Quad van de Wetering: A Sudoku Homage

[@TheSonicPerson]

Hello Cracking The Cryptic, PotatoHead here. Thanks again for featuring another fantastic puzzle from me. I created this puzzle last year after you did “Polka Dot”. My intention was of course to make a Quadruples puzzle that uses Aad’s Theorem which is why I gave it that name. I actually didn’t publish it at first because the people who tested it said they used a different path despite the obvious hint in the title. After several months, I decided to give the puzzle another chance and I finally worked up the courage to publish it, hoping people would solve it the right way. Seeing you do it the way I intended really made me happy and your path almost perfectly mirrored my own. Again, It was a pleasure to see another puzzle of mine featured and I hope I get to see more in the future.

[@RichSmith77]

Oops. I think I probably solved it the way your original testers solved it - sorry. I didn't use Aad's SET trick. The quads and standard sudoku rules lead me to a pencil-marked and coloured grid that was very similar to Simon's at around the 45 minute mark, just without the green and purple colours. It was a fun puzzle, nevertheless. 🙂

[@smet145]

Thanks for the great puzzle, PotatoHead 👍

[@richbuckingham]

@@RichSmith77 same, I didn't need Aad's trick, the quads alone with coloring lets you solve the puzzle.

[@ElysaraCh]

Hello! I too solved it without Aad's theorem because I'm simply not skilled enough to see/use Set based logic yet. I'm actually very impressed that this puzzle was designed to use Aad's theorem but doesn't strictly require it to solve! Thank you for a wonderful challenge of a puzzle.

[@davidrattner9]

Thank you for this!! Appreciate the insight.

[@sacredsock8031]

47:37 how can Simon be so good at Sudoku and so bad at the same time? scanning like a storm trooper

[@voncornhole]

6:18 I really appreciate how you'll just go and explain something that's so simple and mundane over and over again after all these years. I just got into your videos 2 months ago never having competed a sudoku but was familiar with the concept and I've never felt lost by anything you do. Same with fully explaining The Secret

[@mrrobotman5299]

Simon's ability to explain things over and over and not seem bothered by it is amazing. He'd make an excellent teacher.

[@RecreationallyCynical]

Every video has a chance of being someone's first video. Simon's just making sure newcomers don't feel immediately left behind

[@katiekawaii]

Yes! It's such a generous thing to do, explaining everything as if it was the first time because, for someone, it is. Simon's a pro and a total class act.

[@sirgeremiah]

I've been doing basic sudoku for years, but never learned some of the advanced techniques. I ran into Simon's videos while looking for advanced sudoku techniques (I think the video had him explaining Phistomefel's theorem). I was immediately hooked, and have learned much from his explanations of set theory, things like the law of leftovers, and some of the theorems (like here - I hadn't heard of Aad's set theorem he uses here).

[@psyckwhoever4197]

It would drive me mad to explain it so calm, but I'm also very thankful that he does. I started a few years ago and have never seen Aard's theorem before, but (just like Phistomefel's Ring) you can't _unsee_ it after you saw it for the first time 😅

[@roberlucas]

I have been learning english for almost forty years, I say that because I am spanish and I try to learn new words and phrases in english almost everyday. Simon is an excellent teacher, a few days ago he said "high jinks" when there was children background noise during a sudoku solve and I had to look it up: "boisterous or rambunctious carryings-on" or "carefree antics or horseplay". Today I learnt "Hoist with his own petard", a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase's meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown ("hoist", the past tense of "hoise") off the ground by his own bomb ("petard"), and indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice. Thank you very much Simon, you are definitely one of my favorite people.

[@emilywilliams3237]

Simon's use of language, both expressions such as those you mention, as well as wonderful vocabulary words, helps to make his videos fascinating to me, too!

[@stevesebzda570]

Yes, "hoisted by his own petard." I think that's the correct phrasing, but I'm not sure. It came from "Shakespeare?" Cool. There's another one (from one of the bards) that I hope you get right (because it's been simplified in those "voice clips" text. Let me know? Thanks for the background though.

[@ericpraline1302]

@@stevesebzda570 No, it is hoist by one's own petard.

