The Thermometer Sudoku Quest

[@Ciiran]

One thick line was missing. This bothered me immensely. But Simon found it. Now I will be able to sleep tonight.

[@Da6moose6]

I was SO angry until I saw your comment while waiting for the video to finish because I was convinced he wasn’t going to add it.

[@Ciiran]

@@Da6moose6 My brother from another mother.

[@leeuwevdh]

I hope one day we’ll get to see a chaos sudoku in which all regions turn out to be the normal 3x3 boxes

[@Anne_Mahoney]

I wonder how many of the regions you'd have to find before you knew for sure that that was the configuration? I expect you'd *suspect* after about two of them, but what kind of solve path would tell you for sure, and how early could it do so?

[@afrayedknot81]

I believe jovi_al has done this. Or maybe it was a troll where the last two regions were actually not square.

[@leeuwevdh]

@@afrayedknot81 is there a video on the channel about this puzzle?

[@smileyface2411]

that would be evil

[@Scojo486]

Thanks for another wonderful feature! As a few other people have pointed out, the easy way to resolve yellow would have been to ask where yellow gets it's 4, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching you realize you could use the sum of the squares. Editing to shout out a couple other setters who also made great puzzles based on the same prompt. Check out "Chaotic counting" by palpot and "Thermos Construction" by Prof.Dori on Logic Masters Germany!

[@longwaytotipperary]

Very much enjoyed watching Simon solve your puzzle! The intermingling of the rules was satisfying for just the right amount of difficulty and signaling the next moves!

[@QuarkTwain]

This was a fantastic puzzle. So clever how these rules work together. Bravo, Scojo!

[@joelstevens5670]

This was an absolute cracker of a sudoku variant puzzle. A decent challenge but also highly entertaining to solve. Great job setting it.

[@littyfam5136]

This would have gone a lot faster if you just asked at around 43:15 "Where does the yellow region get a 4?"

[@Djaian2]

Exactly what I was thinking. And also at 1:02:48, that 4 cannot be in orange or grey, so it's a new region. Where is the square for this region? The key to this puzzle were the 4s

[@ingiford175]

Yep, when he got all 4's I saw that yellow needed its four from c8, and the unmarked box needs the 4 on the bottom row....

[@dno]

Haha, same, one of the few occasions where i was actually shouting at my phone.. "look at the fours, Simon!" 😂

[@derekjc777]

Adding up the squares when all along the 4 in row 1 determined the shape of the yellow region! Simon will always find a complicated solution when a simple one is readily available.

[@Censeo]

4 in row 9 couldn't be grey or orange, yet it needs to reach a square. Only one available far far away

[@longwaytotipperary]

The sun is out but it’s still cold. So watching Simon with my blanket and hot chocolate is my afternoon entertainment! Thank you Simon (and Mark) for years worth of AT LEAST 2 puzzles a day!!

[@stevesebzda570]

I shoveled twice yesterday. It's freezing here. I had bean soup ealier. 😂

[@longwaytotipperary]

@@stevesebzda570 oh my!

[@ProfMonkeys]

The moment about 27 minutes in where Simon says "2 is not the same digit as 3" and shifts his eyes is one of the most wonderful and spectacular moments I have seen on this channel.

[@SupremeOverlord24]

I enjoyed the fact that you could normally use a 2-cell thermometer to give the same information as the V in this puzzle ... but of course the thermometers were doing a bunch of *other* things, so that wasn't an option this time around.

[@SpyrosSolda]

I was expecting the V to contain a 2/3 pair. That would be funny

[@iambicpentakill]

Hah! Insert Simon's disclaimer about parties

[@MissKapanadze]

I was really hoping for it 😭😭😭

[@MissKapanadze]

I was really hoping for it 😭😭😭

[@tonymanngreenwich]

Even though i had read this comment I pencil-marked a 23 pair and used it to make some progress. (It eventually broke.)

[@frankthompson9630]

@@tonymanngreenwichI did exactly the same thing. Unfortunately, I filled out nearly the entire grid before I noticed a contradiction...

[@markwright6685]

1:48:16 The bulbs having two restrictions/rules was a great idea, with the addition of the squares made for a tough, but beautiful puzzle. Thank you Scojo.

