The Million View Sudoku Man

[@cscatliff]

Simon: "I'll use blue and red for these rectangles. Also Simon: "For this completely separate bit of unrelated logic I'll use grey and... red."

[@jdyerjdyer]

He probably chose red for the second color because it would stand out better than one of the other colors and because the blue had some 89 pairs on them still so to avoid confusion as well. I personally would have used green and gray, but his choice worked fine and was easy to follow.

[@megapotato1825]

Maybe he avoided the other colours to try to make it more inclusive for people with red-green colourblindness. There has been more creator-viewer interaction about that lately

[@micaarzur]

@@megapotato1825 Right, so instead of the chance that a few people watching with colorblindness get a bit confused about the colors, they made it so everyone is confused about the colors instead, makes sense!

[@JosephPetersonJEEP]

Just to be sure you understand... The Miracle Sudoku video wasn't so popular just because the puzzle was amazing. It was your (Simon's) interaction and clear joy while solving it that made that video popular. If I had done that video it would not have been nearly so popular (not to mention it would have been 3-4 times as long... I forget how long it took me, but more than 20ish minutes...)

[@Afterthoughtbtw]

~20:00 There's another way of working this out - look at what happens to box one if there are two 8s or 9s sandwiching the little killer kill. It breaks immediately. I was pleased with myself for noticing that. I was less pleased with myself when I continued to work on the rest of that little killer clue as if a 5 could still be inside it for the next ten minutes.

[@captainufo4587]

24:24 Que serà, serà, "Whatever this is, this isn't, so this is." The future's not ours to see, Que serà, serà.

[@StephenStaver]

The more I watch these, the more I end up reading the grid the same way Simon does. I was like "this square cannot be a 7. Oh but there's already a 7 over here anyway" and then a moment later he was saying the same thing. I can feel myself getting smarter. hahaha

[@CodyRRichardson]

I find my self talking like him when in doing my own solving

[@CodyRRichardson]

"This can't be a seven, so this is the seven hear!"

[@menbah]

I'm just yelling at the screen: Use your pencil marks, you already have the answer!

[@CaioPhox]

3:35 Rules 4:21 Start

[@blabla-rg7ky]

thanks!

[@killerkonnat]

Skipperino Crypterino

[@christophseeliger5551]

0 Murlocs sold.

[@andremess3336]

I almost died laughing at 15:34 "we are flying now...nearly finished" 🤣

[@rushy4321]

I snort laughed hahahaha

[@paulcook2961]

He's 15 minutes away from finishing at that point. At my speed, 15 minutes from finishing *IS* nearly finished.

[@xdrqgon3055]

Every time Simon misclicks, the jokes he make lead me to think he almost had an esports career in starcraft haha

[@draconicepic4124]

To be honest, misclicks are a terrible experience in many games. **Clicks load instead of save**

[@quack420]

is the joke because he actually did? he was one of the top 5 masters in the EU

[@quack420]

if you search the channel there's a starcraft sudoku where he discusses it a little

[@canebro1]

I started to think he played Terran, since miss-clicks on banelings are the bane of going bio.

[@juggernaut93]

@@canebro1 I think he in fact played Terran, he probably said that in a recent post in the community tab

[@theunamiable]

You need a t-shirt that reads 'Release the Crackin!'

[@davecoleman1265]

I'd pay for shirt that said "What Are We Meant To Do Now?"

[@bobblebardsley]

Or one that says "SIMON SAYS BOBBINS" in the style of "FRANKIE SAY RELAX"

[@Pyromonkey83]

Wow, pretty rough break in but once you find it the whole puzzle becomes a beautiful set of falling dominoes. I think it took me 20 minutes to finally figure out the opening restriction, and then suddenly I had the puzzle completed 12 minutes later. Really impressive setting to get something unique out of this gorgeous grid, but the way the logic flows past the opening number is nothing short of a new miracle by Mitchell. Loved it.

[@12tone]

This was a nice one! (Not that I'd expect any less from Mitchell.) Like Mark often says, it's all about asking the right questions at the right time: If you do that here it's pretty straightforward, but finding those questions wasn't easy.

