The Da Vinci Qode...c

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▶Today's Puzzle◀
Today's sudoku is our second in just days by the constructor Qodec... and it's another beauty. You can play the puzzle here:
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Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply. Identical digits cannot appear in the same position in different boxes. For example, the cell in r1c1 and r4c4 cannot contain the same digit as they both appear in the top left position of their 3x3 box. In cages, digits must sum to the small clue in the top left corner of their cage. Digits cannot repeat within a cage. Clues outside the grid give the sum of the digits along the diagonals indicated by the arrows. The two single-cell cages in box 9 are for decoration only!
**************************************************************
As mentioned, a video is now available on our Patreon page showing how Sam Cappleman-Lynes intended his own puzzle to be solved!
/ crackingthecryptic
You can still try the puzzle here:
app.crackingthecryptic.com/we...
Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply. In cages digits sum to the small clue in the top left corner of the cage. Digits cannot repeat in a cage. Clues outside the grid give the sum of the cells on the indicated diagonal. Digits may repeat along the diagonal.
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▶SOFTWARE◀
Play the puzzle in the video by clicking the link under the video (above). We are building a website which will allow you to enter your own sudoku puzzles into the software and this is coming soon!
▶Logo Design◀
Melvyn Mainini
▶ABOUT US◀
Hi! We're Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe, two of the UK's most enthusiastic puzzle solvers. We have both represented the UK at the World Sudoku Championships and the World Puzzle Championships. We're also "cryptic crossword" aficionados. Mark is the twelve-time winner of The Times championship and Simon is the former record holder for most consecutive correct solutions to The Listener crossword. We hope we can help your puzzle solving while also introducing you to some of the world's best puzzles.
Thank you for watching!
Simon and Mark

[@DiMono]

Ah, the old "blue-seven pair". I love the bizarre things these puzzles requiring colours make Mark and Simon say.

[@awilliams1701]

in the 80's you write your programs at C-thousand. lol

[@StorymasterQ]

Fanfiction writers would flip if they were given a prompt to write a crack-pairing fic between Blue from Blue's Clues and Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager.

[@vikingslayer34]

Yes. Let's not forget the famous "25 plus green equals 7 plus blue minus yellow." Math in the 4th dimension I suppose...

[@awilliams1701]

@@StorymasterQ I would love to see that. hahahahahaha

[@bobblebardsley]

32:08 **activate Dr Seuss mode** "And look, one - this is one! Which means blue is one and therefore I can get lots of things done!"

[@ollycoleman7418]

I love this

[@asaenco]

Simon’s comments are priceless

[@kobe11111]

New fav Simon catchphrase: "Oh I don't believe it!" And it's funny how Simon did better scanning in this one than the normal puzzles lol

[@noodlekeeper5150]

Yeah, this puzzle really required it to make sure you didn't repeat a number in a specific location.

[@danh5368]

“Which means that that square is either green or blue or possibly neither” LOL

[@jonhansen9622]

My Favorite Quote :D

[@Fogmeister]

The shape of the cages is a Q but is also the shape of an old fashioned carpet beater with the cross in the middle.

[@Zilvaras2]

Roll credits!

[@paulschutte4729]

Oh, right! And then look at the name of the puzzle ^^

[@lewsouth1539]

Beautiful and bonkers, indeed! Loved it. 15:45 "Whatever color blue is, that one must be green."

[@garanceadrosehn9691]

I'm still watching the video, but have to say that it's utterly fascinating how the logic works in this sudoku.

[@zkhydro4985]

18:19 my brain just melted. If you map out the green squares onto box 5 (ie no number can share the same space in a box) you get a pair of greens in r5 c4,5. Which leads me to ask where does green go in box 7. It has only one sqaure left available r7c6. So pretty how it all communicates.

[@HunterJE]

Another interesting way to look at this rule limitation - if you were to take the final grid apart in to its nine boxes and stack them vertically to make a 3x3x9 rectangular prism, digits would not repeat along the "z" axis!

[@Wecoc1]

Yeah, with this you can form a cube where each of its planes is a valid sudoku grid.

[@breinnarn]

@@Wecoc1 So when is the cube sudoku app launching, you think? :D :D Imagine the pencil marks O___o

[@rob5918]

Yes, this is 3D sudoku.