[@stevesebzda570]

@ericpraline1302 I guess I stand corrected then. ("You learn something new every day.") But, for anyone trying to learn English, this is not how to speak in everyday life. Being "a guy 'hoisted' his engine out of his car," and "those girders were 'hoisted' high above by those cranes," examples. I guess I stand corrected on "hoist" (from "hoise" or something like the OP said). And Emily is right, it's cool the words we become aware of But this is not how you want to speak in everyday life. Oh, and about that other one (in the "voice clips text,") Simon had stopped using it because it was misinterpreted in there. But he actually used it today. (The person had it wrong - and simplified it in the text though) So, that I'm still right about. Ask me about it.? ;) 😆 PS: it'll be educational. ?

[@ericpraline1302]

@@stevesebzda570 Actually possibly I stand corrected. I think hoist is one of those words where the past tense is either hoist or hoisted. The quote from Shakespeare is "hoist". English is a tricky language like that - I would say easier than say French or German in terms of the grammar but full of oddities in spelling and pronunciation.

[@ElysaraCh]

I actually solved this without using Aad's set theory - just some careful logic with things like the 1-7s gradually whittling down possibilities in rows/columns followed by X-wing logic to isolate hidden values/pairs. It took me over an hour - my actual time was 160 minutes but that was very far from a continuous effort, I split my attention a lot because the puzzle was so difficult to solve that way. Kinda proud of myself for essentially solving it "the hard way", even if it took me a long time!

[@AndreasKungl]

We must have followed similar paths. Very satisfying without this arcane set nonsense!

[@stevesebzda570]

Lol @19:15 Simon: "I'm about to put-in the most ludicrous pencilmarks.." 'Ever', I'd say. I didn't realize, you were getting up to the most digits that could be in there. They filled in though, Simon. Good job 😂

[@sprmn14]

“Assuming I solve this…” 1) Simon, your a humble beast 2) how many videos do you regularly begin shooting that you don’t solve and they don’t make it?

[@pseudomonad]

I'm enjoying the Sandra and Nala "Spring Breeze" fog puzzle! As a newbie I really like the fog puzzles - it means I'm given some hand-holding about the path I'm supposed to take towards solving; much less intimidating than having a whole puzzle shown at once and not being sure where one's supposed to start. I'd recommend fog puzzles for others who are new to variant sudoku! Also, the pretty little spring touches that get revealed as you clear the fog are very cute!

[@jeffreytennant]

This is one of my favorite break-ins. Without the hint from title I suspect the solve would have been much longer.

[@longwaytotipperary]

Just a few minutes into today’s puzzle and in addition to anticipation of watching Simon solve a PotatoHead puzzle, I’m excited to hear about Sandra (and Nala)’s fog of war puzzles on patreon!!! The photo of Nala and her friend, Nelly are beyond adorable 🤗🤗!! thank you Sandra & Nala!! Thank you Potato Head!! Thank you Simon and Mark for this wonderful community!!

[@davidrattner9]

You are a huge and important part of this community!! 🤎💜

[@longwaytotipperary]

@@davidrattner9 thank you, David. As are you!!! ❣️I had to laugh when Simon discovered the quad 8 after arbitrating the monopoly game. I had been pointing that out to him gently (I don’t like to yell) for a while. The expression he made was adorably hilarious!!

[@davidrattner9]

​@longwaytotipperary was so hilarious indeed..rewatched it a few times. 😁

[@longwaytotipperary]

@@davidrattner9 me too! 😄

[@shadowoftime3627]

I think the break allowed you to see a lot of overlooked things in the puzzle. Gave your eyes a fresh look that allowed you to see things you easily missed when doing a puzzle for a long time. Maybe you should take breaks more often. You do so good at making the video look as if it didn't pause. So maybe add some tea breaks for to refresh your brain. But keep up the good work. You make amazing videos.

[@MichaelPaine]

As soon as I knew what greens composition was, and therefore what purple was, I focussed more on where the leftovers from the quads in purple could be

[@johnlee635]

37:06 for me without using set. I found fairly quickly that you can limit 6 and 8 in box 6 using quad logic as well as 8 in box 7. Then followed the same coloring of 17 (stemming from asking where they go around the 178 quad) and it just flowed from there. Nice puzzle!

[@andykettle653]

Simon is a cross between Fay Wray and Houdini. A beastly sudoku grabs hold of him but he valiantly fights the good fight to escape. Always some squeals along the way. Great stuff!