[@wpbn5613]

.... You're here. Every other day I find out a KZbinr I watch also watches this channel.

[@LornaM2304]

I'm excited for the puzzle hunt! I've never done one before. I'm one of those subscribers that loves the videos but is terrible at puzzles so I'll be proud of myself if I manage to complete it. Thanks as always for a great video Simon :)

[@coherentramblings7326]

Forget t shirts! I want to buy egg cartons with the “let’s get cracking” logo

[@sfumato8884]

Solved this one a while ago on Logic Masters Germany. One of the best little killers I’ve ever solved. Excellent logic!

[@WhoStoleMyAlias]

16:35 interestingly I suffered from the same oversight, keeping 5s in the coloured squares for quite a while, but watching the video afterwards I realized that r3c9 and r9c3 can in fact never be both 8s because they interact with the 8-9 pair in box 1

[@Coyotek4]

19:23 but with a caveat: While clicking on the thumbnail for the video, I caught a glimpse of the colorization that would be used early. While I honestly believe I would have gotten that part on my own (I usually struggle at around the halfway mark of these puzzles), I cannot be certain. Nonetheless, I enjoyed solving this one.

[@sophieward7225]

I let out an audible "wow!" at 13:43. Genius construction, and a great solve!

[@lmelior]

As often happens with these featured puzzles I was completely stumped at the beginning, but I took over once I could see the path forward on my own. I did catch the 89 parity thing on my own, and it was very satisfying to highlight and place all of the 8's and 9's in one fell swoop, and to have that 49 fix the rest of the puzzle. Great stuff as always!

[@stephenbeck7222]

The entry logic and everything with 8s and 9s was really great.

[@89roddy]

What a lovely puzzle. So I watched the video until 14:38. Then I could begin my solve. After that evrything was unfolding very quickly.

[@jdyerjdyer]

I saw this one and said nope with having to work today, so I sat back and just enjoyed your solve. Great job!

[@Faith276]

Wow, the puzzle hunt is going to be released on my birthday! Now that’s the best birthday gift ever! :D

[@erickehr4475]

As soon as I saw the widely spaced little killer clues I had a good idea how I had to approach this. Lucky it worked as if it hadn’t I wouldn’t have known where to turn next. 20:08 for me.

[@shiju2720]

I love these puzzles, the more I watch the solving, the more I can solve myself. It's great to leran from this :)

[@abhisheknanda85]

Ooooh a good old Little killer sudoku style puzzle. One of the reasons I got hooked on to this channel!

[@blabla-rg7ky]

I don't like 'em. I'd rather solve thermo, sandwich, battlestar or even japanese sums. Just not anything killer-related :)

[@NowUndefined]

What a stunning puzzle and a wonderful solve for it. It had me cheering at the end!

[@matthewjacob5174]

Him just saying let's get cracking just relaxes me lol I love these puzzles

[@doncook3690]

First time I did a puzzle in about the same time as Simon. I usually take twice as long. I figured out the rectangles a lot faster. Of course he did the rest faster.

[@jrparker811]

I solved then watched, and I started the same way as Simon, seeing the 2 diamonds and narrowing them down like he did. BUT only because I have watched his logic enough times to start to pick up on things like this. I would not have gotten anywhere on this without picking up some great methods from his videos.

[@SgtElev3n]

At 20:00 you could use the 89 pair in box 1

[@GenericKen000]

Solved in 37:12 Simon's logic at 20:20 could have been done at 16:59 by looking at the 89 pair in the top left box. I caught this early and gained a minute on Simon there. Lost my lead at 27:58 trying to disambiguate 2 vs 3 in r9c8. I wound up bifurcating rather than finding the naked single 1 in column 9.