[@jonathanhood5514]

Yelling “Where’s the 4 in the yellow region” for ages and of course Simon takes the most complicated route to complete the region. 😂

[@PhonkPuzzles]

This puzzle was an absolute masterpiece. I can't believe someone was genius enough to set something with a ruleset like this!

[@SomeRandomGuyOnYouTube]

@ 1:02:47 the 4 in the bottom row must connect to the 1 square in column 8, and gives you a pretty good idea of the shape of that region, bearing in mind that it's quite difficult to account for all the cells in the SE corner

[@Mephistahpheles]

Simon gets ultra focused on one logic-set. Very helpful for finding difficult stuff within that set, but resists "switching gears". Serves him very well in extremely difficult puzzles that have a linear solution, but not so much in puzzles that require a lot of back and forth between rules. I'm not really a particularly good solver, but nothing in this puzzle was particularly difficult, just needed a lot of that back & forth.

[@smartsport]

That's how I did it too!

[@martinyyt]

I wasn't going to watch all of this because of the late hour (midnight). But my, how the past hour has just flown by! Brilliant solve, very enjoyable to watch.

[@57thorns]

1:07:36 Don't fret, looking for the 4 in yellow is another way to solve it. 4 are overall pretty good towards the end.

[@ingiford175]

Yep, it did the yellow 4, and the unmarked square needs a 4. And since we only have 2 uncolored fours we know fairly quickly which goes to which

[@HunterJE]

56:32 The one square is in fact fully walled and cannot take any cell of the thermo above it - it will never have room to grow to 9 cells unless it uses its sole allotted thermo cell to cross the thermo south of it…

[@der_koleriker1799]

thats what i was thinking the entire time and i bothered me so much that he didn't realise it

[@chocolateboy300]

I finished in 187 minutes. Scojo is a brilliant setter. I have never done a chaos construction suduko before, but solving it was tough. Setting it must be even tougher. I felt like I was slow, but methodical through this puzzle. I did end up completing it, which was an amazing feeling. Great Puzzle!

[@JoostMehrtens]

@46:10 you have 7 4’s. That means there are only 4 possible locations left. 2 on row 9, one in blue and one in a square. Yellow needs a 4 and the only possible 4 is straight down from column 8.

[@craigthorsen]

Great Solve! (And thanks for filling in that last border.)

[@jojoj81Gaming]

Fabulous puzzle by Scojo. I really enjoyed solving this

[@ethanchoo]

Thank god you delineated that last segment. ❤

[@LavenderGooms]

Awesome that you're doing this one. I loved it when it came out, the bulb constraint was a really cool choice for it.

[@aaronsebastian5156]

1:02:51 "That 4 doesn't tell us anything." Me shouting at my screen: "Look at the 4's! You have all of them! Delineate! Where does yellow get a 4?!" It's rare I see something before Simon does in these puzzles. Love the content, though.

[@jonkess2768]

1:11:30 Some day there is going to be a troll puzzle with 9 full vertical sodoku regions lol :D

[@everorizon]

How about a chaos construction puzzle where the regions are all 3×3 boxes?

[@jonkess2768]

@@everorizon Or this yes maybe more realistic because those are actual restrictions whereas columns are not.

[@benketteridge9150]

Hissing Sid is Innoccent!

[@nathanmenezes7914]

A cool thing you'd notice from looking at the missing 4 in yellow is all the cells that appear in yellow's vertical region are the remaining in r1 [5,7,4]. You get the same effect where [8, 5, 7, 4] are in vertical yellow and horizontal pink. Same effects with red [3,8] and blue [2,3,7].

[@anaayoung9142]

It is always nice to watch a great solve to a construction sudoku! 😆

[@eclectichoosier5474]

Simon, you always take the PERFECT amount of time to solve.

[@piarittersporn]

What a fantastic puzzle. Yesterday I gave up .... but today I could solve it .... after ages. Great challenge.

[@ImNoah2212]

I’m finally getting to where I’m able to finish some of these puzzles you guys feature. Was happy to be able to get through this one after 2 hours. Amazing puzzle Scojo was a treat to figure out

[@windybeach2184]

This puzzle is right up my alley! Lots of colouring and not too much arithmetic. Just nicely flowing logic pathways. I’m pleased to have finished it much faster than Simon, but I must credit him for all the sudoku knowledge I’ve picked up from his previous videos.

