This SECRET Shortcut Can Solve Most Sudoku

[@SmartHobbies]

Join the Smartie Party now 🥳to get EXCLUSIVE reward puzzle packs, ad free content, discounts, and so much more👉👉www.buymeacoffee.com/timberlakeB/membership Timestamps 0:00 Intro 00:09 It’s Solving Time 00:38 Puzzle Story 04:06 Solving Tip 07:13 Important Shortcut Tip 08:50 Tricky Solve 11:50 Spotting Hidden Quad 12:55 Setting Up Secret Shortcut 15:04 Why Experts Do Not Want You To Know This 15:51 Solving The Green Cell

[@BryceAndEveeNZ]

Bruh, cheepest tier sold out ... why? I want packs but you not gonna force me to pay more for access to them.

[@DaveCadoff]

Working thru the puzzle pack and found a hidden quad in puzzle 2. The trick worked and totally broke thru the rest of the puzzle. Thanks!

[@SmartHobbies]

Awesome job, Dave! Thank you for sharing!😀

[@BradJames878]

I had to do this puzzle twice. First time was 35 minutes, and I was almost done, when it locked up and said it was wrong. So I let it go a few hours and came back and started over. This time I got it done in 29:52, and it was right. One thing I notice is my eyes follow almost the same path both times, and that's too bad because it's not the fastest path. I never found a quad, but I had a triple in row 9.

[@Sg190th]

Very fun puzzle. Funny how there was another Unique Rectangle but the other solves pretty much blaze through and prevent that from happening. I got the 1 due to the 128 triple at that column where the green circle is.

[@SmartHobbies]

Nice job spotting and sharing that other UR, Sg. 👍🏻

[@skullandcrossbones65]

G'day, It took 2 hours but I was distracted several times, I got so far then had to force/ try a chain to see if it would work , I needed 2 attempts at it. I might have to watch you to pick up some tips. Thanks.

[@SmartHobbies]

It can be tough to solve a Sudoku when you get distracted. Glad you stuck with it.

[@georgesthibaudeau1533]

Sorry to be picky, but you made a mistake placing a candidate 1 in r1c4, at a stage where you allready had a 1 in the column at r6c4. What you had at that stage was a 12 oblique pair. Nice puzzle. If you find the naked 7 in block 8 early, everything falls into place quite smoothly. When I reached the point where the 6 in block 8 was restricted to column 6, middle or lower rows, knowing I had the 69 pair in the corresponding cells of column 7, I simply placed the 9 in r8c4 to avoid the UR conflict. This was the end of the puzzle. 10 minutes notation free.

[@SmartHobbies]

Thank you for pointing that out about the 1s, Georges. I caught it later in the video. The hidden quad still works, but I hope I didn’t confuse anyone.

[@AWildBard]

Thanks 00:26:55 I thought that 169 must be a 1, but your video lesson explained it nicely and confirmed it for me.

[@SmartHobbies]

You have good intuition. Great job solving the puzzle. How long have you been watching the channel?

[@AWildBard]

@@SmartHobbies I don't know exactly. I started watching about a year ago, then I got busy and didn't watch for about 6 months.

[@AWildBard]

@@SmartHobbies I'm not sure if this is the same channel, but I used to watch another channel about sudoku, but they just do games, and rarely sudoku.

[@SmartHobbies]

@@AWildBard I have always done Sudoku, mainly classics. Rangsk and Stro-solves started with Sudoku and now focus more on other games.

[@anaayoung9142]

16:32 with your help twice! Ha! So thank you very much! 🤗

[@SmartHobbies]

You’re welcome 😊

[@sharmilisharmili472]

Done NF 469 triple in row 9 , right frm the beginning.

[@WayneSander]

I don't mean to nitpick because I learn so much from you, but you marked a Snyder 1 in block 2 right in the path of the 1 in block 5 (about 12:14 in the video, you caught yourself later). Had you made it correctly, you would have seen that the 1's and 2's can only go into the same two cells in block 2 which displaced one of the Snyder 7's. Solving for the 6, 7 and 8 in that block would have been obvious. It would have also made the solve for 4 & 6 in block 1 obvious. I love your videos, you've taken my solving to a new level.

[@SmartHobbies]

I appreciate the feedback, Wayne, and you are right about the missed marking. I caught it later in the video, but I understand it can be hard to grasp when the marking is not right. I use feedback like this to make my future content better. Glad to hear you have taken your solving to a new level. Keep it up!

[@WayneSander]

@@SmartHobbies I love your channel, I felt bad about pointing that out. Thanks for the reply.

[@CerenEda-r6d]

Thank you

[@karine606]

I totally missed that claiming pair and was stuck. Let's hope I spot the next one 👍

[@JohnRandomness105]

Was it the pair of 3s in block 8? I found those by marking 3s in rows 7 and 9 in blocks 7 and 9. Then 3 in row 8 could only be in block 8.

[@karine606]

Yes. I've been through a couple more of my "I'm stuck" puzzles and found some more.

[@douglasplachy4577]

Sitting here beaming! When I initially saw no way forward, I remembered your teaching to try single-candidate theory and was off to the races and solved it quickly. Might not be how you did it, but it worked for me. Thank you so much for all you’ve taught me with your channel! ❤ P.S. I did miss the hidden quad…. 😢

[@JohnRandomness105]

No shame in missing the hidden quad. I evaded or avoided it: I had a 12 pair along with a naked 8 followed by a naked 6 followed by a naked 7.

[@SmartHobbies]

Woohoo!

