The Coloured Circles Sudoku

[@LuProch]

"B is the color of 7." "This is bonkers." This episode was absolute gold 😀

[@kaddiddlehopper]

It's a peculiar experience watching these videos. I follow all of Simon's logic, and I feel smarter because I did, and feel like I could have figured it out. But when I try the puzzles myself, I see very few of his deductions. Heh.

[@longwaytotipperary]

Same!

[@ronjohnson6916]

Right. I call them nod along puzzles. I can follow the logic. And when pointed in the right direction I can do stuff. But when it comes time to try it solo ...

[@kaddiddlehopper]

@@ronjohnson6916 It's a good experience sometimes going back and solving the ones I watched a couple years ago. I don't remember them, but the logic stuck enough that I can usually figure them out and they feel like a new puzzle.

[@tonTeufel]

I shout at the screen when I find stuff way before him, but at the same time I would've never gotten to that point in the puzzle on my own.

[@rachelriesling9112]

100% me too🥲🤣

[@bryanroland9402]

I think it may be possible to judge the difficulty or brain-bending properties of a puzzle by noting how tousled Simon's hair is at the end of the video. I'd say that one was a four.

[@AnaFromTheShire]

LMAO

[@MatthewBouyack]

54:28 - "Sudoku is doing things out of nowhere. This is very kind of it. It's very rarely this generous!" 😆

[@Jaze327]

The biggest thing Simon missed was the massive Star Wars reference when he had an X-wing on red 5s.

[@badmitten825]

Nice find!

[@juliadefranco1130]

My husband and I solved this one together and I was taking notes, I don't know how Simon manages doing puzzles like this all in his head.

[@cathybryant5119]

Yes, I had a piece of paper where I listed the naughty digits and marked them off as I found them. I can't keep sets of numbers in my head. Both Simon and Mark have an amazing ability to do this, which I greatly admire.

[@Timlagor]

What really baffles me is that he is clearly much better at them than me and then he seems to struggle to work through the naughty digits even after he realises there's 1 naughty 7

[@ShadowBeatzInc]

"B is the color of 7" is the type of sentence that keeps me coming back to this channel

[@ryaneakins7269]

“B is the colour of seven”.

[@nataslia2490]

The setting of this puzzle was absolutely gorgeous. I really appreciated the size of the puzzle because I tried to think of how you could have the exact same ruleset in a 9x9 or a 6x6 and the very pretty deductions that were made to find the distribution of the naughty digits doesnt work. For example, in 9x9 there would have to be at least one 8, two 7s, three 6s, four 5s, one 4, and one 2 to make the maths work. That would be a minimum of 12 naughty digits, which wouldnt work. In a 6x6 there would only need to be a minimum of one 5 and two 4s. Although there are ways to distribute the other 3 naughty digits, it’s not quite as pretty as the strict distribution in this puzzle. Truly beautiful setting :)

[@joostvanrens]

59:20 "B is the colour of 7. Ah that would make sense"

[@inspiringsand123]

