The Sudoku With Just 2 Digits And A Small Hat?!

** TODAY'S PUZZLE **
A fascinating puzzle today called Smallhat by the_cogito. What is going on with these enormous lines in the grid and where are the 3x3 boxes?! You can try it at the link below:
tinyurl.com/ysuszmhy
Rules:
Contained within the grid are nine non-overlapping 3x3 square regions, which must be located. Each region contains the digits 1 to 9 once each, such that no digit repeats in any row or column. Cells outside regions do not contain digits. Pink lines must contain a set of consecutive digits in any order, with no repeats. Cells on a pink line that are outside any regions, as noted above, do not therefore contribute towards that line's set. Circled cells indicate the number of cells from their respective region that that particular pink line passes through. For example, if r3c3 were 6, then its region would need to cover the entirety of that pink line. Any given pink line could contain no digits at all. Every circle contains a digit.
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[@the_cogito5170]

the_cogito here. Getting featured is ALWAYS a treat, but this video in particular actually had me laughing in my chair in agreement with Simon's commentary throughout. Very nice solve of a rather difficult puzzle. This was my first deconstruction, and I had a lot of fun with it. It always felt almost like two separate puzzles because of how the region-building is such a distinct part of the solve path. A joy to watch as always, and well done!

[@davidrattner9]

Amazing puzzle from you ...brilliant mind you have for constructing these

[@longwaytotipperary]

This was a totally delightful puzzle with a popcorn worthy solve by Simon!

[@tedg1278]

One thing I found unclear from the rules was whether the circled cells were considered part of the pink line, or was just attached to the pink line.

[@BrooksMoses]

Yes, I loved how the two-distinct-puzzles nature of it meant that Simon was, at over 47 minutes into the video, saying "I don't know how on earth we're meant to start this puzzle."

[@PhaythGaming]

Was the little face intentional? If so, is the top left most pink band a small hat ? /s

[@zackrobat]

"Some people like books, and some people like tweets." -- Simon I don't know much, but I know that your movie-length videos are better than almost anything coming out of Hollywood or TV studios today -- and you do it on a daily basis, both of you. Not only that but your appeal extends from the very young to the very old, and spans every country in the world. You make everyone watching a little bit smarter and a little bit happier. There will be books written about this channel, and the videos on it will never grow old. On behalf of the people of earth, I thank you.

[@longwaytotipperary]

Very well said, Zack!

[@mikesmith4365]

56:57 gave me one of the funniest phrases from Simon thus far: "Through the medium of madness that is the Medusa's chin, THAT square is a nine!"

[@LazerWulf]

Lovely solve. At about 1:06:18, there is a slight delay in the audio which causes it to be out of sync for the rest of the video. (1:10:55 has a particularly interesting delay)

[@longwaytotipperary]

Yes, the audio disconnect is a bit disconcerting at that point - still, indeed, a lovely solve. However, listening to Simon's phraseology is just so entertaining. As Amos once said - I think I would enjoy listening to him read the phone book.

[@Astervista]

It seems to me that portion of the video is re-dubbed after, the delay is so inconsistent. I like to think that something went wrong and Simon had to do that part again being surprised one more time about what happened

[@PhilBoswell]

Oh thank you, I thought it was my computer. Poor thing, sometimes I give it lots to do and watch YT while I wait, so it wouldn't have been strange if the sound had de-synced but it's nice to know there's an external reason ;-)

[@crashtextdummie]

For me one of the top 5 most brilliant and beautiful puzzles ever featured on this channel. Completely novel but intuitive ruleset, beautiful logic, and a funny and cute picture for good measure. Magical.

[@distortedilluminations1328]

I was going crazy for like, twenty minutes waiting for Simon to outline the outsides of the boxes along the edges.

[@KombatGod]

The signs of a great puzzle: being unique, being fun all the way through, having equally complex and interesting logic in its phases, symmetry, drawing a funny shape with its clues... this one has them all! Lovely.