[@paulcook2961]

Simon: Let me know if you found a cleaner way. Me: errrr... I found a messier way. Seriously fun puzzle. One of the hardest I've done. Took 3 hours. I guess mine was similar logic in the end but just done far less efficiently than Simon. I ended up making up variable names for things like the corners, the 2x2 mini-boxes, the 2 singles in the middle box etc. and making formulae connecting them to each other, then plugging in min and max values of some to get min and max values of others. I eventually ended up finding that the four 2x2 mini boxes add to 40 or 41, so they must each be 1234, with at most one of them being 1235 instead. And I went from there. Now watching the video, I see that Simon "homes" in on the most direct logical path very quickly. I don't know how he does it. He goes straight down the right road, whereas I try lots of false roads and take ages to discover they are dead-ends.

[@OttoBittoSplatoon]

I love how Mitchell sets up these puzzles, so hard at the start but with a very fluent and harmonious solution once you get the gist of them

[@richardfarrer5616]

Curious. There have been a couple of videos recently where we've been told that the puzzle looks complicated but really isn't too bad and I've ended up having to watch the video for some hints to get started. This one was described as tricky and I did it in 40 minutes, including at least five minutes of back tracking and there was never a time I felt stuck. Having now watched the video, I'm delighted that I got the rectangle using the 17, 18, 23 & 30 almost immediately, and spotted the 89 chaining. Just one silly mistake, a bit longer finding the naked single 1, and generally slower at entering digits. Give it a few more years.

[@Samusin.]

that was interesting, as soon as simon drew those 2 rectangles i thought to myself if they by any chance added up to the same and it turned out they did, sadly that wasnt of any use as far as i can tell but i found it worth mentioning^^

[@bobblebardsley]

I found it interesting that for once, the logic didn't require things to sum to 45 or 405 or anything like that, there was a bit of 17 which is obviously 8+9 but some of the other stuff, 23 etc, seemed like the kinds of totals you don't see too often in Sudoku.

[@timvermeulen4024]

This might be my favorite sudoku ever.

[@danp6101]

Can You Put Let's Get Cracking on the coffee Mugs

[@captainfury2007]

Thats a good idea. How about lets get cracking in a sudoku puzzle grid? I want one now

[@ragnkja]

How about egg cups?

[@danp6101]

I just got my Cracking the Cryptic coffee mug. Very nice.

[@markscottuk]

A good use of alternating inference chains

[@stevieinselby]

Step 1: Draw the rectangles ✏ Step 2: Add the numbers up 🔢 Step 3: Realise that adding the numbers up doesn't help 🤨 Step 4: Stare at the puzzle for about ten minutes 👀 Step 5: Watch the video through to the breakthrough at 14:00 Step 6: PROFIT!!! Complete the puzzle in a shade under an hour.

[@alifallahi5481]

Thanks for sharing the most fascinating and mind-boggling puzzles! UX suggestion: Would you be able to show the rules of these puzzles on the side of the screen on the web app so the users wouldn't need to switch back and forth between the youtube video and the app?

[@susanne5803]

I really hope that one day it will be possible to play the old puzzles on the new app, too ... Thank you very much for a beautiful puzzle and a very educational solve!

[@neilramsey1368]

Another great puzzle from Mitchell

[@azpcox]

Yet another great T-shirt idea. Take the original miracle sudoku with just the 1 and 2 and subtitle it with “We are flying now. Nearly finished!” :)

[@BigAsciiHappyStar]

BEST T-SHIRT IDEA EVER!!!!!!!

[@holyspork]

Figured out the 8/9 parity part all on my own. Magical feeling :-)

[@achad1607]

One hour thirty five minutes. I followed a similar path, but, wasn't all that certain that 12 [ low clues] and 89 pair [high clues] were correct. I did resolve the 3 in box 7 by noting by eliminating the 3 from r7c9.

[@moonglum101]

Wow, it took me just over half an hour to work out how to even start this puzzle. What an enjoyable challenge!

[@yishsaur7657]

I am the worlds slowest Sudoku solver! I can solve every Sudoku in maybe 2 hours up to 60 years!

[@Mephistahpheles]

This looks incredibly familiar. I recall Simon making a diamond out of the 17, 30, 18, 27 clues. Except in the other one, there was no second diamond 33, 21, 20, 18.