[@soomalainensoomalainen7342]

I like this "new" rule

[@pascal6871]

3D Sudoku rule is a great name for it

[@dilbert719]

Aside from Killer, I think the position uniqueness restriction is my favorite variant on sudoku yet, and I'd like to see more puzzles with this limitation. Also, the realization of the blue-7 pair is one of the best things I've seen on the channel.

[@finleyherrmann4048]

Absolutely love this rule and how the puzzle just works, wow

[@Keldorn01]

Here's some logic that has not yet been mentioned in the comments. At 31:00, placing the 2 in bow six creates something that I think should be called a hidden-naked single. If we look at the bottom mid position of each box, we have a blue and a green so that's a 13 pair, and the digits 6,7,8,9 are also placed. So placing that 2 creates a hidden pair of 45 at the bottom mid positions of the remaining two boxes. And, in box five, the bottom mid position can't be 4 because of the cage pencil marks. So r6c6 is a naked single 5, which disambiguates the 58 pair in box 4. Not sure how helpful this is (haven't checked how long the logic chain continues), but at least it's new logic :D

[@vincentvanzwietenOFFICIAL]

Wow I also saw that, except way later when the 4 was filled in in the 45 box

[@longwaytotipperary]

Wow - Simon was so happy in this video. His laughter is so uplifting!

[@BryanLeeWilliams]

Blue/7 pair needs to be on a shirt.

[@ethermelt4780]

Aplomb is right. I've been watching this channel every day for a year now, and yet it blew my mind when you fist called out that "Blue-7 pair".

[@john_reese]

I love it when I go solve the puzzle, get back to the video to check my answer and I find out Simon has used the same colour highlights, right down to the (arbitrary) choice of colours !

[@tyrgannusgaming6657]

@1:11 That moment when you thought you were going to get name dropped, and then you weren't. Beautiful puzzle though, congratulations Qodec

[@peterwild1271]

1:07:12. Slow but glad to solve it myself. Great puzzle. Interesting to admit that I was coloring 1/3 pair too. And using exactly same colors (blue and green). Watching all CTC vids makes me think like Simon and Mark )))

[@PuzzleQodec]

Wow what an honour! I'm speechless.

[@paulbelanger7383]

Another great setting, sir 👏👏👏

[@PuzzleQodec]

@@paulbelanger7383 Thank you very much! This one was really hard to put together.

[@MattGriffiths81]

This puzzle was genius. The amount of times it was one number, then one number, then one number. Felt like such a well crafted path.

[@poohssmartbrother1146]

Finally got around to backing the book, I do love it when a Kickstarter campeign is so successful

[@kalamalahala]

Using the disjoint rules to find the early naked single in box 5 was great!

[@samuelhallin4245]

"Ah, I've got something. Where does four go in the middle row of the grid now? And the answer is I have not got a Scooby-do."

[@stevieinselby]

The way this puzzle developed was beyond magical 😍 and Simon's reactions to it unfolding are absolutely adorable!

[@kitsterling8665]

I wish this puzzle had been discovered in time to make it into the book; what a crazy ruleset.

[@kin2naruto]

Well... is there a reason why they can't make it an anual?

[@kitsterling8665]

@@kin2naruto if they launch Cracking the Cryptic's Greatest Hits 2 a year from now, I'm gonna back that in a heartbeat.

[@Tiger21us]

1:24:58 for me - and again, just like the Orbit, lots of fun trying to spot where to look next. Very interesting interactions between the sudoku variants. The positional rule was very new to work with. I am definitely up for more Qodec on the channel! I definitely missed few easy eliminations later on, just making classic sudoku mishaps. Now to watch the solve~

[@prahas777]

Bravo to both solver and setter!

[@Ruddigore]

A great solve... If you keep bringing us superb new puzzles daily - and you do - you are soon going to need to do a a Greatest Hits Volume Two! 😁

[@evlredsun]

bit of a tricky opener to find the 1-3 pairs, but falls apart fairly easy after that. simon made it look a bit tricky with his difficulty to scan the columns and new rules, as per. very clever, very elegant, but not the hardest. i would like to see more of this type of constraint because it is so hard for simon to scan for. >:)

[@abhijittapadar1813]

@26:02 you could see 45 + shape cage and put 6 in r1c5.. that would save some minuite.. great puzzle as always..

[@aloofmeatloaf1467]

This is probably the sudoku variant puzzle I am most proud of solving. I loved the logic and it just seemed to flow - while maintaining difficulty throughout.