[@Alex_Meadows]

At 20:00 Mark is going to be so proud 🤩

[@ruminator2943]

😂

[@jannejaakkola5836]

It really is quite interesting how differently you can approach this. As I didn't know about the "Wetering rule", I ended up focusing more on the 1s and 7s in the boxes 4 and 7. The puzzle was still very nice, but pretty different than the solve we saw here.

[@LednacekZ]

honestly, if i did not solve the sudoku before watching the video, i would get lost. Simon took "the scenic route" many times during the solve.

[@xerodeus2337]

Simon! We wanted to see the Monopoly dispute being settled! lol

[@wenen4510]

Really liked this. Managed to solve this without SET in 59:10, for which I am grateful because I can never see SET things. My first breakthrough was seeing that, due to restrictions on 8 in rows 6 and 7 (therefore limiting 8 in C3 to R8 R9), 8 had to join the 456 in box 4 to form a 4568 quad in the top left of that box. After that, exploring where 1&7s could go into boxes 4 and 7 and how those would impact the 17 circles elsewhere in the grid led me to colouring 17 pairs, which broke it open for me.

[@sirgeremiah]

I agree - being able to mark the quad clues would have helped a lot in this puzzle. Maybe Sven can figure out how to let us change their color? In any case, I really enjoyed this puzzle. It was clean and simple, but still difficult.

[@HunterJE]

I do wonder if this is a case better served by the "fish-shaped" form of Aad that doesn't remove a box from the smaller 4x4 region and so gives exact 1:1 equivalency between sets? Seems like it'd be a similar logical path and at least for me removing the "same plus another set of 1-9" mental gymnastics makes it simpler to follow...

[@coconuts2513]

It really makes no difference. Box 9 always contains a set of 1-9 regardless if you take it out or leave it in.

[@TheSonicPerson]

You can solve it that way too because it equates the two sets. In one set you have 8 digits that need to be selected from 2,3,4,5,6 and in the other set you have 8 digits that need to be selected from 1,7,8,9. That leaves no room for extra digits since there are 16 cells total so everything is forced.

[@archieb303]

As someone who wasnt aware of Aad's logic used in this solve, I wasnt going to be able to solve this one on my tod, but the 20 mins i spent with it followed by Simons explanation and implementation of Aad's geometry was wonderful. Seems like i'll need some more practice before tackling some more video puzzles

[@st0rmforce]

Yeah. I did a load of pencil marking to start, because there are a few buts of logic that narrows down some cells here and there. Then knowing it's going to have some set stuff going on, I tried what I could remember and got nowhere.

[@DrSpecialful]

Similar for me, I had to solve it by a complex network of x-wings and colouring 1 and 7. To see that most that network could have been boiled down to one set was pretty.

[@sirgeremiah]

I've gotten a lot better in the year or so I've been watching Simon. But I still have times I get as far as I can, then let Simon start playing, until he shows me what I misseed (or, in cases like this one, didn't know).

[@demindf]

Solved it in 64:36. Didn't use the Aad's theorem, because I've seen it only once looong time ago and didn't know it's name, so I didn't get the reference from the title. First breakthrough was by noticing that in box 4 the number 8 must be in one of the squares where 456 are. Then noticed some funny interaction between box 4 and box 7, and was able to exclude some digits, and found a 5 in box 7. So that 5 was my first digit, which Simon only found at 41:28. All in all enjoyed the puzzle. Had to use some interesting logic to workaround not knowing the theorem.

[@Tiranasta]

Solved in 19:46. Didn't need to use Aad's theorem or any other kind of explicit set theory, it all came together pretty quickly once I started tracking where the 1s and 7s needed to go.

[@LednacekZ]

26:05 for me. I am completely beside myself. i am really happy with the solve.

[@michaelmatter1222]

Bravo PotatoHead & Simon 👏👏👏👏 -Cheers from 99% Sneaky

[@ServantOfSatania]

34:18 For me, despite the title I had much more success not thinking of the set and instead honing on a certain suspicious pair of digits in the corner box, after using cross-box quad 8s for all their worth

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

same, set just confused me but i managed to find the break in

[@RoderickEtheria]

I didn't even use Aad's trick to solve this. I solved it in 38:40. Chasing 1s and 7s around the grid was plenty.