Rules: 05:13 Let's Get Cracking: 06:31 Simon's time: 54m21s Puzzle Solved: 1:00:52 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Three In the Corner: 5x (47:06, 47:31, 49:02, 49:17, 49:19) Bobbins: 3x (55:27, 55:27, 55:27) The Secret: 3x (02:48, 02:48, 53:14) The Bot: 1x (09:37) Cooking with Gas: 1x (23:12) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Naughty: 116x (05:50, 05:57, 05:59, 06:02, 06:13, 08:46, 09:13, 09:45, 09:47, 11:09, 11:10, 11:15, 11:22, 11:44, 12:43, 12:52, 12:54, 13:02, 13:05, 13:33, 13:36, 13:40, 13:42, 13:44, 13:49, 13:51, 14:13, 14:22, 15:44, 16:02, 16:13, 16:16, 16:28, 17:00, 17:07, 17:19, 17:37, 18:02, 18:20, 18:38, 18:57, 19:01, 19:02, 19:05, 19:18, 19:47, 19:47, 19:49, 20:04, 20:12, 20:39, 20:44, 21:01, 21:05, 21:07, 21:40, 21:44, 22:15, 24:39, 26:33, 26:35, 27:13, 27:36, 27:48, 27:55, 28:38, 32:52, 32:58, 33:00, 33:15, 33:20, 33:28, 33:30, 33:40, 33:42, 33:42, 33:45, 33:51, 33:51, 33:57, 33:58, 34:08, 34:25, 35:53, 35:55, 36:07, 38:00, 38:02, 38:41, 42:19, 42:19, 48:22, 48:33, 48:36, 48:39, 48:41, 48:42, 48:45, 48:47, 48:50, 48:57, 49:05, 49:12, 51:14, 52:18, 52:23, 52:26, 52:32, 52:37, 57:05, 57:51, 1:01:33, 1:01:46, 1:02:03, 1:02:19, 1:02:54) Hang On: 15x (07:44, 17:52, 19:56, 19:56, 24:06, 26:14, 29:02, 31:03, 31:05, 31:05, 34:48, 37:15, 44:03, 47:40, 50:49) Ah: 12x (12:58, 17:47, 25:24, 34:58, 40:17, 43:59, 44:01, 49:05, 50:38, 54:19, 55:24, 59:26) Sorry: 9x (03:02, 03:11, 15:35, 16:49, 17:05, 24:19, 31:09, 59:16, 59:31) By Sudoku: 7x (26:54, 33:00, 33:49, 46:56, 54:14, 55:59, 56:07) Goodness: 4x (39:45, 44:03, 44:34, 53:30) Obviously: 4x (02:17, 07:10, 26:45, 42:00) Brilliant: 3x (00:38, 03:13, 1:00:15) Shouting: 3x (02:46, 03:07, 03:46) In Fact: 3x (35:49, 37:42, 55:59) Bother: 2x (45:32, 56:22) Out of Nowhere: 2x (34:40, 54:29) Clever: 2x (43:21, 1:00:36) In the Spotlight: 2x (47:09, 49:21) Lovely: 2x (1:01:38, 1:02:28) Beautiful: 2x (21:55, 1:01:49) Fascinating: 2x (1:00:34, 1:04:22) What Does This Mean?: 2x (22:08, 51:31) Pencil Mark/mark: 2x (09:08, 33:04) Cake!: 2x (03:14, 04:24) What on Earth: 1x (08:03) Apologies: 1x (03:14) The Answer is: 1x (20:41) Stuck: 1x (56:43) Incredible: 1x (01:54) Bonkers: 1x (51:28) Irritating: 1x (01:54) That's Huge: 1x (54:09) Have a Think: 1x (28:48) Unique: 1x (31:40) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Fourteen (2 mentions) One (113 mentions) Green (11 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Even (2) - Odd (0) Column (44) - Row (25) 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!

[@Quiltfish]

5x three in the corner? That's some Escherian sudoku.

[@cathybryant5119]

Gotta love that he said "Naughty" 116 times. Let's hope the dreaded KZbin algorithm doesn't think this video is X-rated.

[@AntjedePantje]

This is amazing! Is there a spreadsheet with all this data? I love a good spreadsheet xD

[@Orenotter]

This show seems it's ever improving. This eight by eight grid was quite moving. I was filled with elation At twin celebration As threes their positions were proving!

[@chipsounder4633]

Been a sub since before covid. In my elation id like to bid, The best show on youtube shines. Simons solves are just devine.

[@christopherbowers7236]

these comments are good, each one is changing it up, a Poem Battle

[@YosseFadi]

Super proud of FINALLY having a solve faster than Simon hahaha This one I managed in 36m05s! Super fun puzzle, my main logical path was the following: - There are 8 "naughty" lettered cells - There are 8 of each number in the whole grid, and every cell has a letter. Therefore, for each number we have a minimum amount of naughty cells that they can appear on: - Eights: 8 correct, 0 naughty - Sevens: 7 correct, 1 naughty - Sixes: 6 correct, 2 naughty - Fives: 5 correct, 3 naughty - Fours: 8 correct (two groups of 4), 0 naughty - Threes: 6 correct (two groups of 3), 2 naughty - Twos: 8 correct (four groups of 2), 0 naughty - Ones: 8 correct (eight groups of 1), 0 naughty This gives the exact configuration of the naughty lettered cells, and the solve path becomes very straightforward, trying to fit the groups from larger to smaller and keeping in mind that "ones" must appear on all letters,

[@brianshilling]

Yeah, that's the part that clicked early for me, and then it was smashing numbers in where they fit.

[@CharlesV148]

Same

[@Paul-cn3ij]

Took about 3 minutes but saw the same thing having only worked out the two possibilities for the 1 at that point. Finished in a similar time of 37:28

[@12mkamran]

Hey All, got everything up to the fives part, but don't get the fours. Why are there no naughty numbers? Is it because the first 4 numbers (8-5) occupy 6 out of 8 naughty numbers and the last number must occupy exactly 2 to make sense?