[@johnnyw4life]

30 seconds left of the video ( 1:16:13 ) and he finally sees it! My OCD is saved, thank you!

[@emilywilliams3237]

Beautiful solve, Simon, and very interesting. You are a genius at these region-defining sorts of sudoku puzzles. Thank you!!

[@kenhaley4]

Once again a brilliant solution! I can't believe how you find the next thing to consider while I'm totally at a loss. It's so fun watching you solve these..

[@ProfMonkeys]

At ~45 minutes in, there was another way Simon could have found the 6 in the green square. He noticed that the green region had to grow into at least one more thermo cell earlier, but he didn't ask the reciprocal question of what is the maximum number of thermo cells it could grow into. The region had to grow by 2 more cells, one of those two cells must be a thermo cell, but it is not possible for both to be because of the region boundary crossing rule, which forces the 6.

[@Mn0ty]

3 4 can be discarded immediately by noticing the 3-4 pair in bulbs in column 9, making r4c9 at least a 5, putting six digits equal or bigger than 5 on row 4.

[@Cid0484]

This must be the first time I see that Simon uses the pen tool to mark the complete outer border of the grid at one point rather than every time he completes a region. Very proud of him for finally making his life a little easier 😂

[@vedrankordic9161]

You mean like this? kzbin.info/www/bejne/h4Ssi5Kogph6ba8si=KOrcPM4R-Pax2uuq&t=1742 Maybe he only does it when there would otherwise be no progress made :)

[@johnnyw4life]

Was thinking the same. Now he needs to teach Mark 😂

[@lasagna312]

I'm so glad Simon finally fully boxed in the red region at the very last second.

[@HunterJE]

43:54 Alternate route here, green can’t go down through the gap in column 2 because a 67 pair in green would put three 89s in row 4.

[@ChaosKnight7000]

It's a beautiful puzzle with just the right amount of difficulty. Eighty minutes to solve for me. I'm just happy to not be too much slower than Simon. 🙂

[@trudain]

Got stuck on and off but after the 33 min mark managed to complete by myself in under an hour. Thanks for the help, and amazed how the logic ran.

[@CorrectHorseBatteryStaple472]

Great solve! Lots of region deductions were only caught late, and those felt easier to grasp than the rest, at least for myself. It's interesting to watch Simon miss certain types of clues that are plain as day to me, even though 95% of the time it's Simon pulling out stuff I'd never have noticed. The shapes of red, yellow and the second pink were available for quite a while.

[@fredgoodyer4907]

A couple of fun points (to me 😅): 41:41 The square in question is a 6 straight away, as there is simply no possible region green can be that contains any other number of thermo cells! 46:15 The 13 pair is immediately resolved since the bottom one sees the two remaining thermo bulbs, which are a 12 pair 😊

[@Samoth1995]

16:13 Amusingly, you actually ALSO can prove it can't be a combination of 2s and 5s on thermos by showing the 5's don't work. If you play out the idea of putting 5 5's on the bulbs, you're forced to align them in a fairly precise way - r1c1, r3c5, r5c9, r6c3, and r7c4. If you play out the 5-cell thermos of these (all except r7c4), they would all have 6789 along the length of the thermo. This then breaks the r7c4 thermo, as its tip has no feasible digit - it sees all digits greater than 5.

[@nicka3697]

I did all the colouring. Except the last 5 boxes in the bottom left before I did any suduko. The need to cut the thermometers and the restriction on the lower right thermo to not only be cut 4 times but for the bulb to be in a four thermo cell region is enough to disambiguate all the options. But then Simon was as always faster than me so maybe his way was better!

[@LiquorStoreJon]

What a Saturday! Over 2 and a half hours of watching Simon do battle!

[@ericpraline1302]

Cracking puzzle, thanks, I enjoyed every minute of this. The solve was pretty smooth for me so limited opportunities for staring blankly at the screen.

[@kivonni]

Thank you for the birthday message, it is so kind 😊 I had a Chocolate cake with the correct icing ratio, in case you were wondering.