[@piarittersporn]

Nice puzzle.

[@inspiringsand123]

Let's Get Cracking: 04:25 Simon's time: 53m07s Puzzle Solved: 57:32 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Bobbins: 1x (15:47) Three In the Corner: 1x (49:47) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Pencil Mark/mark: 19x (06:14, 06:41, 08:29, 08:33, 17:38, 19:13, 22:08, 23:39, 23:43, 24:51, 25:04, 30:30, 32:11, 38:22, 42:50, 45:43, 48:47, 49:00, 54:11) Ah: 14x (07:34, 18:44, 21:15, 26:33, 26:54, 28:08, 29:13, 29:20, 29:20, 29:20, 32:01, 34:25, 43:48, 44:59, 55:56) Sorry: 7x (16:31, 16:43, 17:23, 23:25, 44:25, 53:37, 53:37) Brilliant: 6x (00:28, 01:34, 20:49, 20:56, 57:31, 57:34) Obviously: 6x (08:44, 12:16, 14:03, 14:14, 14:18, 38:47) Beautiful: 4x (01:39, 02:10, 02:10, 35:40) Hang On: 4x (09:27, 24:12, 44:07) Proof: 4x (11:08, 11:57, 12:01, 12:02) Shouting: 3x (02:41, 14:22, 44:28) In Fact: 3x (02:46, 04:28, 32:04) Naked Single: 2x (51:02, 57:12) The Answer is: 2x (12:14, 39:23) Clever: 2x (57:52, 57:55) Lovely: 2x (04:49, 39:14) Fascinating: 2x (36:18, 36:25) By Sudoku: 2x (34:42, 37:26) Shenanigans: 2x (49:53, 49:55) We Can Do Better Than That: 2x (48:24, 49:06) What Does This Mean?: 2x (16:43, 33:53) That is Sick: 2x (21:31, 21:33) Cake!: 2x (03:06, 03:09) Good Grief: 1x (44:25) What on Earth: 1x (16:35) Goodness: 1x (48:47) Out of Nowhere: 1x (41:41) Nonsense: 1x (07:53) Bingo: 1x (18:44) I Have no Clue: 1x (33:53) Going Mad: 1x (04:18) Gorgeous: 1x (18:49) Take a Bow: 1x (57:44) Bonkers: 1x (51:11) Surely: 1x (36:41) Full stop: 1x (21:33) Whoopsie: 1x (06:11) Weird: 1x (41:31) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Seventeen (9 mentions) One (99 mentions) Green (31 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Even (6) - Odd (1) Column (12) - Row (10) 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!

[@dikephobia]

simon says bobbins at 23:03

[@anaayoung9142]

Whoa... I started but did not go to far. After you did the set part I give another shot and was able to finish!!! 🎉🎉 Great puzzle! It is amazing how some people can make such good puzzles with so little hints!! 😊

[@David_K_Booth]

Any day with a (link to a) Sandra and Nala puzzle is likely to be a good day.

[@Rubrickety]

I noted the title, considered Aad's theorem (which I remembered this time), looked at the grid, couldn't see how that could possibly be relevant, and solved it without using it. Sorry, PotatoHead!

[@psiphiorg]

What a great puzzle! My time today was 38:19, solver number 4432.

[@jkid1134]

I hope they're playing Monopoly by the rules... They're a path you don't want to stray from. You think you're being generous or merciful or clever and all of a sudden you're in purgatory... Oh, nice puzzle. Inspired, clever, intricate. Tricky in the good kinda way.

[@wanderlustwarrior]

31:25 for me. That was challenging but very fun!

[@zealot2147]

43:00 for me and wow, I did not see that break in for a minute but everything kinda flows from there, it’s really crazy. Rows 6 and 7 were beautiful

[@stevesebzda570]

It displaces the 4 in box6 (putting the 4s on quad in box4 on top). Now, there is definite one "4" in purple (and no 4s in green), so the "4" in that quad near box2 can't be another 4 in project (so it's in r3c6) It's going to be a battle between one more (of 1-9) in purple, and zero in green (in green). You keep track, Simon. It's too late, and I'm shot. (Not that the "lateness" has anything to do with it lol) Onward.. Good luck 😂

[@stevesebzda570]

Oh, I thought it was the reply area. 19:15, btw Onward, Simon. Good luck 😂

[@sams5963]

Monopoly arbitrator! I like how the way your life goes on as a dad as well as a puzzle solver.