[@tabris1135]

​@@12mkamranyup. Maximum for naughty is 8 in total after all

[@Adrian_Grey]

55:55 for me. I found it helpful to keep track of how many of each color/letter I had left as I filled in digits. Knowing there was one 1 in each letter was important too. If I saw I had say, 6 of a particular color left, I know one is a 1, and the remaining five have to be split up as 2s and 3s (assuming none are lying).

[@Gonzalo_Garcia_]

29:49 for me. It took me embarrassingly long to understand the logic behind the puzzle, but once I finally did I absolutely loved it. What a fantastic puzzle!!

[@daanphlips662]

31:33 for me. I realized pretty early on that the naughty digits had to be 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7 to satisfy the rules.

[@JalebJay]

In the mathyiest way you can say: n is naughty 8 mod n number of times in this puzzle.

[@dorlirahmeti7576]

Thank you for the feature really enjoyed the video. When you mention if it would help to know that 1s should be in all different colors, that would make a bit easier some deduction that is why probably is 3 out of 5 start and not 4 out of 5 stars. But most of the logic is quite similar as mine. And I must say the double 3 in the corners was intentionally place and being naughty. Thanks again and take care.

[@stevieinselby]

The 1s only need to be in different colours/letters once you have established that you are using up all the naughty cells with 7, 6, 6, 5, 5, 5, 3, 3 - otherwise you could have let's say six 1s all on different letters but then the last two 1s on the same letter with them both being naughty, and you can't rule that out _ab inicio_

[@dorlirahmeti7576]

@@stevieinselby That is indeed what I was referring too. I was talking for the part Simon said in the end of the video.

[@Mausemotte]

63 minutes :) very fun and quite proud of myself for solving it in the first time and in a similar time as Simon. Usually, I would not have dared attempt a puzzle where the video is longer than 1 hr but I saw so many things very quickly from the start I had to try and I am so glad I did! This was for sure one of the hardest puzzles I have solved yet and it went so smoothly and I enjoyed it a lot. Only started solving puzzles myself earlier this year and variant sudoku a couple months ago and I am quite proud of my progress! Thank you for these videos, without this channel I would have never been able to solve a puzzle like this and get enjoyment from it. It is crazy how far these videos can take you. I will try to gain more confidence to attempt harder puzzles because this went surprisingly well, which I did not expect going into it!

[@Laezar1]

wish there was a link to the colored circles version too, it looks easier to follow for me

[@SvenBeh]

I actually coloured all the cells before solving it. But that was only semi-good, as I had no good way of marking the naughty cells

[@chris5619]

@@SvenBeh I colored the cells also, which I really liked. Then I used red circles for the naughty cells, and light gray X's for the normal ones. My final puzzle definitely looked crazy! But it also allowed me to double click seemingly somewhat easier than Simon (when he decided to remove his green).

[@QuarkTwain]

I started by coloring each of the six smallest sets of letters. Then I made one of the large sets lights gray, and left the other set white. Funny enough, I think this setup is much easier to scan than either the colored circles or the letters

[@vedrankordic9161]

@@SvenBeh I use the pen tool in such cases, either to circle a digit or to frame a cell.

[@cathybryant5119]

I was very pleased that I worked out how to solve this puzzle on my own. Once I knew the set of naughty digits, I also realized that there must be a 1 in every letter. This helped work out some of the letters immediately, once the higher digits were placed. Simon did a lovely job explaining the logic and I can't get enough of his excitement when he makes a break-through. 🤓💡😂

[@AdmiralMinell]

"Those fives have a quality beyond their numberliness - they also have a quality of naughtiliness." - Simon 2023

[@MattYDdraig]

24:40 Nice use of modulo/remainders to break in. I ended up scribbling the options on a pad to break down the distribution which made things easier along with colouring. Really neat setting.

[@Jesthers]

Beaten in about 40 minutes. I think this is the first time I've ever bested Simon? I pretty much never expected to be able to do that, and this certainly feels like a weird puzzle to have done it on. This one felt straightforward for me, it pretty much tells you what digits the naughty cells have to be and seemed to resolve quite quickly from that, I'm curious to watch Simon's video to see if he got stuck somewhere because I know Simon's better at sudoku than me lol Highly recommend this one, was great fun :D

[@chocolateboy300]

I finished in 79 minutes. This was one of the most fun puzzles I have done. Figuring out that 8 had to belong and could only belong in C's was very fun to spot. Then, the implication of that is that 7, 6, and 5 had to also belong, with one 7's, two 6's, and three 5's. This also meant that 4's had to fully belong. This only leaves 3's missing out two or 2's missing out two. The rest was geometry. I had a blast with this one. It has to be one of my favorites. Great Puzzle!

