The Miracle Snake

*** TODAY'S PUZZLE ***
A collaboration today featuring two absolutely top-tier setters: Nordy and yttrio (who set at Nordyttrio!). It's called Earth Wurm and it really is astonishing that just four squares and two circles is enough to specify a unique solution. It's a blast to solve too so do give this one a go if you can!
Play the puzzle at the following link:
sudokupad.app/lbvymeu3as
Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply. Construct a one-cell-wide snake of orthogonally-connected cells whose two endpoints are given as circles. The snake cannot branch and cannot touch itself orthogonally, but may touch itself diagonally. Additionally: All squares are on the snake; a digit in a square gives the number of snake cells seen in all horizontal/vertical directions combined, including the cell with the square - non-snake cells block the vision; the snake acts as a “German Whisper” line ie adjacent digits on the snake must have a difference of at least 5.
*** NEW JAMES BOND SUDOKU HUNT OUT ON 1 APRIL ***
Do you know your Drax from your Goldfinger? Make sure you've got your licence to kill renewed to enter our latest competition: a brand new James Bond-themed sudoku hunt!
Apart from the new James Bond sudoku hunt, there's:
- Simon's latest forays into the world of Islands Of Insight
- Mark's video looking at the new OneUp puzzle from Rodolfo Kurchan.
- his solve of Region Geometry by Emre Kolotoğlu (3hr 36min long...!)
- Mark's solve of The Times Club Monthly cryptic crossword
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▶ Contents Of This Video ◀
0:00 Theme music & Puzzle intro
2:04 Please subscribe!
2:31 Join Us On Patreon
2:50 Rules
6:36 Start of Solve: Let's Get Cracking
▶ Contact Us ◀
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[@pirukiddingme1908]

40:54 “my logic was exceptionally good, except in one regard, where it was imbecilic” 😂😂😂 what a line

[@KC-pe9vt]

a german whisper snake and you make the snake grey and non-snake green. whyyyyy

[@pacman52280]

Very good question.

[@Scarybug]

Some snakes are grey 🤷‍♀️

[@AaronSmith-i8y]

Even the snake in the thumb nail is green! 😢

[@nicka3697]

Mine was orange and blue with a nice dark green line

[@mipsuperk]

I did green snake on grey other stuff. It was right there. Just swap the colors!

[@Ytterbio]

Nordy and I have been waiting to see when Simon would get to say the name "Nordyttrio" 😃. Fantastic solve as always, finding all of the major intended logical steps along the solve path! We were both just as astounded as everyone else that the puzzle managed to not only have a unique solution with just the given clues, but also that it managed to have a logical, flowing solve path.

[@longwaytotipperary]

Lovely puzzle!!

[@rebmcr]

Is it a required step to mark r6c4 as non-snake? It seemed important in my solve, and Simon got stuck until he proved it (though I got there through its effect on the head and thus breaking the 4-viewing square).

[@Ytterbio]

@@rebmcr It's possible to make sufficient progress without needing that deduction. The key deduction around that point in the solve is that the snake must go down into at least r5c6. With that, it's possible to get the snake shape in box 5 by simple non-loop and non-branching deductions.

[@chrissolnordal9421]

It was wonderful, thank you!

[@martysears]

A fantastic construction / discovery that I really enjoyed solving myself. This sort of snake building puzzle is right up my street. Absolutely remarkable how few clues were needed, great work both of you

[@zaclewis1869]

Why isn't the snake green?! I realize not all snakes are green but are many times depicted that way AND this one was also a German Whisper line. HUGE missed opportunity... (insert sarcasm) 😂.

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

my snake was bloo

[@fresnik]

Simon doesn't fit in a box. If he wants to color water green and grass blue, then that is what he does and there is nothing we can do about it. Conformity is for the weak-minded. (I kid of course)

[@noragar]

A little bit interesting that it's stated that the snake can touch itself diagonally, but then it doesn't. I suppose stating that it can't touch itself diagonally would have made a couple steps trivially easy.