[@rupen42]

If you ever release a Picnic Sudoku game (thermo + sandwich), I'll buy it in a heartbeat. Same for a Hybrid Sudoku (2 rulesets or more), or a standalone Knight sudoku, separate from Chess. I don't like queen and king sudoku much but I love knight sudoku.

[@fuxpremier]

38:57 for my solve. I wish I was better at regular sudoku as it probably took me less than 10 minutes to arrive where Simon is at 21:00, but I did struggle so much at placing the remaining digits afterwards... That was a remarkable construct, I think those little killers where you have to look for geometry to understand where the constraint applies are the best!

[@njerzynek]

@29:11 "we're right into the middle of the puzzle now!" it's finished technically!

[@thebiasedreview5432]

This is one of the best puzzles. Took me 45 mins, coz I made a mistake in the 49 disambiguation, but excellent logic

[@cgjhuber]

It's already clear around the 27min mark that the 49 diagonale can only be the minimum values, effectively eliminating the need for (most of the) sudoku at the end. Overall brilliant solve though.

[@njerzynek]

@20:38 you said the 4 squares add up to 13, with 1 set of 3 and 4 the other set has to add up to 6 with a 3 4 pair???

[@steve470]

He misspoke. They needed to add to 14 (which they did).

[@jeffreytennant]

Absolutely brilliant Simon

[@rankinsean]

Great video. Can't wait for the puzzle hunt!

[@martincoates96]

This is one of my favorites ...

[@twarnken]

Solved in 48:05. I pretty much followed Simon's logic though not as fast.

[@2tvtv]

I started playing some music on Spotify and it played the same song as your intro and outro, piano sonata no 16 by Mozart that's a wild coincidence... I just finished your video and the song sounded strikingly similar it confused me lol

[@walkingwriter4325]

Not completely sure what you did, or how you did it, but...you're a genius. : )

[@nadeemhajiiqbal9214]

I completely failed at my initial attempt, and would never even get started if I hadn't watched Simon's solve. So anything I comment here is irrelevant, as I couldn't have solved it anyways. ~~~ That being said, I do think he deduced the 4-1-1 step one step too early. Once he saw the pattern pertaining to the red rectangle, he should have gone to the blue rectangle and done exactly the same. THEN he should have deduced the 4-11 step and we would be cooking with gas! ~~~ Also at 17:23, it is fairly obvious from the 89 pairs in Column 3, Box 1 and Row 3 that the two 89s on the diagonal CAN'T be the same digit. Again, this wouldn't be necessary if he had just repeated the purple trick with the blue cells. Edit: He does this later on in the video. ~~~ Still, a thumbs up as I think most of us wouldn't even know where to get started with this puzzle.

[@ewoudjan]

After the helpfull intro of Simon I got on the way to cracking the cryptic

[@maxoshiro]

Finally bought chess sudoku on Steam today thanks to the summer sale. Best day ever.

[@zkhydro4985]

29:47 ahhh maybe the 5 in column 2? I don't know just a guess. Lol

[@dbass4973]

58:58, i am not good at these types of sudokus, you need to add digits, its pretty hard after first couple of minutes

[@hudaboombeach2189]

Solving this was a ton of fun, which is no surprise as it’s from Mitchell Lee

[@mceajc]

In Simon's own words - stunning.

[@davecoleman1265]

"Ah, that's it, we've done it." "Yes. We did that. It was completely a group effort. I think we probably spotted that simultaneously. Well done, us."

[@GPCTM]

6:58 very annoying that the coloring don't go "on/off".

[@stephenbeck7222]

Yes but in this case he could have just colored the whole thing including the misclick and then reclicked on the misclick to color it back.

[@victorolosaurus]

this is great, somewhat over my abilities, needed help twice, but great

[@Stephen-Fox]

Might be useful to see some puzzles that are good for people transitioning to these variants from classic, in the same way you've showcased a few puzzles of that nature for other variants like Sandwich and Thermo. Enjoyable solve to watch all the same.