[@inspiringsand123]

Let's Get Cracking: 07:20 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Bobbins: 2x (49:53, 1:00:55) Knowledge Bomb: 2x (10:59, 11:00) The Secret: 1x (1:14:33) You Rotten Thing: 1x (1:02:43) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Ah: 24x (12:17, 23:55, 28:23, 28:24, 28:55, 29:59, 33:40, 36:51, 37:59, 41:17, 43:08, 50:15, 50:18, 50:59, 56:39, 58:38, 1:03:27, 1:03:55, 1:04:29, 1:05:06, 1:05:24, 1:06:54, 1:14:03, 1:16:17) Hang On: 13x (04:13, 05:44, 09:45, 09:51, 10:43, 26:45, 32:43, 32:43, 32:43, 34:35, 40:35, 54:14, 1:13:38) Lovely: 8x (15:13, 15:25, 15:27, 30:32, 34:05, 56:55, 1:04:45, 1:12:19) By Sudoku: 7x (20:10, 50:52, 57:08, 58:30, 1:04:25, 1:05:51, 1:09:52) In Fact: 6x (12:31, 14:21, 54:00, 58:26, 58:26, 1:03:31) Obviously: 6x (04:53, 18:04, 18:07, 41:40, 43:05, 1:15:55) Useless: 5x (44:53, 54:56, 55:06, 1:06:36, 1:08:54) Sorry: 5x (09:21, 21:14, 26:39, 1:15:42, 1:18:46) Beautiful: 5x (34:25, 39:07, 41:27, 1:05:30, 1:18:19) Wow: 5x (26:14, 36:21, 1:02:42, 1:02:43, 1:11:57) What on Earth: 4x (07:32, 18:16, 47:05, 47:49) Nonsense: 3x (18:20, 18:22, 25:18) Clever: 3x (16:34, 53:20, 1:18:14) Pencil Mark/mark: 3x (51:53, 1:00:35, 1:11:22) Good Grief: 2x (06:39, 1:16:44) I Have no Clue: 2x (16:43, 1:17:23) Cake!: 2x (01:56, 02:04) Apologies: 1x (18:27) The Answer is: 1x (16:41) Recalcitrant: 1x (1:10:36) Stuck: 1x (38:46) Ridiculous: 1x (01:59) Gorgeous: 1x (1:18:27) Magnificent: 1x (1:17:56) I've Got It!: 1x (1:00:15) Plonk: 1x (39:35) What Does This Mean?: 1x (23:43) That's Huge: 1x (27:32) Have a Think: 1x (06:00) Nature: 1x (44:32) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Eleven (8 mentions) Three (140 mentions) Red (17 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Even (4) - Odd (0) Outside (7) - Inside (0) Black (4) - White (3) Column (25) - Row (19) 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!

[@Ardalambdion]

Thanks to Simon, I make at least 10 Bobbins daily for all sorts of reasons.

[@davidthendarionbertalan7854]

you missed the rules around 2:54 😅

[@th.nd.r]

1:09:09 “flown past”

[@stgra5476]

Is there a lacuna in the simarkisms if they don't include lacunae?

[@-42-47]

What a great puzzle, I very rarely try puzzles that takes this long for either Simon or Mark to figure out as they are much better at sudoku than me so it either takes me several hours or I completely fail to solve it. Well this looked like a fun one so I gave it a shot and got a time of 78mins. Watching Simons solve I can say that we followed the exact same path, with only minor deviations regarding the order in which we solved things. I even got stuck at the exact same spot as Simon around 1:14:30 being unable to spot the 6 in row 2 that disambiguates the rest of the puzzle.

[@LednacekZ]

so many times did Simon say, this does nothing, even though it was the correct step of thinking,yet he didnt take it a step further to find it.

[@cthulhutentacles4716]

Simon saying this does nothing is when I start playing how long is it going to take him to spot the simple sudoku he just uncovered

[@mattinm]

27:41 There’s a 23 pair in C9 looking at R8C9 and a 23 pair in R9 looking at R9C8, so you can’t place a 2 or 3 in R8C9 or R9C8, meaning that renban has to be 2 with the 2 being in the yellow box. That also tells us that the two remaining renban cells aren’t in any region.

[@linkforce6078]

That 2 in R8C8 could be discovered way earlier than in 45 minutes in: The moment you put the green region in, at 27:35, 2 and 3 can't be on the "white" part of the square renban, due to the 23 pairs on row 9 and on column 9. No matter if you put a 4 in one of those two renban segments, it has to be completed by a 2 and a 3, which is not possible, due to the aforementioned 23 pairs.