[@attker89]

"My logic was exceptionally good, except in one important regard, where it was imbecilic." 40:45🤣

[@inspiringsand123]

Rules: 02:56 Let's Get Cracking: 06:41 Simon's time: 42m27s Puzzle Solved: 49:08 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! The Secret: 4x (06:47, 08:22, 13:42, 13:48) Bobbins: 1x (44:24) Three In the Corner: 1x (45:13) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Snake: 142x (01:22, 03:05, 03:16, 03:16, 03:20, 03:22, 03:37, 03:47, 03:50, 04:10, 04:17, 04:23, 04:26, 04:39, 04:44, 04:48, 04:55, 05:03, 05:42, 05:52, 05:57, 06:09, 06:49, 06:53, 06:53, 06:56, 07:03, 07:09, 07:12, 07:17, 07:23, 07:25, 07:28, 07:28, 07:29, 08:27, 08:35, 09:16, 09:40, 09:58, 10:06, 10:07, 10:32, 10:36, 11:00, 11:20, 11:26, 12:08, 13:13, 13:25, 13:34, 14:51, 15:43, 16:03, 16:30, 16:38, 16:45, 16:56, 16:56, 17:01, 17:05, 17:05, 17:39, 18:23, 18:48, 19:20, 19:21, 19:21, 20:01, 20:18, 20:28, 20:34, 20:34, 21:13, 21:16, 21:16, 21:34, 21:43, 21:59, 22:14, 22:19, 22:22, 22:39, 22:42, 22:54, 23:02, 23:21, 23:34, 23:37, 23:38, 23:49, 24:10, 24:10, 25:12, 25:25, 25:27, 25:43, 26:16, 26:21, 26:23, 26:28, 26:35, 27:37, 28:00, 29:17, 30:56, 31:09, 31:14, 31:24, 31:55, 35:10, 35:18, 35:31, 35:38, 35:41, 36:07, 36:20, 36:26, 36:28, 36:28, 36:47, 37:41, 38:35, 39:05, 39:05, 39:47, 39:47, 39:55, 40:01, 40:01, 42:55, 44:26, 44:27, 45:01, 45:25, 45:29, 45:31, 46:49, 46:58, 47:43, 48:41, 48:59) Ah: 12x (04:03, 16:34, 16:34, 18:09, 19:36, 27:29, 27:52, 42:33, 43:32, 43:47, 44:57, 46:21) Brilliant: 9x (00:48, 01:11, 01:11, 26:55, 27:04, 37:33, 38:08, 38:11, 49:04) In Fact: 9x (05:41, 14:44, 17:59, 22:11, 28:22, 35:22, 36:00, 37:58, 42:36) Beautiful: 8x (16:59, 17:01, 17:15, 18:31, 19:41, 44:57, 47:52, 47:57) Touch Itself: 7x (03:53, 03:55, 04:10, 07:19, 19:24, 21:45, 22:01) Wow: 5x (26:01, 26:44, 27:29, 29:49, 32:20) By Sudoku: 4x (19:34, 19:51, 22:36, 43:05) Good Grief: 3x (09:02, 38:01) Obviously: 3x (01:50, 05:35, 08:49) Unique: 3x (01:34, 01:42, 23:55) The Answer is: 2x (08:32, 33:48) Clever: 2x (19:46, 49:21) Fascinating: 2x (32:30, 49:25) What Does This Mean?: 2x (03:16, 12:18) Nature: 2x (12:04, 43:02) Weird: 2x (25:16, 49:33) Goodness: 1x (41:08) What a Puzzle: 1x (48:59) Sorry: 1x (32:01) Bother: 1x (46:49) Naughty: 1x (04:30) Bingo: 1x (43:59) Lovely: 1x (38:00) Of All Things: 1x (19:34) Bizarre: 1x (37:35) Lunacy: 1x (44:03) Pencil Mark/mark: 1x (13:42) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Seventy Eight (3 mentions) Six (86 mentions) Green (3 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Low (21) - High (19) Even (8) - Odd (3) Higher (6) - Lower (4) Column (15) - 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!