[@Rach881101]

50:22 for me. Beautiful puzzle!

[@chocolateboy300]

I got 45 minutes. This one was so fun to practice scanning on. I think I did very well and as always, it feels good to beat Simon's time. Great Puzzle!

[@explodinpineapple5618]

absolutely my favorite puzzle I've been able to complete.

[@alienrenders]

41:38 for me. This was complicated. Wondering if I missed something more obvious. I liked this one nonetheless.

[@alienrenders]

I watched the video. I'm not sure I like the intended way. I much preferred the way I did it. You notice the 8's on the right on rows 6 and 7. But the 1, 7 and 9's are just as important because those can't go in the 2x2's in box 4 or 7. So where do they go in those boxes? For example, a 7 in row 6 on the right means that in box 4, the 7 will go in column 3. OTOH, if the 7 is in row 7 on the right, it means the 7 will go in column 3 in box 7. The same is true for digits 1, 7 and 9. And we already placed the 8 in column 3. So instant quad.

[@andrewnicholson3810]

this had a very smooth solve even without using aad’s theorem, but i appreciate seeing the elegant solve it has when it’s used!

[@flwi]

Impressive solve! I enjoy watching your videos in the evening even though I'm not good at solving sudokus myself. For some reason my brain immediately starts to think how to program a sudoku solver, so it's not relaxing. Does anyone know if they _always_ manage to solve the sudokus? I guess they always show their successful attempts, but I wonder if they always succeed.

[@flwi]

Oh, I guess he answered my question in the video. "assuming I solved this and it becomes a video" 52:30

[@trainsinpoland]

By their own admission they do fail to solve a puzzle quite frequently. As you say they only show solved videos. When asked why do they not show a failed attempt, their answer was "nobody wants to watch me stare at a screen for minutes at a time completely silent with no clue what to do next".

[@tessabrisac7423]

And fact is, Mark once published a video of a failed solve and it was both boring and really sad, which somehow proved their point: I for one don’t want to see any more of those!

[@Babinzo]

If Simon pencil-marked any more cells, he would be referred to The Hague (still enjoyed the video though)

[@YukishiroSan]

I solved it another way :O, I mostly did a follow up of the possible positions of 1 and 7 from the 2 quads in the right bottom corner. Basically, with the other clues, I realized both 1 and 7 couldnt be both be in box 9 (row 7) since theyd be in conflict with the 8 in column 3, box 7. they also couldnt both be in box 6 since thatd force the 8 in the quad with 8 and 9, into box 5, breaking the puzzle. That was basically my break in and used colors to track 1 and 7s to follow it up and it kinda flowed from there rather naturally.

[@daanperelachaise]

26:41 (solve 1013). It's weird how sometimes break-ins just seem to happen and leave me wondering what actually happened and how. Obviously, goodliffed the life out of this sudoku ;)

[@RecreationallyCynical]

I solved it in about an hour without knowing/applying Aad's theorem; I just used pencil marks and coloring. That said, I didn't see much of a difference with my solve besides not immediately knowing the contents of the green chevron.

[@JohnRandomness105]

21:10 I needed the push of the entries in the green cells. Furthermore, I still got quite stuck until I was inspired(?) to use the letters A and G to represent 1 and 7. These two wedged open the first crack. I also used letters to represent unknowns when centermarking around some circles, until I found a way to get rid of them. I resolved G and A, and also the numerous bi-value cells in the endgame when I saw that the only way for the 67 circle could have 7 was if I placed G next to it. My last two acts were replacing G with 7 and A with 1.

[@mipsuperk]

56:37 As with many Simon puzzles, this lack of spotting could have been avoided by not continuing to use colors after the color's value has been determined.

[@djcomidi]

Your solve counter says 62 in 225 days. When i open the puzzle on april 10, the solve counter says 1900 in 225.9 days... suspiciously massive increase in solves in not even 1 day !?

[@RichSmith77]

(Do you mean April 4? That's a week ago.) The CtC channel is pretty popular. The video has had 23k views as of the time of this comment. It would only take 1 in 10 of those viewers to attempt and solve the puzzle before watching the video to get to above 1900 solves. If anything, I'd say it's a pity that the percentage of viewers solving the puzzle themselves is so low.