[@MihirRai398]

Never thought I would hear Simon make a davie504 reference lol 😁

[@dontmindme2844]

The circles are placed exactly where there is guaranteed to be a valid cell in any 11x11 grid with 9 different 3x3s. In this type of puzzle, the intersection of every 3rd, 6th and 9th row and column will always be filled.

[@Waggles1123]

For how many of these types of puzzles he's solved, it's a shame he hasn't figured it out. It's a very similar concept to nonograms and sandwich sudoku where you lock a section of the puzzle as a guaranteed fill, it just happens in 2 dimensions. The other takeaway is not only that there is a cell there, but that each of those is a separate region.

[@timeforhunch9962]

Only just started watching the video but doesn’t the final rule, every circle contains a digit, give that away?

[@Escviitash]

@@timeforhunch9962 You are absolutely right, but it would be true for any puzzle with 9 3x3s in an 11x11 grid, that these nine cell are always in a region, and also that they are in different regions. Also the regions will always occupy 9 cells within row/column 3,6 and 9. There are many this_will_always_be_true rules that can be deduced fairly easy, but it makes it much easier if you remember the "rules". For a person of Simon's level you would expect that all these TWABT rules were written on his glasses, but he fairly often forgets them.

[@gta2812]

I like both long and short videos, long vid for the night and short one during lunch time. That’s just perfect.

[@jonathanallan5007]

@47:49 "How on Earth are we meant to start this puzzle?" 🤣🤣🤣

[@SamuenClemens96]

Thanks for helping me to come down tonight. I got an exam tomorrow an couldn't find a way to relax untill I watched your video. Amazing work. It was a pleasure to watch and get the head around it.

[@CrackingTheCryptic]

Good luck!

[@wooferzfg]

not sure if it's too late to fix, but the audio starts to desync from the webcam video at 1:06:20

[@bobblebardsley]

Luckily it never gets quite far enough out of sync to really impact on following the solve (I think)

[@philinahammock]

Perhaps at 1:06:20? I’d like to imagine there was a stream of really filthy swearing at that point that had to be edited out to keep up the ‘bobbins’ image. There is nothing in the solve path at that point to justify my speculation though.

[@goldenknight578]

The only problem I had was yelling at Simon for missing something before he missed it.

[@dwagyn2202]

Anyone else have an issue with delayed audio? Might just be me but the sound was quite behind the picture for a lot of the video. Other than that, this one was a lot of fun! I love the irregular puzzles like this where you have to find the regions. Wonderful job, to both Simon and the_cogito!!

[@EdoTimmermans]

It didn't bother me personally as the audio is in sync with the sudoku, but I also noticed Simon's face to be out of sync. Good thing KZbin offers subtitles (CC) to those who need that. Great deconstruction sudoku indeed!

[@Swisswavey]

Wow. Took me 100 minutes but I'm so pleased just to have finished it. Haven't had such a sense of accomplishment in quite a while. Lovely puzzle, thanks for sharing it.

[@nonyobisniss7928]

Took me almost twice that, across 3 attempts and 2 restarts. I really thought I might have a chance of beating Simon this time, when I thought I'd made so much initial progress. Alas, it was not to be. Great puzzle though. About 50 minutes on my final attempt.

[@andrewmonteleone4323]

“By The Medium Of Madness” is Simon’s new Marvel movie. Coming this summer!!!

[@mremumerm]

59:39 Simon highlights R7C11 cell "we cannot do anything with these cells" , cell that is literally forced to be 7 by renban. These videos are such a joy to watch, the level of difficulty is beyond my level but i watch to learn and it has greatly helped my solving.... Again thank you to everyone on the team.

[@DanJS]

I loved this. One of my favourite solves. I got stuck for ages exactly where Simon did right at the end and just gave it up, then when I got to that bit in the video I thought I'd have one more look for myself and spotted it staring me in the face. I love the longer videos, they're always intriguing. But I love the shorter ones as well - great for a sneaky extra sudoku on the bus or on my lunch break.

[@stevieinselby]

Amusing that Simon has forgotten what we learned in the two previous 11×11 chaos construction puzzles, which proved that the 9 circled cells are always members of the 9 different boxes 😎 Pleased to say that I completed this one in 1 hour dead without any help from the video ... looks like I beat Simon, which is a rare treat! Around 38:00, the key thing to notice is that the little squarenban can't have a 2 or a 3 on the t-r or b-l corners by sudoku, which means it can _only_ have two digits on it, with the second one being a 2 in the middle box.