[@tobiasfischer1879]

I love how the rules allow for the snake to touch corners, and then proceeds to never touch corners

[@AaronSmith-i8y]

"The snake... may touch itself diagonally." Snake is NOT touching itself diagonally in the final solution. We've all been trolled!

[@AngryKettle]

I'd love to see someone do a blind solve with that part removed to see how much easier it is

[@RoderickEtheria]

It's fun that it gives you the option to touch diagonally.

[@dylanlenn7836]

the non snake non german whisper cells are green of course

[@thescrewfly]

One of the reviews on LMG was "a bit risqué", oh dear, but later Simon casually informs us that "the snake can't go there" because it would be "too naughty regarding what it's touching". Excellent!

[@DarrenNakamura]

Finished in 52:04. I love snake puzzles! I especially love whisper snake puzzles, because of the checkerboard logic that arises from them.

[@RichSmith77]

Am I the only one who ends up with a blue/orange striped snake? I feel like I have to follow the CtC standard colouring for high and low digits, or it just doesn't feel right.

[@SamAHill]

I did, except I used pink for 456 because at first I thought you couldn't put a 4 or a 6 except at the ends. It did seem strange to see Simon using pencilmarks for high/low instead of colors!

[@ericpraline1302]

I had a turquoise/orange snake for reasons I cannot fully elucidate.

[@stevesebzda570]

Yeah, blue and orange, also. (With a green pen tool line to boot) 😂

[@PuzzleQodec]

Legendary comment by Calvinball. Befits this brilliant puzzle.

[@Celvinbell]

Thank you, I'm considering this my CTC debut lol.

[@martysears]

@@Celvinbell Take a bow :D

[@longwaytotipperary]

Yes!! Very well said!!

[@longwaytotipperary]

@@Celvinbell😄

[@chocolateboy300]

I finished in 85 minutes. The logic of German Whispers on the Snake were very satisfying to figure out. I greatly enjoyed this one. Also, the picture looks kind of like a heart. It must be a repeating theme in these snake puzzles to have a picture that looks like a heart in the end. Great Puzzle!

[@emilywilliams3237]

I loved this. I started it on the day it was posted, but things got busy so I had to come back to it. Glad I did - thank you, Simon!

[@longwaytotipperary]

Either it’s snowing in the UK in April, or Simon is on holiday/vacation. 🤔 Hope you’re having a great time, Simon, and thanks for keeping the daily Sudoku going!

[@uigrad]

Someone else figured out that it was recorded on January 8, based on the number of days the puzzle has been out (shown on the completion screen). He is on holiday at the moment.

[@Swisswavey]

I struggle with snake puzzles usually but this wasn't too bad, just under 40 minutes. The practice must be paying off!

[@emptyset1312]

Very neat puzzle, and pretty approachable as well, so I'd recommend trying it to anyone on the fence about giving it a go.

[@elizabethshort9632]

I always feel better about myself when I have to come back to the video for help when Simon then struggles too

[@nathanialblower9216]

Great job, Simon! Don’t know why, but this solve was too fun to watch; thanks for all you do!

[@steve470]

30:25 for me. Quite enjoyable puzzle! From the discrepancy in the number of days the puzzle has been out, it looks like this video was recorded around the 8th of January. Hope you're having a lovely vacation, Simon!

[@bobblebardsley]

That would explain the snow 😅 It was 13C/55F here today.

[@SVURulez]

I did parity shading for my entire snake and just drew a line for clarity. That made it much easier to see that you'd run out of low digits in row 2 if the snake went all the way to the right edge of the grid.

[@F1r1at]

35:56 for me, what a nice puzzle! I like how it makes you to actually think about the sudoku and the snake at the same time!