[@PathOfShrines]

Fun puzzle! I really could not stop screwing up solving this; IIRC it took two full resets. 115:48 after everything. Think I was just crossing out the wrong digits within regions in the endgame.

[@windybeach2184]

If you ever need a little reassurance from Simon 50:10

[@aWildKITsune]

I think this is the first sudoku on this channel I solved faster than simon 😆 😆 😆 it was so simple simon was thinking too big brain to see the little things

[@Gonzalo_Garcia_]

34:54 for me. Incredible puzzle, super fun to solve!!

[@dvorsky78]

The 3 at the top square could have been deduced by the 1 in the box below it. The 1 could go through only 1 thermo and it had to escape, allowing it to only go down. That would leave the thermos above the 1 square unable to escape if they belonged to a different region than yellow meaning the only possibility was for them to be a part of the yellow region.

[@titusadduxas]

2:02:40 - I know it took me over 2 hours but I LOVED IT!!!

[@bobbie0976]

Awesome puzzle, started over once I made an error somewhere. Once I started over, knowing everything I figured out, it was an ultra quick solve lol. Also loved this didn’t take too much sudoku to complete. And of course: after all the brain work, we always love a 3 in the corner!! (Prefer this fireworks over the doo dee thing also!!)

[@aberrant322]

tfw you click unpause and hes not talking and you think wait did i unpause it or

[@Kinada]

97 min, I expected longer since I'm bad at making my own regions but near the end it seemed there was only one way it could possible work so I went with it.

[@Soulavenger69]

I had a much easier time filling out the yellow region than the way Simon did it, you just had to think where it was getting a 4 from and realizing there was only one spot it could get one 😄 But I liked his logic too

[@BozoTheBear]

Beautiful puzzle, thanks!

[@markbooth6706]

Awesome puzzle. Surely you’re aware of the rule that you only need four unique colours to colour any map.

[@frankjiang1857]

Finished in 72:07. Very fun puzzle!

[@evanvandeneinde7095]

Couldn't the yellow box moving down column 8 deduction have been made sooner? I understand the box containing a 3 was a constraint on the amount of thermo lines, but yellow has to take at least one of the remaining cells in row 2, and it can't take the 9 in row 3. Thus yellow has to take R2C8.

[@Mephistahpheles]

lol @ 1:02:00 "That's [4] not gonna do anything." Omg...it's huge!

[@srwapo]

58:23, fun solve, but I had to look at the video around @35:41 to see that I had to just try some numbers on a thermo to rule out being one the 4 ones. Spun my wheels for like 20 minutes before I did that.

[@InuNoTaisho1]

I wonder how many constructors deliberately try to put a 3 in the corner, just for Simon.

[@Rach881101]

63:29 for me. Brilliant puzzle!

[@57thorns]

1:04:29 r2c8 has to be yellow regardless if yellow square is 1, 2 or 3.

[@AnnaNicole.]

I was worried a moment until the final seconds of the video.

[@coconuts2513]

Great puzzle, loved it. Funny idea for constructors who are way smarter than me: Chaos Construction Sudoku, with random regions, but the end solution has the digits 1-9 where the original boxes would be. Is there somerhing there?

[@MrCoxmic]

Every time you comment about your brain I think about the worst Star Trek (original series) episode, "Spock's Brain" with the line, "Brain and brain, what is brain?"

[@Ardalambdion]

If I had solved, or more likely failed, the puzzle, I would have counted the number of thermo squares too, being 33. Wonder if that is useful info.

[@simonmoore8776]

It is,that's how i got the yellow region square had to be three, after that the regions only had one possible solution.

[@agoristtaxadvice]

ARGH- I forgot the V was a greater than sign, and treated a "5" V and drove myself crazy!

[@ABodyInProgress]

Can we please go back to referring to the "V-shape" as the "Greater-Than" symbol, which is what it is?

[@RichSmith77]

To be fair, when it's been rotated 90⁰, it is pretty much a V-shape too.

[@ABodyInProgress]

@@RichSmith77 I'm not saying it doesn't HAVE a V-shape, but it's a simple mathematical symbol in which the open end is toward the greater digit. We were all taught that in school.