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

Even the rules say that each of the circles must contain numbers

[@robert-skibelo]

Simon hasn't forgotten "what we learned [about 11x11...]" because he never learned it. It was discussed in the comments, but very few of our comments are ever read, I think. At least, very few of them are ever replied to, and since reading them but not replying would be discourteous, I assume it doesn't happen.

[@autumndragonfly.]

I sudoku-slapped the subscribe button a couple of years ago but will happily slap the like button in a similar fashion instead

[@mattinm]

59:37 Bit harsh to say you can’t do anything with C11 in the blue box :(… you can place the 7 you need on the renban in the bottom C11R7.

[@onijester56]

I think most people just like the videos. Short ones are fun, and long ones are nice to fall asleep to but also fun if I end up staying awake through them.

[@tremkl]

I for one love great videos of great puzzles, and while many of your short videos are great, I have yet to see a video that’s over an hour that wasn’t absolutely incredible.

[@nemuchan]

Simon, you didn't wish me a happy birthday last february, mainly because i didn't know the channel back then, but you did post on my big day the video of the channel i find the more entertaining : the puzzle in a puzzle in a puzzle... where each grid was a different game that would lead to the next. Now, since then i have dreamt of creating such a complex intricated puzzle for you, but allas this stays in my mind because i ma nowhere near to become good enough to actually set a sudoku. So anyway, i share here my thougts of a puzzle, who knows maybe someone very clever could built it one day : - first it would be a sudoku, a rather complicated one, where you would have to construct the regions like this one, and make suppositions untill the very end, where your first digit would come very late and set a chain reaction in finding all the digits. - then, i would ask you to say remove all digits but one and nines, and blacken the 1/9 remaining cells. This would give you a crossword grid which you'd have to fill with very cryptic instructions. Me being French, i'd spice it up with french words or french definitions, or things like that. - Then in the grid, you'd have to look for the letters M A R K S I M O N and replace them with the digits 1 to 9 with a logic that' you'd have to find, and that would be the placed digits of another sudoku. There, it surely can't be done, at least not by me, but these are the kind of ideas you get in your mind late at night while watching cracking the cryptic

[@Anne_Mahoney]

You could even do two different crosswords, one in French and one in English (where it'll be easier to get the "k" of "Mark"), leading to two different new sudokus, which might interact in some other way to continue the puzzle chain.

[@JaymanOttawa]

Brilliant puzzle and solve! I, for one, love the long videos! :)

[@LittleBallOfPurr]

I really enjoy the long videos, because if it took you a long time, I would never manage to solve it, so I'm definitely going to be learning new things. Wonderful solve, congrats!

[@martinyyt]

Time to get up....but maybe I'll have a gander at this video for a few minutes... 80 mins later....it's a good job I don't have to go to work early today That was a totally absorbing and fascinating solve to watch. What drew me in is the fact that once I could see where Simon was going, I could actually see a move or two ahead, and on two occasions wanted to tell him where he could put a 7. If the logic is beyond my skill level, I don't like long videos so much; this one was perfect.

[@th.nd.r]

Absolutely wonderful setting and solving once again, the_cogito and Simon! No way I would’ve attempted something of this difficulty. I feel like it takes a genius at either end of this, and I’m just so grateful to come to this channel to watch said geniuses do their thing. Love the design of it, the concept, a variety of the deductions, the ruleset, etc. Also Simon, love the Davie reference 😂 sudoku slaps are indeed superior 😤 EDIT: also, on the question of long or short videos, I will always watch videos of either variety, although I will say that I might ever so slightly prefer 30-60 minutes

[@trevortidwell8819]

I really enjoyed this puzzle. I found this channel a earlier this year. I have tried some of the more difficult puzzles but have always gotten stuck at a spot and needed to watch the video to resolve where I was stuck. This is the first of the more difficult puzzles that I was able to finally solve without getting stuck. Thanks for these videos as it helps train the brain for where to look and what to see. The region building was fun an a bit nerve racking, but it did have enough to show when you had made a mistake thanks to the 21-cell renban. Being able to unraveled this puzzle was really a treat.