[@StuartRoskelley]

this one belongs in the book imo

[@mceajc]

Wow, Simon had to work really hard for every inch of this puzzle. I was completely bamboozled.

[@ardinrye4786]

This was so much fun to watch you solve!

[@notnek12]

A truly beautiful puzzle and an equally beautiful solve. I loved this video.

[@PauxloE]

The "same position in each box" rule seems like a natural extension of Sudoku - just imagine putting all the boxes on top of each other, then it's one vertical line. Other such extension options would be sets like "same (relative) columns in boxes on the same row of boxes" (e.g. r1,2,3 × c2,5,8) or "same row in boxes of the same column of boxes" (e.g. r3,6,9 × c4,5,6), which correspond to stacking the boxes in sets of 3 over each other, and then taking planes of those resulting cubes. Those could be made easier to scan by having a software which highlights all seen digits on hovering over a cell. (That also helps for chess sudoku and other anti constraint variants.)

[@Raven-Creations]

Brilliant! I like this new constraint. I didn't seem to have as much difficulty as Simon Meldrew, except for one hiccup, when I thought I'd made a mistake, pressed undo for what seemed like ages, only to realise I hadn't made a mistake after all and had to redo it all.

[@Tiger21us]

OMG, blue-seven pair!! 💙

[@Big_L1]

I love this ruleset, would love more of this!

[@Piatato]

Amazing puzzle!

[@konzetsu6068]

there's a trick to keeping order with this kind of constraint. use the box with the corresponding number as a representation and color in the corresponding cells in the box. (every time you put down a 4, you mark its location in box 4 etc.) that way you don't have to scan for the corresponding numbers.

[@omfgmouse]

You can't really do that when you're also using the colors for something else though, can you?

[@maiawells9597]

@@omfgmouse the relative position sudoku variants are usually pre-colored when that is the only rule set. It’s sometimes called color sudoku. So yea, it’d be hard to use additional colors on those like Simon did here

[@konzetsu6068]

​@@omfgmouse 8 months later but but. Since i suggested box logic for tracking the disjoint sets you only have to use a single color (though you might want to use two colors and checkermark the separate boxes) to track everything, leaving all other colors open for other uses.

[@dragonborne3277]

This is the most genius setting I've ever seen

[@GrifMoNeY]

32:08 "Ah, and look, one! This is one!"

[@WarwickAllison]

The "3D" part of this sudoku burned my brain.

[@MichaelJPartyka]

I just think it's funny that when Simon realized he couldn't make the middle cell both blue and green, he said, "I'll just have to remember there are blues and greens needed in this box," instead of just switching to regular corner markings and putting 1s and 3s in the three relevant cells.

[@calculatrguy]

The 17 cage really was key to cracking this open, one of the squares could only be a 789

[@adamtaylor5040]

Happy that Simon did finish off the colouring with the 1s and 3s

[@MegaMisch]

This puzzle is awesome. It just refuses to give its secrets away easily. So good. :3

[@neilramsey1368]

Qodec is another great setter - Great solve Simon

[@guilhermetorresj]

16:32 I thought I was having a stroke. Nope, that's just a sentence I've never heard before in my entire life.

[@maverickstclare3756]

Should have called this puzzle "Victor Meldrew" for every time Simon said "I don't believe it!"

[@danieltaber4924]

I don't get this reference

[@MisterM2402]

@@danieltaber4924 "One Foot in the Grave" is a British TV show from the 90s about a grumpy old man called Victor Meldrew and his long-suffering wife Margaret. His catchphrase was "I don't believe it!", said when something unexpected annoyed or angered him. It's a true classic of British comedy.

[@djmitt3807]

@@danieltaber4924 Neither did I We Americans huh? Thanks Miister M2402 for informing us

[@charlietaylor5418]

@@MisterM2402 A true staple of British comedy!

[@boomstand2872]

I had Richard Wilson's voice in my head each time. When he appeared in an episode of 'Father Ted' they called him "the I-Don't-Believe-It man"

[@Mephistahpheles]

@30:13 "4 can't go here (top middle)" meaning box 9 is the only available top-middle for a 4. Simon got to the same result by going all around the board. :-)

[@londov1]

"whatever colour blue is..." - uh, that's something I know, yay! and the "symmetric symmetry" afterwards is certainly interesting.