[@danny98237]

I think this would have gone quicker for you if you had realized that the 8 ones had to all be in different letters.

[@LavenderGooms]

Not necessarily. There could be two naughty cells of the same letter that both have a 1 in them.

[@timjensen4320]

But once you realize all the naughty digits are 3, 5, 6, or 7 you know all 1s are real and each letter needs a 1

[@chris5619]

He finally realized it at the very end of the video when he was reviewing the puzzle and his solve. He realized each letter needed a 1, but couldn't quite decide if it would have helped. I was thinking he would realize it and think of either how the H could have never been 3 or one of the other letters (don't remember which now) he said would be a good candidate for 5s with exactly 5 available, so it couldn't have been. I think that's the point in my solve where I realized the whole thing with the ones as well and it definitely helped after that. I think there was even a part where I realized one letter had 5 real cells, so it couldn't be one of the 3s since that would leave 2 left over.

[@MattYDdraig]

This was one of the first deductions I used to trim the size of each letter "set" making it easier to allocate the other digits among the letters. Definitely useful!

[@laincoubert7236]

@@LavenderGooms my thought process after 10 minutes of looking at the puzzle was: for every number X from 1 to 8, what is the minimum of naughty cells that contain X? and you realize it's the remainder of 8 divided by X: 0, 0, 2, 0, 3, 2, 1, 0. those sum to 8 -- therefore, we reach a significant limitation on the grid. meaning ones cannot be naughty cells at all.

[@morganlak4337]

This is the first video of yours that ive felt like i could keep up with, what a great series! I feel like Ive learned so much

[@sacredsock8031]

I would say that 3 stars out of 5 only applies once you get your head around the rules

[@brianshilling]

21:49 for me. I have no idea why that made sense to my brain, but I just blasted through that one like nothing. I am boggled that I powered through it so hard.

[@longwaytotipperary]

Congratulations!

[@nidoking042]

I spent about half an hour trying random things and getting nowhere before I stopped to wonder which digits were the naughty ones, and the revelation that every letter needed a one came very quickly from there. It absolutely helps the solve, because you now know that you can't fill all of a given letter with a single digit. For example, H can't be three threes and the naughty digit, because that would eliminate the possibility of a one in H, so it must be one one and two twos. I also colored each letter at the start to help me visualize that, which may have made things smoother overall.

[@MarcusTheDorkus]

69:37 Such an amazing brain on the setter to come up with this. I was on the cusp of seeing the modular arithmetic logic that lets you know how the digits are distributing among the lying cells, but I just didn't quite make it without the Simon's help. I still always feel good about the things I do manage to get faster than Simon so I'll at least take that for the placement of 8s & 7s, the 1/liar pair in G, and that 1 must exist exactly once in every letter.

[@sagov9]

quite frustrating waiting for simon to realise that there has to be one 1 in every letter, because none of them are naughty

[@theadjectiveform]

He figured it out... after solving the puzzle 😆

[@alsoroses]

Whoa. I solved this without realizing that. The 1s (and most things) were finished by suduko after the naughty x-wing was resolved by the 7s.

[@martysears]

Beautiful puzzle which thoroughly deserved the feature, and perhaps the best and cleverest use of the circle rule I have seen yet. The full colour version is certainly the most aesthetically pleasing. But what I really want to give props to is Simon's solve, quick grasping of the logic, and beautifully eloquent explaining of it. My favourite part of the logic is working out that the nature of the rules entirely force which digits will be naughty; you don't even have to look at the grid. I was very much looking forward to this part of the video, and Simon delivered in a really satisfying and clear way. Loved him iteratively going through the digits from high to low, and proving to himself that one naughty 7, two naughty 6s, three naughty 5s and 2 naughty 3s were needed. It was quite a long time into the solve before I properly grasped this, and the fact that all 1s needed to be different colours. The fact that Simon grasped that so quickly was brilliant. Great puzzle, great video.

[@MichaelMoore99]

As a color-blind viewer, thank you so much for doing the alternate version, because the actual circles were gibberish to me.

[@dylanlenn7836]

today I learned b is the color of 7

[@johnh2052]

The simple way to highlight sets later is just to remove the green colour from one cell temporarily, and click it to get the set. Safer than going manual.