[@djcomidi]

@@RichSmith77 I fixed the date. I assumed the number of solves grew linear over time, shamefully disregarding the CtC-effect :)

[@SpongeJ]

Since when doesn't Simon clean up the grid and color all color-digit before checking if the solution is right? This triggers me way more than the 8 and and the 9 being overlooked for a little while in the bottom right of the puzzle hahaha.

[@ezra7088]

Well now I feel less bad about getting stuck at the point that theorem was needed, as I don't know it. I know there's also other ways of solving it but I'm assuming they're quite difficult as well.

[@luisa9999]

I solved it without the set and in just over 45 minutes and I actually think that the set makes it harder 😂 The break in for me was thinking about what could go into the bottom row of box six and then the realization that the nine around the 89 circle could only go in one place because all other options would break box seven

[@draxiedru]

27 min and chuffed with that. I just coloured where the 17 combinations had to go. Fortunately it worked because i am terrible at set!

[@constantsong]

I think marking the quad clues would have definitely helped! They certainly got confusing after a while.

[@thenatundi9009]

I love how simon broke out the complex set theory to solve this one, while I just solved it like a simpleton... both routes were still very interesting indeed!

[@Urutsini]

I'm curious why the van de Wetering corners are always in the same orientation (top left and bottom right).

[@Kinada]

That ended up taking me over two hours, but I had to split the solve over two days, maybe that slowed me down.

[@ericveneto1593]

He HATES pencil marks that would be actually helpful

[@petergerlagh9858]

34:44 with a more brute-force approach, and using colouring for the 1-7 pair.

[@highpath4776]

Monopoly Crossed With Suduko, seems there is some potential

[@BryanLu0]

Solve number 212 in 38:41 Some good logic with the 17s. Quadruple clues are so simple, yet so great.

[@BryanLu0]

Oh, I didn't use any SET tricks if there are

[@yaelvercammer5468]

Loved this one and proud of my first solve of an over 1h video! 01:41:22 for me.

[@MattYDdraig]

65:38 A really good puzzle with such a clean ruleset and very clever logical interactions on the grid. I spotted the reason for the name reference almost immediately and had a very quick first digit but really let myself and the puzzle down with slow followups to that. On the plus side, I got to enjoy the puzzle for longer!

[@arpwable]

Just starting this one now and I have to say the ruleset could be cleaner... Namely, it doesn't specify whether the quad numbers need to be in iexactly one or at least one of the surrounding cells, which does seem to impact the logic.

[@emilywilliams3237]

Wonderful in so many ways - thanks so much, Simon. I especially like that you had a chance to explain Aad's application of SET. (But I must confess, I miss the scrabble bags ...)

[@juliadefranco1130]

Interesting puzzle! This one stumped us.

[@AndreAy1975]

Solved it with much help from the video.

[@ericpraline1302]

Really nice, thanks, and possibly the first time I've done less pencil-marking than Simon. I would have struggled without the clue in the title!

[@deangaudet]

this may be the first time that simon used more pencilmarks in a cell than i did. my max was 5: i pencilmarked all of boxes 7 and 4 (using the 8s simon seems to have ignored so far, 24min into the vid) ... and that was at most 5 centermarks. i didn't use aad's theorem.

[@Gonzalo_Garcia_]

19:36 for me. Wow, what a puzzle. I don't think I would have ever solved it without the hint in the title. Loved it!!

[@KrisCadwell]

I couldn't solve this one. I found the set but I just didn't notice the same things Simon did. Once again I'm envious of his brain lol

[@davidmartineau4037]

All of a sudden, I acn't open the link to the puzzle. I have this problem with the last soduko from Simon too. Edit - It works now. My best guess at this point is that the network that I was on was blocking content. For my own sanity I will test this again when I get back on that network.

[@jeroenw9853]

It works for me, so the link seems ok. Have you tried opening the link in a private window or a different browser? Sometimes that works

[@WimmekeVL]

Opens for me too, might be something on your end.

[@Ennar]

Link works fine for me. Have you tried clearing cookies and browsing data?

