puzzle. Kudos Adem Jaziri.

[@atasaeedmonir8073]

I was disappointed that you didn’t use letters, it was fun filling grid with letters and doing algebra

[@michaelgillespie1206]

I can tell you a fact about all of the planets, Earth is the only one I've been to!

[@RichSmith77]

Trying to decide if "been to Earth" (past tense) means (a) you're not currently on Earth? (b) you had to have visited Earth from some other place? 🙂

[@mudscuffer]

Fun puzzle! 20:02 for me

[@pocoapoco2]

Much easier logic to ask where one of the corner squares that aren't green goes.

[@sjm6280]

29:39 "What about purple and orange in this row? ... Not orange" ... nor purple 😂

[@phuybrechts6875]

Could start with roeping by number row 1 ( or column 7 ) with a b c d e f

[@ina_louisaw9020]

I love your videos

[@toxicara]

With the blue early on, you could have started with r1c1 rather than r6c6. less of a headache to get them to be the same digit.

[@giladooshlon]

Nice! 13 minutes for me.

[@RoderickEtheria]

I got 4 earlier by realizing a 4 could not be used in a domino to sum to 8.

[@epsilonzero77]

Wow is the exact word.

[@tommytitbongo202]

im having trouble understanding how you figured out that r7c6 was 1 at 18:30 . couldn't yellow and blue have been a 1-6 pair to add up to 7?

[@tessabrisac7423]

But then you could not fill the 3d digit in the 8 cage of the low right corner.

[@titusadduxas]

49:53 for me. I rather enjoyed that but missed some simple logic half way through when making 5+2 make 6!

[@specialkalberta]

Amazing

[@dilbert719]

Not so easy for me. For whatever reason, I couldn't figure out an elegant break-in, and came tumbling down the mountain with a 76:30. (solver 4468.) My path involved an appalling intersection of colors, letters, numbers, cross-referenced possibilities, it was a mess. Looking forward to an opportunity to see what I should have done at some point, but I think I need to step away, possibly have a bit of a lie down while I'm at it. Woof. That was fun, but taxing.

[@kf6eml]

Planet factoid: You could stack all of the planets in the space between the earth and the moon. 9 out of 10 astronomers agree that actually doing this would be a Bad Idea.

[@stevendavid5370]

magical

[@jameskarran5330]

Nice but how is this easy? After much head scratching and binning it off once as beyond me it eventually fell to a mix of colouring and algebra

[@denismustafin3106]

If I'm not mistaken, "digits in a cage cannot repeat" rule is unnecessary, I was able to solve the puzzle without it (with a lot of brutforce)

[@irakyl]

I made a mistake by beginning the puzzle by colouring the different regions so I could distinguish between them easier... Then I didn't think to use colours as variables for the unknown numbers 😅 So I had to make a big mess with pencil marks, even after placing multiple digits. Took me 3 hours of staring at it to figure everything out.

[@matejbrozkovec8795]

Yesterday's puzzle was such a joy to watch I am really excited for this one too!

[@HunterJE]

Another way to put the rules is that all regions are 7 cells but two of those regions are disjoint and are made up of a 6-cell region plus a 1-cell region (since the digits missing from the two 6-cell regions necessarily must appear in the two one-cell regions to make up the seven sets of the digits 1-7)

[@TrackpadProductions]

Wouldn't it be even easier to just say that digits cannot repeat in any region? Unless I'm missing something...?

[@eve_the_eevee_rh]

9:43 fun puzzle, I really like irregulars like this one after the VIVI puzzles!

[@WeAreIndividuals]

Is the one piece equal to 45? :o . . . . For explanation one piece is a treasure at the end of the grand line in the series one piece. What the one piece is is a secret.

[@davidh.4944]

Easy? Ya gotta be joking. Maybe if I had managed to spot a better solve path early on, but I ended up struggling for over two hours (1:06:52 to be exact) to finally crack this nut. I had to try, and abort, several attempts at coloring and lettering before figuring out an approach that worked, and even that wasn't particularly smooth. I really have a hard time with puzzles that require this kind of prodigious coloring. I just cannot keep my head straight around all the different highlights when things get that cluttered. Still, I did manage it in the end, so yay. 😁 Solve #6120.

[@randysavage1011]

This is one of my funniest (and least creative) comments.

[@LednacekZ]

19:08 for me. I messed up the solve horribly. Should have been a sub 10 solve.

[@pedrosaraiva1411]

Well thats much better than me. I couldnt even put a number for an 1 hour and had to give up 😅

[@theashen]

Clever, but not super easy :)

[@aulonocara2010]

blue and green are seven, each needs to have partner to 8 therefor not3 and 4, must be 2 and 5, they need 3 and 6 therefor green is 4. six cage is not 2 and 4 therfor yellow 5