[@Mennoo_]

52:12 for me. Absolutely stunning puzzle once again by prof.Dori. He's on a role lately with good puzzles and deserves to get this many features lately. Managed to solve it nice and steady (ignoring the part where I got stuck on a very obvious sudoku part). But only after the solve, I heard from Dorlir that there's even more elegance behind it which I did miss, which makes this puzzle even better (I apparently did make the right deduction behind that, but less consciously) I did solve this one using the colored version btw. At first i had the same reaction with the colored one making me dizzy and hard to spot all the different colors, but I noticed that using the letter version (there was already a colorblind-friendly version on LMD when I solved it), it was much harder for me to spot the differences, so eventually used the colored one again. Especially the break on point is more obvious in the colored one.

[@leporid257]

Did you play it on LMG? that's a great time!

[@Mennoo_]

@@leporid257 I did. Dorlir actually asked me to solve it (after he solved one of mine), and he watched me solve it on the CtC discord.

[@FirstDraftPhilosopher]

These videos are always a pleasure to watch, and I have been appreciating the backlog of recordings when I am waiting for the new episode. One deduction I was able to make on this puzzle that I kept waiting to see Simon conclude was that, since all 1s are real and there are 8 letters (different colored circles), all 1s must be in each of the differently marked cells and all distinct marks must include a 1. This deduction likely could have sped up some of the solve. Edit: I should have finished watching the video to see Simon reach this same conclusion.

[@sonalita_]

I think this is another type of puzzle like 159 that software developers would find quite easy, especially if you allow yourself to scribble on paper. It quickly becomes apparent which sets of letters map to which digits and the solve becomes quite easy.

[@ckdo1974]

(Ex-) Programmer here. Not that this was hard in any way, but I would have solved this so much quicker if only the rules had actually stated that there is exactly one naughty digit per colour/letter...

[@Anne_Mahoney]

@@ckdo1974 That's true in this puzzle, but I'm not sure it would always have to be.

[@mahmoudabdelghany7112]

Lovely, genius, so much fun. Thanks a lot for the unparallel setting.. thats an awesome start to my weekend

[@aleksandrajanicka6949]

„Right, and that's wrong”. My goodness, I hardly ever laugh as loud as I did when I heard this one 🙂

[@mattiascrowe2549]

What an absolute monster of a puzzle. 41:22 admittedly with some checking of Simon's solve midway to fully grasp the logic

[@Psycl0psz]

"Right, and that's wrong." Lovin' it

[@stevieinselby]

Pleased to say I solved this in under 30 minutes without any help from the video. Much easier to just think about the minimum number of naughty cells by virtue of mod 8 maths, and you can see straight away that there must be (at least) one naughty 7, two naughty 6s, three naughty 5s and two naughty 3s, which totals the eight naughty cells allowed. No need to iterate at all! And that straight away proves that all 1s are goody two-shoes and so all eight 1s are in different letters.

[@andrewgifford8706]

Classic Crackijng the Cryptic quote "B is the color of 7" at 59:20

[@epicpajl]

Two naughty threes in the corner is bordering on poetic.

[@anthonygallucci6471]

Beautiful logic to start off. Loved watching you solve

[@MelissaW09]

I love the fact that at 9:40, he has the same debate about how to pencilmark that I did.

[@jrparker811]

Love it. This one just works the way my brain works, so quicker time than usual for a hard puzzle.

[@MordiggianMorddoth]

The rules are a bit confusing as they are written. My interpretation was that _"Eg: a 5 in a naughty C cell indicates that there are NOT exactly five 5s in cells containing the letter C"_ means one naughty cell containing a number allows any amount of that same number in other cells with the same letter. (I.e. it's possible for four 5s in the C cells so long as one 5 in a C cell is naughty.) The way the solution panned out, I'm pretty sure that's wrong and would make the puzzle almost impossible, but it left me confused for quite a while.

[@MattYDdraig]

If there were 4 total 5s on C then they would have to all be naughty (impossible) of those on non-naughty cells which dictate that the letter contains 5 5s would be broken and only the naughty cells would be correct.