[@kyaniteice]

I absolutely love these longer videos - I am always so thrilled to see your mind at work and it only sometimes makes me feel incredible stupid!

[@kicorse]

Since you mentioned a famous bassist, can I mention a famous drummer and say this Sudoku is a picture of Akane Hirose circa 2017

[@longwaytotipperary]

Of course I looked up Davie504 - that guy is one fantastic bassist! Now going to make popcorn and settle down to watch Simon figure out the Medusa face with the small hat.

[@timbeaton5045]

Far prefer Charles Berthoud on bass.

[@longwaytotipperary]

@@timbeaton5045 Wow - he's great also! 👍

[@volkerysilvia]

Hovering over the 5 between the 67 pair Simon says "something must disambiguate this puzzle". Then he points at the 6 he just placed that does disambiguate things and says "perhaps I should color the 6s and 7s"... -- a small humorous moment in what otherwise was a smart and entertaining solve of a stunning puzzle.

[@1a2s3d6a9s5d]

Simon : yes that's a two, this line has only two digits Me: finally simon, you had that two for ages with the 2-3 pairs looking at its line Simon: this is the most useless digit ever Me: :(

[@przemekmajewski1]

Fantastic! Great 90 mins solve here!

[@ljordas8475]

I'd love to see a deconstruction sudoku with displaced set rules, it would drive Simon mad .. (Not sure if that's how the ruleset is called, it's the one where the digit in any location of a 3x3 cannot be in the same location of another 3x3)

[@nickjayyoung7662]

I've heard Simon call it "Disjoint"... It would drive him bonkers.

[@ljordas8475]

@@nickjayyoung7662 yes that one!

[@mattmayoh9680]

I spent 10 minutes embarrassingly missing the completely obvious at the very start before placing the first digit, had a sudoku failure in the middle and put two 3s in c3 and had to rewind, and took nearly an hour to finish, but had a lot of fun anyway. Incredible puzzle.

[@theashen]

Amazed that I solved that one frankly. Really struggled with the geometry, but great puzzle, and very satisfying

[@Gonzalo_Garcia_]

40:45 for me. That was incredible!! What an awesome puzzle, I loved every single part of the solve.

[@faddy91]

A lovely little geometry trick in this one is that you can fill the 3 cell gap in row 1 with the bottom row of box 2. Which lets you fill in the 2 cell renban in box 3 as soon as you get the 34 pair in box 2

[@gregdyck7893]

I enjoy long videos like this. They are spellbinding for me!

[@CaptainSpock1701]

1:06:18 - And *THAT* is where my brain got broken. I don't know it it was KZbin or Firefox but all of a sudden the audio did not line up with Simon's mouth movements... "Bobbins!" Couldn't stop watching though. Excellent, excellent solve!

[@naughtypotato]

We need a collab between Davie504 and Simon in Davie's usual "battle" style. But instead of just playing their instruments, they should play AND solve sudoku xD

[@longwaytotipperary]

👍

[@renopdx]

Excellent solving. I watched it over two sessions at 2x and don't mind the extra length.

[@BrooksMoses]

That was totally fascinating, and I loved it. My only regret is that I didn't realize how approachable it would be, and didn't have two hours to spend on trying it myself if I had -- I really think this would have been completely doable at my "two steps past GAS puzzles" level, unlike nearly all puzzles with this length of solve.

[@user-oj2xx1rk7d]

"so there are 7 cells of chin" another one for the Simon Out of Context compilation

[@SpeedyBozar]

Nice unique puzzle that tells a story, love the idea of uncertain renbans.

[@littleschnitzel8226]

There could be a rule in the sudoku checker software, if there are exactly 81 filled digits, it stops marking any excessive empty cells as errors.

[@RyanAndrewEdwards]

This one was wonderful.

[@AurelUrban]

what an extraordinary puzzle! it was an absolute joy to solve, but it took me almost an hour just to locate all the boxes :D the logic was so beautiful though!!!

[@CaptainSpock1701]

I absolutely love both of these puzzles. I say both because the one is sorting out the regions and then Simon starts pretty much all over with an irregular (broken) sudoku! How often do you hear: "How on earth are we meant to *start* this puzzle?" at 47:48 into the solve?

[@ericpraline1302]

Really enjoyable puzzle which took me way longer than it should have because I missed something obvious for ages. This one certainly messed with my head.