[@brianshilling]

At 20:50 you were pondering if there was another way to see that, there was! The 9s in box 7 takes the 9 out of the 89 in box 1. That means inr1c1 is a 7 or 9, and a 9 is impossible because it forces a 6 in that column, with 1s on each side meaning the 12s in box 1 have to be both 2. It was extremely circuitous, and I'm glad you found the smart way vs the goofy way I did.

[@soocool78]

How does anyone set a puzzle like this

[@Gonzalo_Garcia_]

15:51 for me. Very enjoyable puzzle, loved it!

[@davidblake6889]

Solved it eventually, but got stymied by thinking the ends of the snake acted the same as squares. Doh! Great fun, despite my idiocy. I made my snake yellow to be different... Wonderful puzzle!

[@TheRealPowerDoge]

lets fiddle with the snake slightly💀💀💀

[@benjaminrealy5661]

42:19. Systematically played very well until I got caught up on the snake piece crossing from box 6 to 9. I mistakenly assumed the 8 had to go to the 3 to the left of the box and kept trying to figure out ways it could continue to either circle. It at least caused me to fill in a lot of the standard sudoku to help find the error.

[@ThePoxun]

The snow is going to settle? Emm... not recorded recently then 🤣

[@steve470]

The 8th of January, from the looks of things. Simon's congratulations screen says the puzzle has been out 4.7 days. It's 110.9 days now.

[@LiquidElectron]

Simon has been on holiday for a while. He did Friday’s crossword from his laptop.

[@OverkillSD]

32:25 for my solve. What fantastic logic.

[@sushirunner]

Much simpler thought at 34:00 - can the number in the square be a 9? can it be a 7? can it be a 6? (in that order)

[@An_AlphaDuck]

27:44 easier way to see: the 4 in R8C3 needs only one more cell, so snake either turns left into R7C2 or continues to R6C3. If it goes to R6C4 it has to connect to R5C2 and can't take another cell in C3

[@CaptainSpock1701]

21:40 - An orthogonally connected snake that can't touch itself has a wide turning circle. Now *THERE* is a knowledge bomb for you!

[@uigrad]

A bit of a slip up at 20:40. He concludes that r1c1 must be a 7 because it is between a 1 and 2. That logic works the opposite way. It very well could be a 9 in r1c1 and a 7 in r3c1. It was pretty late in the puzzle when I finally reconciled r1c1 and r1c3. He was just lucky that he put them this way.

[@danielszanto2955]

Wurm is german for worm.

[@leosmith848]

or dragon...

[@AaronSmith-i8y]

Does an earth dragon spew lava?

[@petergerlagh9858]

that was a fascinating puzzle!

[@myfyrmadocjones]

Snow? Not today surely?

[@steve470]

The 8th of January, from the looks of things. Simon's congratulations screen says the puzzle has been out 4.7 days. It's 110.9 days now.

[@RecreationallyCynical]

Did it in 40:58. I made a few hasty and incorrect deductions/assumptions that forced me to undo quite a bit of progress, so I potentially could have had a quicker time if I stopped to think more carefully.

[@stevieinselby]

That was fantastic 😍 - absolutely incredible that such a sparse grid can give a unique solution! A relatively straightforward solve once you know a few tricks like bishops colour, which took me about half an hour. One step that might have helped Simon would be to consider whether the square in r2c7 can see all 6+ of its snake cells vertically ... and by connectivity, it can't, because it would run into the left-hand end circle and leave no way of joining the snake cells in the top-left of the grid. This means that it must go right from that cell.

[@darthrainbows]

Nice one, solved in 56:55

[@spacecolonizer9508]

funny. the snake was allowed to touch itself diagonally, but didn't.

[@Afterthoughtbtw]

Lovely puzzle.

[@srwapo]

42:04, but I felt stuck for such a long time, I'm assuming I left the timer paused at some point. There were a few dumb moments where I was stuck for not using square clues and I spent too long thinking the line could loop around the corner of box 7, which would require five high digits in column 1.