[@MordiggianMorddoth]

@@MattYDdraig That seems to be the correct interpretation. However, the example as written suggests that only a single naughty 5 would be required. I should have focused on the first part _"However, 8 of the lettered cells are naughty; these don’t obey the letter rule."_ , but that doesn't say *ONLY* those cells, so the example made it more confusing to me

[@daha571]

@@MordiggianMorddoth I don't think we can just ignore part of the rules though, can we? It clearly states that a single naughty digit causes the inverse of the standard rule

[@maartenmarien]

With H Simon made the deduction that it would have to be 1 naughty + 1 one and 2 two's, or 3 threes. It was essentially a sort of Knapsack problem on the number of H digits. I was wondering during Simon's solve (I didn't try this puzzle myself) whether this type of deduction on letters might have helped more often? For example, after Simon found 8 eights in C, there were 6 leftover C's in only 3 columns. So these would have consist of naughty cells, or real 1s 2s and 3s.

[@MattYDdraig]

It definitely does help 😅

[@Clainelight]

Hey Simon ! Actually the "1" was useful for "H" letter, you said it could have been "1, 2 and 3s" but if you worked out the 1 had to be in each letters, you would have known "H" to be "1 and 2s", this could also have been used for other letters that were used less times in this puzzle.

[@Sarahr98998]

Aw man the thumbnail really drew me in, but alas, you got rid of all the lovely colored circles...

[@kaushalagrawal6258]

Yes Simon, observing that each color has exactly one 1, and it is not a naughty 1, would have been useful. For example, early on when doing the H, you considered either the corner H to be naughty, or all the remaining H to be naughty. Instead you could have found out that the corner H must be naughty 3-5, R8C4 must be 2, and the remaining two H must be a 1-2 pair. It would've also resolved the F group of 4s. Since we can't place 1 in R6C7, it must be a 4. And I guess there was one or two more instances where it would've helped.

[@bertbergers9171]

I am thinking the finish being initiated by 7 not being red in b was a neat find by Simon. However i am thinking that the 1,2 pair in row 6 and 7 in H would have solved the grid for him if he remembered that they had to be different. Loved the setting of this one, great job!!

[@memyself8340]

I use a spreadsheet on my computer to make a paper copy, then I solve with pencil and eraser. Yes, Simon, the 1's were how I was able to solve it. It took me off and on 2 evenings, probably about 3 hours. But I did it!

[@laincoubert7236]

44 minutes for me. this is such a beautiful puzzle that requires to think abstractly since in a way it's about graph theory and connectivity. that breakthrough twists the sudoku into a sort of table puzzle that helps you match the inserted numbers with letters!

[@missfortune5460]

First time doing one of these puzzles at the same time as watching the video, been too intimidated by them before especially since I can't reach the same conclusions. Needed some of the conclusions from the video, but managed to do a bunch of it myself. These are so enjoyable

[@MrMW2nd]

59:20 one of the rare ctc quotes "b is the color of seven"

[@johnpauladamovsky86]

I'm a connoisseur of words that go together well, and "Dorlir" is a great sounding name... I cannot get it out of my head... I have been walking around for a full week involuntarily sounding out the name "Dorlir"... What is it about the name "Dorlir" which makes it different from every other name?

[@AFT3RDAY5]

OMG 😱 That puzzle took all of my brainpower I could muster and a lot of extra notes, but at least we were rewarded with two 3s in corners 🎉 What an absolute mindboggling challenge 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@suewilliams7091]

well, I am so thick! I could not for the life of me make head nor tail of the rules to this puzzle. I went back to the start of the solve twice too! I did watch the video and eventually think I understood it (kind of). All power to Simon, his brain is phenomenal!

[@KyRaiden]

Good Simon, you kill us. It was that availble for ages : YESSSS :)). Fantastic logig. Congruats

[@markp7262]

46:27 finish. I did, in fact, use the one 1 in each letter to help solve the puzzle. I penciled every place that 1s could go, and eliminated them as I went on. I also colored each of the letters (I know, I could have used the version with the circles, but I was already into it), removing the coloring from each letter as a number was finished in it. But such a fun puzzle!

[@Kinada]

Just over 50 minutes and I could have been faster if I had looked at how restricted the higher digits were in their respective color. That was really interesting and almost didn't feel like I was solving a sudoku.

[@Deathpooky]

60:13 for me. It was both very difficult (wrapping your head around the ruleset and letter groups to figure out what the sets had to be) and fairly easy (filling in the numbers and performing the sudoku once you identified the sets and limitations of each group). I somehow worked backwards up to the same conclusion on the naughty cells in adding up the truthful cells, figuring out how many "true" digits I needed of each type, finding out the identity of the false digits, and then roughly working out which set of digits was present in each letter, which I'm sure was the more complicated way to do it. My main roadblock was completely forgetting the rule that there could only be one naughty cell per row/column/box, which led to me trying to deduce how the small cell groups interacted and divine the position of the 1/2/3s in those letters. Once I remembered the rule it broke open from there filling in group G in being able to place the low digits and fill in the rest.