[@DNXTMaster]

oh man, I solved the whole thing by looking at the geometry of the 20, 33, 17, and 18 arrows (total of 88) and finding out that if I made the values in each of the cells the lowest they could be (while not breaking the 21, 27, 18, and 30 clues) then I got 87. then I found out there couldn't be a 9 in the middle of both the 21 and 18 clues because it would ruin the 27 clue and make the shape at least 89 instead of 88, hence telling me which of the cells had the extra wiggle room and everything flowed from there

[@janoththava765]

20:40 at that point the marked spaces must add up to 14 simon and not 13 U didnt make a mistake but u said 13

[@megaminxpll]

And it MUST be an 8 & a 9 to complete the 33, 8 & 8 is not possible, r2c3 & r3c2 will both be 9 if they are.

[@toddbiesel4288]

The 49 clue could have been used at the very end to avoid a 2-3 traffic jam in boxes 3 and 9.

[@davidgustavsson4000]

What's a puzzle hunt?

[@BlueCyann]

Puzzle hunt being available only to patrons is disappointing -- maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention when it was first mentioned, but I don't remember that being said.

[@flobiish]

Eastern US is in daylight savings at the moment so it would be 10:00 EDT, not EST.

[@MaxMcEvoy1178]

Starts 3:36

[@gletscha1]

Altho he explains very well what he is doing, i simply cannot follow. I mean, i can follow at times, but i would never be able to come up with that logic myself. Amazing

[@christophersanford9756]

Keep with it, it becomes like a second language after you watch enough videos. Sometimes I have to pause and rethink the logic myself in disbelief. (Has always been solid logic up to this point.)

[@QemeH]

"If, however, you're not a patreon - you get unpleasant notes." :D

[@davidbeaumier4953]

No clue how to start this...

[@blabla-rg7ky]

that's why we are here, watching while the pros are there, solving ^_^

[@sudokuvariante]

Solving time 17 minutes. Nice sudoku !

[@Sibula]

40:06 damn I'm proud of myself. That was a wonderful puzzle.

[@ekinyayy]

the sums of the two rectangles are equal idk if it means something though edit: just finished the video, great solve!

[@stevesebzda570]

@15:35 "Oh, we're flying now. We're nearly finished." "(Not really)" Hillarous, Simon lol 😂☕ Sarcasm at its best lol

[@d029w7]

What a puzzle!

[@bristolrovers27]

Brilliant puzzle

[@michaelbaker9347]

towards the end of the video, instead of using the 49 clue to solve the puzzle, would a BUG work as well? Edit: Upon further inspection, if you put a 2 into R1C8, the solve would work, but it would break the 49 clue, so my best guess is that the 49 clue is there to create a unique solution

[@tabris1135]

Well at the end there's a 27 pair in row 3 which disambiguates another pair in row 3, maybe with that

[@kinesis28]

Mind. Blown.

[@57thorns]

14 minutes to the first cell markings, a total video length of about half an hour. Nowadays this would be a medium approachable puzzle.

[@Funkopedia]

how about merch referencing Naked Singles?

[@cubesquared7808]

I saw the grays before simon. Applaud me and give me praise. I have defeated a god.

[@BryanLeeWilliams]

Just amazing.

[@simovihinen875]

You should have just colored all the squares first (including the ones you selected by mistake), then remove the color from the extra ones.

[@BigAsciiHappyStar]

Simon can crack a mean Sudoku but I reckon you could teach him a thing or three about colouring in :) :) :)

[@shimboshimbo9156]

overdue for a classic

[@EricTann]

Rough one to start this one. Tried for 20 minutes before I gave up -_-

[@TheFirebloom]

I appreciated the Sudoku, but I wish you colour coded it a bit more better. Using the colour red/grey for your 8's and 9's when you already had red made it difficult to understand. Overall, this one was too difficult for me and I couldn't even get started. I'll need to improve my logic.

[@Martykun36]

This one took me 01:39:25. Quite fun.

[@Nyarlah]

"Different time for other places in the world"; truer words were never spoken.

[@sanlumiere664]

Pretty sure banelings are the bane of starcraft 2 players.