[@ILapras]

Is the way Simon determined the properties (high/low) digits on the squares and circles using bishop diagonals common knowledge? I've watched a fair bit of CtC (not much recently though) and never seen that logic used. I got stuck because i couldn't find that one, maybe I'm just stupid haha

[@OlafDoschke]

KZbin, what are you doing? They display an ad banner that hides part of the grid for the whole runtime of the video. That's not bearable on a Sudoku solve video. Simon, Mark, this surely has nothing to do with you, it's youtube trying to make ads more effective and maybe rising prices for advertising, but you should ask KZbin for an option to turn this off. You may not have this as ads are localized and I found a solutoin in toggling to picture-in-picture mode when the ad banner stays in the original window and the freely movable and sizable video window can be fully seen.

[@ericpraline1302]

Good clean fun, thanks.

[@MelissaW09]

18:03 Simon! Why no follow that logic to its conclusion?! I know the 4 is pretty, but look at all the numbers you are missing by that! ...it took 2 minutes for you to get back there.

[@Tepalus]

It took me TWO hours to realize the snake in fact can NOT touch itself orthogonally. Well... Had like 30min after that... 🙃

[@WimmekeVL]

Is this an older puzzle you grabbed out of your 'I didn't have time to do a new video' box ? For I can't believe Sven would have taken your 'I loved this puzzle' button away at the end...

[@maht0x]

I never tire of naughty snake

[@dilbybar]

I love snake puzzles and I love German whispers, the perfect combo for me. I really loved that once you know if one cell on the snake was high or low, you can know if a cell is high or low if it is on the snake anywhere else in the grid. Very cool. 🐍

[@luisfonseca2299]

11:18 the way I see it, I pretend the grid is a checkerboard. Any orthogonally connected path between two cells must switch between black and white cells, therefore if start and finish are same color, then you must have step the same number of times in white and black cells -> total number of steps is even. Similar argument concludes that otherwise it's an odd number of steps

[@sampathkumar-ej7xl]

A great puzzle except for what I found a bit confusing. For a while I kept treating the circles like the squares in terms of the counting of the orthogonal snake digits.

[@psiphiorg]

Clever puzzle! My time today was 31:33, solver number 6011.

[@psaxton3]

@33:35 bifurcation confirmed.

[@Killrrhubarb]

Weirdly, this is also the nickname the ladies gave me 😉

[@nicocost33]

64.20 for me. Wonderful puzzle.

[@RealCadde]

Simon please... 28:30 You should see that R7C3 needs to connect to snake somewhere. Likewise, R5C2 needs to connect to snake somewhere. If either of them don't connect directly to each other there's NO room for one of them to get out of there. So they HAVE to connect. There are three ways they can connect. All in column 2, all in column three and half/half through columns 2/3. Can it ever connect through R5C3? If it did, R8C3 would have to be 5 or greater, which it isn't. Therefore, R5C3 is NOT SNAKE (green) and now you know that R6C2 IS SNAKE.

[@KyleBaran90]

I'd do more puzzles if the software didnt reset cookies every time there was an update. Annoying to have to reconfigure things every time

[@nanceactual1790]

Here is an unkind comment for you to especially not enjoy

[@WimmekeVL]

My puzzle broke like 2 minutes in. Luckily I don't mind watching Simon solve a puzzle. Hopefully I'll learn what I did wrong.

[@WimmekeVL]

I sent my three down, not to the right. Didn't figure out that it had to be 6 if it went down.

[@MWSin1]

I made mine a gray-banded kingsnake.

[@alienrenders]

102:08 for me. Got stuck for something like an hour and for some reason, I kept ignoring that lone 4 at the bottom square that I had gotten right at the start of the puzzle. Once I saw it, I solved the rest of the puzzle in under 10 minutes. Ah well. Really nice puzzle though!