[@AngryKettle]

21 minutes. I stuck with the headache of the colours because I couldn't see the letters as a set. I realised the ones trick early and that allowed me to limit the digits on the low-count circles/letters, which gave me some small shortcuts

[@Sean-hr9dy]

24:52 for me, found this one surprisingly easy once I realized that there had to be 1 naughty 7, 2 naughty 6's, 3 naughty 5's and 2 naughty 3's

[@liselotte6992]

24 minutes for me 😊 that would NOT have been possible two years ago!

[@Cleeves358]

44:52 for me and I'm glad that I wasn't discouraged by Simon's long solve

[@victoriam6569]

Astonishing puzzle! So fun!!!

[@thanderhop1489]

double 3 in the corner!!

[@davidhughes7174]

B is the colour of 7. Lovely

[@danielepicone1480]

I actually think this puzzle is much easier to solve with a companion piece of paper, writing down how many there are of each letter, and how often they see each other helps immensely. The grid is just there for show.

[@Raven-Creations]

The rules were not very clear for this. Once you've worked out what they mean, they are accurate, but I'm sure they could have been worded more clearly. Once I understood the rules, this was a fascinating puzzle. After the G, I noted that the H in the corner sees all of the other Hs, so it has to be unique. Either it's 1, or it's red, forming a 1/red pair in R8. I then worked out that reds had to be 2 3s, 3 5s, 2 6s, and a 7. This allowed me to place the 8s, some 7s, and some 6s. This allowed me to place some more reds. Considering 5s, only A, B, or F could have the five normal 5s, and whichever it was, R8C1, R7C5 or R8C6 had to be 5. The (now red) H in the corner sees all of them, so it had to be 3 (the red 6s and 7 having already been placed), and the other Hs had to be a 1 and two 2s. After that, it all came together quite quickly. @ 54:47 - "I want to come back to..." - No, do sudoku instead. You've put 1 in box 3 with a 12 this puts a 2 in B in box 3, a 1 in D in box 1, and a 1 in B in box 2. That 1 can't go in C6 because there are three Cs to be filled in C6, and there are 6 Cs to be filled in all. Therefore the three Cs are a 123 triple and the B at the top of C6 must be 7 and the one next to it is 1. You now have two of the Cs in C6 that can't be 1, so you know which is 1. You also know that the H in R7 is 2. Why don't you fill in the 1 in A in box 5? The ramifications of all those 1s and 2s mean that there is no need for any complex logic to finish this. It's all just very basic sudoku. Why are you so intent on forcing a puzzle using unnecessarily complex logic? Take the low-hanging fruit. @ 58:05 - "that's not 5 actually" - no, and how could it be 7? There are only six non-8s in C, in only three columns, as you've repeatedly pointed out. @ 58:42 - "How can that be a natural 7?" - easy. B is the letter which has seven natural 7s, and you've only placed five. It HAS to be 7. This was so much easier than you made it. 3/5 is a fair rating. If you took every possible opportunity to do sudoku, you'd have done it in half the time. This is not just because sudoku gave you easy wins, but because if wouldn't have been so long between making a deduction and being in a position to use it. You made deductions early on, then because you faffed around trying to avoid sudoku for as long as possible, you'd completely forgotten your earlier deductions. For instance, after placing 8s in C, if you'd not been avoiding sudoku, you'd have noticed that there were six Cs left to fill, and that there were three Cs in one column, so it was obvious that it had to contain a 1, two 2s and three 3s in the rest. The knowledge that there had to be a 1 for every letter would have been useful. It means for instance that a letter with five normal digits cannot be the one which has the normal 5s. It means it must be a 1 with four 4s. This is precisely the situation with F.

[@stelladissing]

I really enjoyed this puzzle! Your deduction of the naughty digits at the beginning of the video really got me started. Then I paused to try to solve it myself first before continuing watching. I'm sorry to say that the logic with having one true 1 in each of the letters probably would have cut your solving time in half. When you got stuck on the 5s, you could have flipped the logic and solved it "backwards". There were 4 letter H in the puzzle. Once one of those was identified as a naughty one and there were only three left, logic would have dictated that those were one true 1 and two true 2s. Then the puzzle would have fallen apart by using that logic on the remainder of the letters. So five true F would give us one true 1 and four true 4s. And so on...