[@christopherhunter1491]

Right from the point Simon identified the 2/3 in red and blue, blue had to be 3 since a 2 would cause it to overlap the large renban. Amazing when someone so smart misses the little deductions, and yet pulls logic out of thin air that’s over my head. Simon is the most amusing and wholesome person on the entirety of the internet.

[@peaches760a]

He did finally twig to that around 39:00

[@christiand3560]

this with the circles are the 9 regions is in the 11x11 ist ALWAYS fixed, because there are 2 rows bonus, mean you can shift a region maximal 2 rows mean the 3rd row is always in the first box, same goes with column, mean that the 9 circles are always in 9 different regions, simple mathematic, the NEW secret 😉

[@HunterJE]

I kind of wonder if this setting is intended to teach that property of these 11x11 deconstructed puzzles…

[@rigafraction1653]

I won't lie, the more detailed and convoluted to rules get, the less I want to play the puzzle. When the rules read like War and Peace, I'm tapping out before I even start

[@selenasilverstep7981]

1:04:40 In deconstruction puzzles like these, I've found that it helps to consider that the 3 cells in R4C4-6 are **actually in row 1**.

[@MattYDdraig]

66:43 I expected finding the box placements to be tough, but they unfolded neatly with some cool logic. After that, my brain took a vacation and I found myself rewinding several times to fix errors before finally getting to the end... Possibly.😂 Such a nasty shock to get the message that it still looks wrong.

[@Coyotek4]

Spent well over 90 minutes on this one (1:48:36), but I finally found my way through sans guesswork. Incredible puzzle! (This one is a personal 'keeper'.)

[@RealGrouchy]

I like both the long and the short ones, but I find the long, eccentric ones tend to feature logic that is a bit more enjoyable to play (even moreso than GAS, which can be more tedious than fun). The shorter ones tend to require advanced tricks like swordfish and whatnot that make them essentially impossible if you don't know the trick. PS: This one was very clever, and I needed a boost from the video to get started on the middle square. I got stuck on the same 6/7 cell that Simon did at the end! Lol

[@peterkelley6344]

Random thought of a story teller: Moreso Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes reference).

[@doncook4097]

Very original. It felt like a hidden irregular sudoku

[@michielgerretzen9777]

For the first time ever I beat Simon by determining the regions quite quickly..............But then I got stuck in filling the regions with the correct digits. In total Simon won the match by far :-)

[@willemm9356]

After half an hour getting nowhere I realized I missed the rule where the regions have to be 3x3 squares ^^;; Fun solve after that :)

[@HunterJE]

The grid isn’t as symmetrical as it looks - on top of the obvious 8/9 the big renban in the middle, while rotationally symmetric, is not reflectionally symmetric, and so breaks the reflectional symmetry of the rest of the renbans…

[@HunterJE]

Kinda feels like a ())( situation…

[@andrewnelson2525]

Loved this long puzzle, especially since it only took me an hour and a half, which isn't so far behind Simon.

[@mickeychew4374]

It took me a while to figure out if I did it correctly, because like you mentioned, the program doesn't recognize if the puzzle is done correctly. I had to jump ahead until you checked to confirmed that you too got the incorrect message.

[@TabAtkinsJr]

Around 30:00 when Simon has put in the start of the red and blue regions, you can actually disambiguated their circled digits immediately. The central renban already has 9 digits accounted for with its three regions, so you can't have a fourth region overlap any of it. This means blue's circle can't be a 2, and that unwinds several numbers that would have been very helpful. ^_^

[@stevenape377]

I loved this puzzle! I like a mix of short and long puzzles, but I would like more shorter videos because I'm more likely to attempt those. Also I don't always have time for the very long ones.

[@cthulhutentacles4716]

always plenty of easier puzzles in the discord

[@stevenape377]

@@cthulhutentacles4716 I know but the GAS puzzles are too easy; also I like to compare my solve to Simon/Marks. Anyway as I said my preference is a mix; there definitely should be lots of hard puzzles on here too!

[@sillvvasensei]

7 chins must be a new record.

[@YetAnotherCakeAccoun]

i was screaming finally when you spotted blue 40 mins in. I have no why idea it made me so frustrated. lol

[@williamnathanael412]

1:58 "which is quite ridiculous" - Simon, CEO of United Cake Manufacturers Inc.