[@g.h.190]

At 32:07 a 7 was placed in r1c8. At 32:26 r4-5c2 was reduced to a 1-7 combo. 3 minutes later r5c5 got a 1 placed and that 1-7 combo was solved.

[@glennmelven3414]

That was beyond me and I still tried it and now my head hurts.

[@bristolrovers27]

Great puzzle very Elegant

[@ocaly]

30:51 another way of spotting the 4 there is that there can't be a 2 because it blocks the 2 out of, and puts a 4 inside of, the 17killer cage. and even if you minimize every cell of the cage, the fact that there can only be one of the 13 pair, no 2s, one 4, no 5s, and minimal a 6 and a 7: adds up to 18 and not 17. so this places the 4 in r7c8 without the disjoint.

[@clarematthews4051]

67 minutes to solve, no bifurcation or other guesswork. It was tempting to give up part way. Now I have a headache and I'm in dire need of a large mug of tea before finding out how Simon manages to spot difficult things so quickly. Are there other Qodec puzzles in the archive on Discord? I confess I'm yet to look at it much and have only attempted one puzzle out of all those hundreds.

[@mindthegap9541]

Qarpet beater.... reminds me of an old sooty episode called Soo to the Rescue! Haha

[@doublepudge465]

Oh my. Sooty was my favourite childhood show and I just watched this on KZbin !!

[@ukdavepianoman]

Beautiful. Bonkers. Bobbins!

[@Kinada]

When you placed the 2 in r5c1 it restricted the 2 in the central 45 cage to column 5 giving you a 6 in r1c5 meaning that r8c5 was 9 making the 14 cage 9-2-3 solving the green and blue, so that 2 was quite a bit more useful than it appeared once you eliminated the 7.

[@jamesyeomans9613]

Amazing, one of the best! Had me locked to your every word

[@Coyotek4]

There had to be a better way to do this one than what I did. I spent 26 minutes on this, had to start over (bad assumption), then another 36 minutes (so roughly 1:02:00 in all) to finish ... but I can honestly say that I never bifurcated, so for me this is still a 'win'. Tough puzzle!

[@shawnheidingsfelder8179]

I like this constraint. It's kind of like going from 2D to 3D chess.

[@domenicobonilla5870]

This is a beautiful sudoku

[@marcosharlequin]

At 26:00 - "and that 2 gets us...absolutely nothing" - except it could be used to put a 6 in r1c5, since a 2 would have left nowhere for a 2 in the 45 cage. That bit of logic never got taken advantage of!

[@doublepudge465]

I feel like Simon was saved far too many times by the sudoku where I hoped he needed to rely on disjoint groups condition more !! Someone make a harder puzzle where he’s forced to do better scanning and rely on the constraint more lol !!

[@Deh207]

Please no hahaha I'll be screaming at my screen even more! "Remove 2 and 6 from r8c5 please Simon do it, it gives you a naked singleeee"

[@flabort]

@@Deh207 Oh like the 6 in R1C5 if he just looked at the 2s in the 45 box

[@batdowg]

Beautiful puzzle

[@lindaisyoutubing]

This reminded me of one of those frustrating Candy Crush rounds where no matter what you do, you just can’t get any cascades

[@PuzzleQodec]

Haha that's hilarious. Thanks for putting that image into my head. :-D

[@rufioh]

The 1-7 pair in box 4 was resolvable as soon as you placed the 7 in box 7

[@Tanfana830]

Rule #1 - Make sure you understand ALL the rules. I missed the part about identical digits needing to be in different positions in each box & wound up spending an hour or so saying, "I must be missing something! Where do I go from here?!"

[@oakleyg2870]

1:21 for me but I followed the same path Simon did, he was just a lot faster than I was at it.

[@Anne_Mahoney]

Really nice ruleset: I'd cheerfully do more of these.

[@nathanhatch5009]

Solved in an hour and a half roughly. I'm quite proud of solving this one.

[@joshuaperry4112]

The disjointed digits rule is actually what stopped me from doing Sudoku growing up; I assumed that was an inherent rule of sudoku - so everytime I tried doing one I became totally frustrated.

[@emoore06905]

Starting at about the beginning, I was fresh out of scooby-doos :)

[@HalfBakedLunatic]

Bonkers is a good description!

[@alvaropallete]

1:30:56 this one is really though, I needed 2 breakouts but it was difficult to know where I should look at

[@bozkayalar]

Want to see more puzzles with this same position rule.