[@titusadduxas]

1:01:44 after two restarts! Once I’d spotted the colour version, and with what I’d deduced from my first two attempts, it was much better. What a gorgeous puzzle though.

[@TheBoredNerd]

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me: three naughty 5s; two naughty 6s; and a naughty 7... in a pear tree(?)

[@longwaytotipperary]

I enjoyed watching Simon solve this but it’s definitely out of my current ability! 🤪

[@chipsounder4633]

Extremely mindblown, even though the difficulty was high, it seemed forced once the base logical argument to get the 8s. 🎉 loved that

[@HunterJE]

44:00 Feel like there was more narrowing to do before going back to checking all the options - you can prove outright that 5 goes in A if you just repeat the "check which letters can take a 5" on all rows and columns with known non-5 "naughty" cells (in fact you only need to look at a few rows/columns to get there-starting from only ACDF available for the 5 in r6, c3 can't fit one in D or F and r4 can't fit one in C so A is all that's left)

[@margaritashcheglova8670]

“let me explain it to you. If AB were to be divided into two parts at C-” “It would be drownded,” Bruno pronounced confidently. The Other Professor gasped. “What would be drownded?” “Why the bumble-bee, of course!” said Bruno. “And the two bits would sink down in the sea!” -Lewis Carroll "It can't B a be. So many bees, it's bonkers..." - Simon.

[@JPRobinso]

I made a horlicks of it (other hot beverages are available) - couldn't get started, then watched Simons solve, then thought I'd done ok, only to find several green ones (I used the coloured circles version), I think I mis-marked the 7s near the start which wasn't salvageable at the end. oh well, great puzzle though!

[@ServantOfSatania]

39:59 For me, nothing like a fun puzzle with a little secret

[@AllenMS828]

I wanted to try this puzzle, but things like "naughty" cells tend to break my brain. I'd love to try a similar puzzle without that rule!

[@cathybryant5119]

"That gives us the full complement of naughtiness in the puzzle". 😂😂😂

[@jds373]

I think a deduction that would have saved a lot of time was knowing that there are exactly eight letters A-H and each needs to contain exactly one 1. One of the few times I came up with a deduction early on that Simon missed!

[@Sybilara]

I would use losing its religion for the naughty 3

[@solipsismworld]

I guess since so many other people have solved this, it's my problem and not theirs, but I couldn't reconcile for myself how there could be only 8 naughty cells if there was (e.g.) only one 1 in its correct letter, only two 2s in their correct letter, etc.

[@MichaelGreen831]

At a party... So, Simon - what do you do for a living? I solve Sudoku puzzles and sing about the number 3.

[@stephenmccarthy1795]

The real reason H can’t have proper 3s is that every letter must have one proper 1.

[@jonnybolton4659]

I wonder, did Simon make use of the negative constraint?

[@khoozu7802]

An alternative way to deduce A=5 is looking box7 & column3 {A, E, F}∩{A, B, C} = {A}

[@MegaTrain]

I made a spreadsheet to figure out what number sets went into each letter group before I figured out how they went in the puzzle.

[@DjurslandsEfterskole]

Wauw, that outro music! Well done

[@ChrisMikaitis]

I have not solved the puzzle and haven't watched the video... this one is right up my alley. Can anyone describe to me in a non-spoiler way how box 6 has (3) C cells, but only one can be a liar cell and the others need to be the same digit?

[@PhilPreen]

That confused me too. The non-liar cells don't have to all be the same though. If there were 7 non-naughty cells with the same letter they could be 4 fours and 3 threes for example or 2 twos and 5 fives. Doesn't have to be 7 sevens.

[@ChrisMikaitis]

@@PhilPreen Ah! Thank you.

[@michakoppes7416]

Had to watch the beginning of the video to get the logic that there's no naughty 8's 1 naughty 7 2 naughty 6's 3 naughty 5's no naughty 4's 2 naughty 3's no naughty 2's no naughty 1's But very enjoyable puzzle, finished it in 41 minutes :)

[@badmitten825]

The last bit of logic about there being a 1 in each of the letters might have helped with the Hs, when you didn't know if the 3 "good" Hs were 3 3s or 2,2, and 1. But you would have still ended up with a 1/2 pair of Hs. Not really groundbreaking.

[@MiaaaaaChan]

23:55 for me Lotta possible logic in this one

[@Ardalambdion]

I hope yesterday was filled with love and compassion.

[@Ardalambdion]

1 naughty 7. 2 naughty 6. 3 naughty 5. 2 naughty 3.

[@jasono8783]

A clean 49:25. Fascinating!