[@xerodeus2337]

Mark would have loved this puzzle with all the pencil marks :D

[@jelenaradulovic2214]

22:17 for me and I did not use colors. I rarely manage to beat Simon and Mark's time :/

[@lorenb6066]

Heehee. Simon, you ask if some of us have found "all this very easy". The quads were difficult to spot and then deduce numbers from it even though I had heard of the Aad equivalence through this channel, but the Sudoku at the end when you ask, well yes that was easy 😂

[@Pritchie45]

29 minutes

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

31:14 for me.

[@mxpxorsist]

22:54 for me

[@theredstoneengineer6934]

28:03 for me

[@phuybrechts6875]

Where go the 2 red 1/7 in box 2 and 5 . 😅

[@MariaVlasiou]

8:50 i marked this by a blue colour

[@SuneReitz]

🎉

[@transrightsbaybee]

the snap at 18:46 sounded so perfect what the heck

[@transrightsbaybee]

im going crazy this is like the platonic ideal of snapping your fingers how did he do that

[@HunterJE]

One more piece of low hanging fruit available from the start - the 6 in the far bottom right quad limits the locations of the 6 around the nearby 6 7 quad to box 8, which further limits 6s around the 2 6 quad in box 5...

[@riluna3695]

Slight correction: That is the bottom left, not bottom right. Otherwise, exactly right. That's the fanciest bit of logic I was able to do on my own before getting permanently stuck D:

[@HunterJE]

@@riluna3695 hah yep, my brain mixes those up somewhere on the trip between the spatial and language parts of my brain (weirdly am much more intuitively fluent in "port/starboard" even though I'm rarely on boats lately)

[@TurquoizeGoldscraper]

43:40 for me.

[@jansteyaert1]

I'd say Simon took the harder path. Personally I find the puzzle easier if you literally quad van de Wetering. All 4 corners, the overlapping areas are really powerful in this puzzle.

[@miyahollands6136]

but surely the 4 disproves the theorem, because how do you put a 4 in green, with the adjacent 4's in boxes 2 and 5 being placed where they are? they prevent a 4 being placed in any green square, therefore green isn't a complete set of the digits 1-9 🤷‍♀️

[@RichSmith77]

No-one claimed green was a full set 1-9. (How could they be, there's only 7 green cells). Aad's SET trick is that the 16 purple digits are the same as green (7 digits) + a complete set 1-9 (9 digits).

[@miyahollands6136]

@RichSmith77 so, what I said is correct then, theorem is incorrect then. thanks for proving my point

[@RichSmith77]

@@miyahollands6136 There is no theorem that the green digits contain a set of the digits 1-9. Aad's "theorem" is not disproved by this puzzle's solution, since green contains {1256789}, and purple contains {1256789}+{123456789}. So the purple cells contain the same digits as green, plus the digits {123456789}.

[@bones7708]

​@@miyahollands6136Nope. Theorem is correct and Rich disproved your point. Theorem does NOT say that green contains full set of digits 1-9.

[@gibsoand]

Green is 7 cells, how on earth did you imagine all 9 digits squeezing in there? Aad's theorum is that purple = Green + the digits 1-0, or I've seen it alternatively described as Purple + box 9 (so essentially the bottom right 4x4 box is equivalent to the purple squares, it's just easier and more interesting to exclude the extra set of 1-9 and only deal with the 7 green cells.

[@nmappraiser9926]

Are we now going to have to hear about the intended use of corner marks and central pencil marks every video?! Please, enough with the pedantic overexplanation. Assume that people watching videos on the channel understand sudoku and elementary problem solving. Maybe supply links to basic tenets of sudoku for new viewers to catch up, but PLEASE stop treating viewers like we have one-day memories.

[@ettaz]

Jesus, who hurt you? I enjoy getting reminded about things I already know and don't mind them being sometimes repeated. Not everyone watches every video every day

[@BryanLu0]

Don't like, don't watch. Cracking the cryptic isn't the only Sudoku channel, and they don't have to cater to you.

[@Esperi74]

Every video is potentially going to be someone's first time on the channel. Skip through the explanations if you don't need them.

[@nmappraiser9926]

@@ettaz OK. Sudoku is a puzzle where you put digits 1 through 9 in each row, column, and box. The digits 1 through 9 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. A box is a polygon with four sides. A polygon is a shape formed by line segments. I'll remind you of all these tomorrow.

[@TPH250290]

Who pissed in your cornflakes?