[@Sternentier]

I was extremely annoyed until the very end when Simon finally finished the region boundaries.

[@AhsimNreiziev]

In case anyone reads this, and anyone knows: is anyone aware of whether the "honour roll" for the December Patreon Reward (the "Snackdoku Pack") has been, well....... rolled yet? And if so, in which video I might be able to find it?

[@didntwantthisaccount]

Simon, I do hope you stop saying "no jokes about me at parties". It makes me sad that you are worried about whether or not the audience might be percieving you negatively. I promise you, you are delightful at parties, and I'm sure that anyone watching your videos is doing so because they find your personality pleasant and endearing. (And thank you for all the great videos!)

[@RoderickEtheria]

Gray and orange were my entirely last regions to touch at all.

[@ramprakashkrishnan6651]

Is there a rule that says each region has exactly one square?

[@asktheraccoon]

*gets 5 digits* "wow this has done very little to help our cause"

[@KyleBaran90]

Hey Simon, I'm curious; I also started watching because YT recommended the Miracle Sudoku that so many people had seen during covid. What is the average length of time your subscribers have been following CTC on YT? Just curious because one of the collectible channels I watch said their average viewership is about 4-6 months before people drop out of the hobby.

[@MissKapanadze]

That might be a difficult metric to measure. I personally started watching CTC in 2020 when looking for classic sudoku technique tutorials. Since then I’ve had months when I was watching daily and other months when I wouldn’t watch any videos just depending on my own life. I’ve stayed subscribed to the channel though.

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

44:03 for me. took very long on the break in because i forgot the circle rule.

[@sheazellweger5450]

I played this one in the app and got the same solution but it’s being marked wrong. Not sure if Sven can check that out.

[@joelstevens5670]

I suppose in this video, you could say Simon failed to use the fours. I’ll show myself out. 😅

[@troy.s]

Anyone else spend half the video wondering where R7C9 was going to get it's thermo cells? Also where yellow gets it's 4?

[@eckberthighwater2555]

at 1:10:00 where is the 4 in yellow is easier

[@ankitsonias201]

18:34 why can't the right most 2 bulb be 4? anyone could help?

[@fredgoodyer4907]

At this time stamp, he simply says that there must be four bulbs with 4s, which can’t be four-cell thermos (they can only cross three region borders). Of the five five-cell thermos, four of them are 4s, at most one of which is in column 9, so the other three must all be 4. Only at 26:03 does he deduce that the rightmost 2-bulb cannot be a 4, due to the inability to place all of the low digits in row 4 😊 hope that helps!

[@ankitsonias201]

@@fredgoodyer4907 thanks for helping.. but still it's not clear. As you mentioned that out of 5-cell thermos, 4 need to be 4s. so at this time stamp, how it was sure that out of these 2 right most only one will be of 4s and why these 2 right most + any 2 of other 5-cell thermos can't be a possible solution. Later it got clear but how at this time stamp it was concluded? in other word, how he was sure that at most one of which is in column 9, why it can't be both of them and other 2 from remaining 3 5-cells thermos?

[@fredgoodyer4907]

@@ankitsonias201 I think it’s just that you can’t have two of any number in the same row column or box anywhere in the puzzle 😅

[@netproteus1]

Shouting for about 25 minutes where the light green 4 got its thermo cells from

[@iambicpentakill]

@ 53:00 I'm pretty sure that Simon has gone quite mad

[@theredstoneengineer6934]

109:21 for me

[@looweeg4229]

The word "square" has been abused in this video.

[@LednacekZ]

i gave up. after an hour of solving i got the areas right and then i completely messed up the irregular sudoku. i am so pissed off.

[@David_K_Booth]

After a few years of watching the channel, I've become more inclined to backtrack, and try to find the problem. But there are still some puzzles where I slip up and just can't figure out how, so I do sympathise. Better luck with the next one.

[@LednacekZ]

@@David_K_Booth i also rather backtrack than restart or give up, but this time i made mistakes and backtracking only made it worse.

[@dylanlenn7836]

hey, a quick one

[@johnh2052]

Look at the region with the '1' in the square!!! Argh!!!