[@JWilliams-sd1cl]

R7c7 ? I found the 2 by itself

[@davidwalters313]

Excellent video. Thanks

[@SmartHobbies]

You are welcome, David. Glad you liked it. 😊

[@thomaslong8401]

I use to solve for uniqueness. But as I got better I stopped that because there is a more satisfying solve

[@SmartHobbies]

I understand what you mean, Thomas. Do you intentionally leave the UR to look for other strategies?

[@thomaslong8401]

@@SmartHobbies yes. This morning was an example. I could have solved it easy using uniqueness, but eventually found an XY Chain that solved it. However, from the uniqueness, I knew what number to eliminate, so I looked for an XY Chain that would do it. So a bit of reverse engineering!

[@AnonimityAssured]

It was almost painful to resist two very obvious and powerful URs. I used them on second and third run-throughs. Without either of them, I needed an unconventional step (83 = row 8 column 3): 83, 92, 57, 95 (hidden single, owing to hidden DRE), 73, 88, 19, 74, 26, 62 (hidden DCE), 78, 79, 77, 99, 18, 47, 48, 58, 63, 66, 64, 24 (hidden pair in box), 14, 25, 27, 23, 22, 53, 44 (two-way chain from R8C5)*, 69, 49, 61, 52, 41, 32, 46, 84, 97, 87, 96, 85, 86, 15, 37, 36, 17, 31, 33, 91, 93, 11, 13, 55, 54, 56. * R4C4 is determined irrespective of what goes in R8C5. Two URs were available at this point (boxes 4 and 6, and boxes 8 and 9), and either would have led to a swift conclusion. R4C1 could not be either 2 or 8, and R8C5 had to be a 3. For a slightly harder variation, replace the 9 in box 1 with a 5.

[@SmartHobbies]

I think I might try your variation with the 9, Julian. Thanks for sharing.

[@AnonimityAssured]

@@SmartHobbies It was a lucky find. I removed the 9 and saw that there were two solutions. A 5 worked to replace the 9. How's your setting coming along? I haven't been very productive lately.

[@SmartHobbies]

@@AnonimityAssured Not very well. I made a puzzle but it was not very hard nor creative. I do not quite understand how to create puzzles with an embedded advanced strategy. I will keep trying, though. I did look through your extreme puzzles that you dropped in the comments a few weeks ago. Very tough puzzles. Fun to analyze. Have you done any tournaments lately?

[@AnonimityAssured]

​@@SmartHobbies Yes, I'm still doing the tournaments, even though they turned out to be fake. I've now done 92 of them in a row. The 90th and 91st were very much harder than usual, whereas the 92nd was back to the old level (i.e., mostly very easy, with a sprinkling of moderate grids thrown in). Although the harder tournaments were more instructive, they were too time-consuming, so I'm relieved that the experiment has been abandoned (for now, at least). I'm so impressed with your ability to take on mind-blowingly difficult puzzles. Some months ago, I posted a puzzle with a redundant central cell, thinking that you wouldn't be able to cope with the original, very much harder puzzle. The modified grid was called “Einmal ist Keinmal”, for reasons that would have been revealed when solving, but the original had no name, although I suppose it could be called “Windmill”. I would say it's among the prettiest of all my puzzles. It's actually not the hardest of the series, but it's the most ordered. Indeed, it couldn't be more ordered. 003 400 080 200 050 700 010 006 009 006 000 001 050 000 020 400 000 300 300 900 040 001 080 005 020 007 600 003400080200050700010006009006000001050000020400000300300900040001080005020007600 HoDoKu rating: Extreme 9960. Andrew Stuart rating: Extreme Grade 675.

[@SmartHobbies]

@ Thanks for the update. My viewers want more of the extreme puzzles, so I try to add more of them, especially if I can solve without any Bowman Bingo’s.

[@epikbaconb9780]

4:42 I've never thought about that, I've been doing is pairs

[@SmartHobbies]

Wow. Epic. Great job with the solve. That is quite fast.

[@JohnRandomness105]

I found not one but two deadly pattern threats: 69s at the bottom of the grid, and 28s across the middle horizontal band. I followed my usual practice of coloring and predicting the digit in a cell for each. Then I decided to chain on 13 next to the 69 threat. Both 1 and 3 gave 8s that the 287 cell (of the 28 deadly threat) saw, removing 8 from that. Here is a logical issue: 27 was left in the cell. If that cell were 2, it would be impossible to remove 8 from it, because nothing could disambiguate the 28. Therefore, that cell had to be 7. I felt uncomfortable following that logic, so instead, I started chains with the 2, leading to a 3 collision in box 8. But really, I should stick to my logic. 6:00 I didn't find box 8's naked 7 until later, when I was filling out the block. It led to a boatload of solves in the bottom band and the right band. But it had to end, and I returned to my standard stuck practice and finished filling out the blocks. 12:00 The "hidden quad": I filled that block, and the "hidden quad" plus the 8-cell was a 12-pair and a 678-triple. The 8-cell had 78 and faced block 8's 7. Another thing I just noticed: your cornermarked 1s were dangerously mismarked. Going back, I saw that you inadvertently put 1 in R1C4 instead R1C5 with the 2, just before this scene. That would have given you the 12 pair and the 678 triple. 16:00 You caught your mistake. The danger was that you would notice the wrong 1 facing a 1 below, remove it, and place 1 in R3C6. That would have broken the puzzle.

[@SmartHobbies]

Yeah. The mistake with the 1s was glaring when I did the video editing. Awesome job finding the 28 UR as well, John. Someone else pointed that out to me on Discord as well. So cool. 😎

[@rogerweir1772]

Cant be 6 or 9...UR...