[@martinepstein9826]

A funny thing about the grid at 1:15:00 is we can use uniqueness to eliminate 5 from the center of box 5 (there would be no way to disambiguate the 3s and 9s boxes 3 and 5). The funny part is that I saw this before seeing there was one digit left to place in row 2 ;)

[@FredT34]

Here we go!

[@Ardalambdion]

This sudoku reminds me somewhat of 'Normal Sudoku Size does not Apply'.

[@wossaaaat]

Pop corn o'clock!

[@emilywilliams3237]

Very fun puzzle tonight - at least, a fun one for me to watch! I will content myself with that pleasure, but will not be putting this one on my list for a while yet. But another example of Simon's brilliance. I mean, really. Throughout. And to top it off, a panoply of excellent words, including lacunae, ossified, immediately corrected to petrified, salubrious, and of course, panoply.😊 Thank you so much for this video. There does indeed seem to have been some kind of edit at around one hour six minutes which caused an audio sync problem which was a bit disconcerting and distracting - so I just had to watch the grid and not Simon's face. (As for long or short videos, I love the variety, so thank you for that. It is nice if a short-ish one from one of you is on the same night as a long-ish one from the other, but even that is not that critical to me, because I can always watch part one of them the next morning or pause in the middle and pick up where I left off later.)

[@Matthew-wz8ng]

Simon the only thing with long videos is depending on the time sometime I might have to wait days to watch it

[@rileyburrup8687]

Noooo Davie, are you gonna let this stand?

[@awilliams1701]

once you get your first two regions and you placed the 4 and then the 1, that renban is fixed as a 1/2 renban. The cells not in those regions can't be 2 or 3. A 2 is required so it goes in yellow, but now where do you place 3? You can't. So it's fixed as a 1/2 renban and you can black 6 additional cells.

[@dashvash5440]

Love these type of puzzles but PLEASE get more colors. Otherwise great stuff and nice catches.

[@peterkelley6344]

Sven needs to widen the color pallet.

[@andremouss2536]

1:14:35 Yes, Simon, something has to disambiguate that grid... and that's simple sudoku 🤣

[@mister-8658]

Settling in Bois this is going to be a good one

[@dextrodemon]

absolutely trounced simon for once, about 40min, really nice puzzle very intuitive and smooth.

[@HaroldSchmarold]

I gave the thumb up a massive sudoku slap. what.

[@theunwelcome]

excellent and devious strategy by the_cogito, distract Simon with a funny picture so he loses focus on the solve!

[@Tfin]

Never underestimate the importance of a 1-cell renban. If you do, you'll find yourself jumping off a logical cliff in the attempt.

[@DHREAVER]

I just did this in 1:14 which I can barely believe because it's about the same length of time it took Simon.

[@ScottCabernet]

I can see why folks might like long videos, but I prefer the shorter ones personally

[@user-xw1lh7zt7n]

1:03:00 "does nothing for the blue box" sad single 7 screaming at me to be placed on that renban

[@sagniksaha1374]

The conflict checker in the linked crackingthecryptic page is broken. For example, it seems to think that all the 9 circled numbers should be different

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

37:11 for me. probably my best speed to a sudoku in a video of almost 80 minutes

[@andrewdudenhoffer9512]

Sudoku novice here, but at the point where Simon got down to a 2 or 9 in R11C11, could he not have got the 2 based on the fact that the 3 cell renban in that same box could only have been 9,8,7 since it had to have three consecutive digits that couldnt also be in the cells that the other renban share in the same box, and two out of the three cells in the larger renban that were outside of this box were already penciled with 7s 8s and 9s in them? (hope that question is explained well enough)

[@volkerysilvia]

And once again, a few more colors would have been really handy in the tool...oft requested enhancement :)

[@Scanlaid]

Davie504 shoutout, awesome! Epic crossover video of Simon and Davie covering Losing my Religion? 🤔

[@JohnRandomness105]

What happened? I tried placing a 2, and the cell lit up with another 2 below and left. Much later: I *think* that I solved the puzzle. Not sure, because every time I inserted a digit, the grid lit up. I had no way to check the basic validity. Getting the regions was the easier part. It looks as if my final grid is identical to yours.

[@rrafje4387]

Simon, 47:50 into the video: "How on earth are we meant to start this puzzle?"🤔