[@mardlik]

Is it possible for you to combine your applications into one. It would be more convenient to have one app instead of plenty :) Then you can add new variant sudoku to this one app and users can decide which one unlock (for extra charge ofc :))

[@GeHeum]

I very much have the feeling that there will only be a few finished grids that satisfy the "Identical digits cannot appear in the same position in different boxes" rule (permutation of digits ignored). So it should be mathematically possible to finish this using only a few of the cages and using a lot of symmetry relations. This will not give a quicker solve, but its fun to think about.

[@PuzzleQodec]

That turns out to be a bit optimistic I think haha. It's not as restrictive as anti-knight for example. An interesting way to measure this is by counting the average number of extra cells excluded, which for this ruleset is 4. Anti-knight would be around 6 I think. If I remember correctly, if you leave out any of the clues, you get somewhere between 15 and 100 solutions instead of 1.

[@jasonkhanlar9520]

20:37 Today I learned that placing digits in center of a square means that that square can NOT be those digits!

[@behomichann]

Simon turning into Victor Meldrew in this one

[@jeffersonroth]

Once 1-3 pairs are spotted, the Phistomephel's ring really helps to crack the puzzle.

[@MrXami08]

Dang, I discounted the ring too early then :(

[@forgottenfamily]

So once you showed how to resolve the 7/9 in the corner, I was able to work it out. Technically I didn't notice the elimination of 1 in the middle of box 7 before you pointed it out but I feel like I could've noticed it with time.

[@buzzly108]

2:46 Rules 5:12 Let's get cracking!

[@michaelmckay8667]

you know what, I took a long hard look at the cover of your sudoku book and gave myself a headache just looking at that ladder

[@metroid031993]

Some weird logic I noticed... at around 26:08 once there's a 2 in r5c1, it rules out a 2 in the 45 cage horizontally; therefore, r1c5 cannot be a 2 (must be a 6) otherwise, 2 is entirely ruled out of the 45 cage. Not particularly useful I guess, but something I noticed :)

[@LednacekZ]

it took me over 20 minutes to realize the 4 in the 45cross.

[@BVIGrockle]

Really enjoyed this puzzle. Managed to solve without watching the video at all, and I used colours so basically I'm being brainwashed

[@yichen6313]

Took me almost 3 hours....this rulest makes me so dizzy.... Hopefully will get better if I do a few more like this.... One thing I did use is to realize that R5C1 R5C2 R5C8 R5C9 R1C5 R2C5 R8C5 R9C5 all needs to be different, due to the 45 geometry. It looks useful and neat but only helps to place a 4 (corresponding to around 19:00 mark in the video), and not much help otherwise. Bobbins.

[@explodingmonkey1807]

"That cell is either blue, green or neither" 🤣Yup, pretty much applies to every cell in the grid🤣

[@graduator14]

I would love to see Tom Hanks attempt to solve this!

[@lukostello]

at 26:40 I'm asking "Which box has 2 in the right middle cell?" since the new 2 in box 4 can see the right middle cell of box 5 and 6

[@serleth]

You should also look out for Unnamed Sorceror then.

[@andremouss2536]

This new rule could be called "SuperElephant rule" since it forbids the cells three diagonal steps away (in chinese chess, an elephant can move to a position two diagonal steps away).

[@jdyerjdyer]

Forgive me, but looking at the ruleset and seeing the video length, I think I'll just watch this one today. It looks like an amazing puzzle, but having already spent about 8 hours of my day off working on other puzzles from CtC, I feel like just watching. :)

[@jdyerjdyer]

Great solve for an amazing puzzle! Awesome job setting, Qodec!

[@Fogmeister]

31:00 (ish) you removed the 7 from r5c8 but missed that that affects the 14 cage (along with the 6 in box 3). As it removes the option of 6,7,1 and so you’re left with 2,9,3 which disambiguates the green and blue all over the board. 😊

[@Fogmeister]

You got it a couple mins later though. I just like when I’m able to spot things before you can. I have zero chance of getting this on my own. 😂

[@londonbobby]

At 16:19 there is a green 13 and a blue 13 both seen by square 2,2, so it cannot contain a 1. Falls apart after that.

[@michaelmckay8667]

I wanna be smart enough to understand other smart people and appreciate their smartness too