[@dangrene617]

Wow, amazing! I wasn't quite sure how to solve that one, but it came together beautifully bit by bit. Glad I already knew about "checkerboarding" on whispers. Had a few stalls staring at the screen for a while, but the next step always came eventually. 32:19 solve time.

[@frankjiang1857]

Finished in 32:32. The logic of the snake was superb. And the squares helped make a lovely break-in and first 3/4 of the puzzle. With the sudoku and logic of the snake making up the last 1/4. Fun puzzle!

[@LednacekZ]

2 F-ing times did I mistake the rules for squares for circles. I am too stupid today.

[@xerodeus2337]

ahhh I was so close to solving this but halfway through I thought in my head the bottom right circle had to see 6+ squares, but the circles don't follow the square rules, and so I made a mistake :(

[@Annawastaken]

Love it, what a puzzle!!

[@anaayoung9142]

I decided to try it, after the German Whispers rule, and I was able to do it!!! Super happy to do a snake puzzle. 🎉 Thanks to all the knowleged I learned in this channel! 🤗

[@titusadduxas]

1:05:57 - Absolutely loved this one; snakes are my favourite variant and this one was magnificent.

[@markp7262]

21:27 finish. A fun little puzzle with some nice straightforward logic. Excellent!

[@gatlygat]

This is so so good. And the video, Simon, is a delight. If the day offers nothing else, it already has a highlight. Hurrah, God bless you all!

[@Rach881101]

47:39 for me. Nice puzzle!

[@林老師-i5d]

41:08 for me nice puzzle

[@ubk42]

I got to all squares are on the snake and the snake does not touch itself orthogonally and thought I can't even do that much ignoring everything else. I suppose it would have said instead cells if the whole grid was to be on a snake?

[@Antinomiste]

Such a blast to solve ! Took me some time, but with no real blockage and even the sudoku part that I usually dread were a breeze!

[@MattYDdraig]

29:10 Such elegant simplicity. Beautiful work by the constructors.

[@zealot2147]

27:55 surprised how quick I solved that, it’s actually quite restrictive logic and for a miracle at that

[@rafaelrust3561]

if anyone needs it i think this puzzle would be easier if it was specified that the snake in fact doesn't touch it's diagonaly

[@six_5000]

I usually don’t even bother with snake/loop puzzles, but the one I did in 39:44 🎉 🐍

[@HunterJE]

It's possible skip some steps by asking at 39:30 where the snake goes from r3c8 - a 3 or 4 must be next to an 8 or higher, and r4c8 sees 8 and 9...

[@MAUOMBO]

Very entertaining

[@aidanfreeman2932]

Four 3s in snake corners, i feel robbed of a song 😂 what a puzzle!!

[@TurquoizeGoldscraper]

58:57 for me - that was tricky, but I feel good for beating it.

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

18:00 for me.

[@trudain]

Wow that wasn't too bad. 40 mins for me. Thanks!

[@jennwinter2243]

Is it a "wurm" or a snake?

[@theredstoneengineer6934]

30:38 for me

[@Leslie_AF]

32:00 for me. These rules coming together made for some pretty fun logic.

[@leojs5673]

this one was a lot of fun and surprisingly intuitive!! 42 minutes for me.

[@Hakucho64]

Took me a while, but loved it all the way, thanks!

[@timothyjamison8172]

61:22 for me! Good puzzle!

[@henrym5034]

48:56

[@angec9908]

Simon has no sense of color propriety. He’s made water orange, land grey and now a German whisper snake grey.

[@highpath4776]

The 6 example on the snake rules I found confusing , should it not be a 7 , being 4 down and 3 in total across (as the language in the rule is ambigious)?

[@RichSmith77]

That would double count the cell containing the square. There's nothing to suggest you count some of the cells seen twice. It sees six cells, including r2c6, counted once because it's one cell.

[@piarittersporn]

Brilliant puzzle.

[@michaelmatter1222]

B-E-Aaaaaaaaaaaaa-utiful! Cheers from 99%Sneaky 🍻