The Art Of Puzzles
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- ** TODAY'S PUZZLE **
gmpuzzles.com is about to start a new season of puzzles and they've sent us this Snake Egg/Star Battle hybrid by JinHoo Ahn to have a go at! This is a PHENOMENAL miracle of a grid - just three dots is all you get. The logic feels like magic when you find it.
Play the puzzle at the link below:
sudokupad.app/Tqfg9qNd2L
Rules:
Draw a snake (a 1-cell-wide path) in the grid. The snake can touch itself diagonally, but cannot touch itself orthogonally or revisit any square. The grid already provides some of these diagonal touching points (as grey circles). The remaining cells (not occupied by the snake) must then form a 'Star Battle puzzle' ie there must be two stars in every row, column, and region divided by the snake's body. Stars cannot be placed in adjacent cells that share an edge OR a corner. (For answer check to work, use a 1 in a cell with a star.)
You can find out more about gmpuzzles.com here:
www.gmpuzzles.com/blog/2024/0...
** NEW SUDOKU HUNT ON PATREON **
We're delighted to share with you a brand new sudoku hunt themed around snake egg puzzles by Glum Hippo. If you've never tried snake egg logic puzzles before, prepare for serious fun - these sudokus are outstanding! Finish by May 20 to enter the competition!
Other treats on Patreon include:
- the Sumgeons & Diagrams sudoku by sunnyjum;
- 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...!);
- and Mark's latest solve of The Times Club Monthly cryptic crossword
/ crackingthecryptic
** GET OUR FOG KICKSTARTER DELUXE & OUR BOOKS **
Check out this link for the kickstarter books and Fog Novella we've created over the years:
coffeebean.games/product-cate...
▶ SUDOKU PAD - Use Our Software For Your Puzzles ◀
You can input classic sudoku puzzles into our software and help support Sven, the programmer responsible for the wonderful user interface we all use to play these puzzles everyday. The app also comes with 12 handmade puzzles from us:
iOS:
apps.apple.com/us/app/svens-s...
Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/17...
Android:
play.google.com/store/apps/de...
ALSO on Amazon: Search for “SudokuPad”
▶ Contents Of This Video ◀
0:00 Theme music & puzzle intro
2:52 Patreon
3:35 Happy Birthdays and other announcements
6:36 Rules
10:00 Start of Solve: Let's Get Cracking
▶ Contact Us ◀
Twitter: @Cracking The Cryptic
email: crackingthecryptic@gmail.com
Our PO Box address:
Simon Anthony & Mark Goodliffe
Box 102
56 Gloucester Road
London
SW7 4UB
(Please note to use our real names rather than 'Cracking The Cryptic'.)
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We also post the Wordle In A Minute videos on TikTok. - Zábava
Thank you, Simon, for solving my Snake+Star puzzle. I hope you enjoyed the aha moments. :)
As mentioned, R7C5 is one of the most important cells. There are several ways to prove this cell has a star, but I'd like to recommend the following logic:
After finding parts of the snake's body around the three dots,(22:00) focus on Row4-5. Please recall that a 2x2 box can contain a maximum of one star(14:15 at the video.) Because the snake passes through the first and last column in Row 4-7, that row 4-5 region has shrunk into 8x2, which is a perfect size to apply 2x2 box logic! Precisely speaking, a star should be in each R45xC23, R45C45, R45C67, and R45C89. One may use this logic on other consecutive rows like Row 6-7. This will help you to scope out the location of stars much easier.
Wonderful puzzle!
Thanks for the fun puzzle! I always struggle with snake puzzles, but this one wasn't too difficult. I got the opening fairly easily and had the snake parts fleshed out except the middle diagonal bit. I recognized that there were A, B, C, and D segments that had to be joined in order to not break the snake. Then it was just the 2x2 constraint on the stars that slowly fed me the solution. Took me a while, but I got there! Thanks, again!
42:35 "Does the snake go there...or there?"
I imagine a lot of people were shouting at Simon at this point.
I've never done a Star Battle or Snake puzzle and I was yelling.
@@ronbalut592 I can barely solve a regular sudoku and I was yelling
That look at 16:56 ... 🤣🤣🤣🤣 ... after all the snake puzzles simon has done over the years, he finally catches onto the growth of the snake joke 🤣🤣🤣
and all of that without touching itself
"My snake is growing!" *smirks at camera*
Absolutely cracked me up. Never, ever change, Simon ❤
42:00 I will never understand the workings of this man's mind 😂 but he is truly a delight and brilliant and I would defend him with my life
I always appreciate when Simon cleans up his markings, leaving a nice pure grid that's pleasing to look at. ^_^
50 minutes of watching Simon's snake grow, what joy 😂
I’m not very practiced at difficult Sudoku puzzles but I am very familiar with Star Battles and I enjoy completing the more difficult ones. As a long-time fan of the channel and of star battles, this was a great watch!
27:49. It actually solves quite intuitively after you understand how restricted the circles make the path of the snake. Thank you for featuring this wonderful puzzle :)
52:42 and still no digits placed? Truly a very difficult puzzle :P
That's a good deduction @31:55 (about that domino up top having to have a star).
But, what you failed to realize earlier, was that 3-cell yellow along riw10.
You can't put two stars in there, that would be three stars.
So, that yellow region has to extend.
Now extending, the snake can't possibly come down and turn around, it would be a naughty snake, so the yellow has to extend all the way across on the bottom.
Now, if the snake comes down , it'll have to connect (which leaves no room for that "yellow area" to turn up.
So, yellow takes that "up" cell in col1 (and possibly others, we don't know) but the snake has to take X'd cell (don't know how it goes, but it goes thru that X.
You spoke too soon about it "turning into a star battle puzzle," because that yellow region had to extend in row10.
Good job though, Simon.
😆👍🏻
Andrew - I hope your recovery from surgery is going well. I can also speak to Simon’s calming voice being a go-to for my times of stress! Happy wedding McKenzie and Jack! Happy birthday James, Laurel, Nathan & Puck! (Wow - sheep herding !) Simon, your delightful personality, humor, enthusiasm and playful interaction with viewers and setters make this channel my favorite daily CZcams viewing! I actually watch when I don’t have a clue what the puzzle is about just to spend some time with a funny, smart, engaging human and the smart engaging people in the community. Thank you! 🤗
My jaw dropped at the lack of clues in the puzzle... this is some wild stuff!
I almost chipped a fingernail smashing the ‘like’ button on this one
😂 at least it wasn't your pinky toenail
I usually don't try the non-sudoku puzzles, but this one was a real joy. The logic was so clever but also approachable for someone like me who's never done Star Battle puzzles before.
Maverick is riding his motorcycle today!
I do like Star Battle puzzles, not so great at snake puzzles, but this all made sense to me (and was very fun). Thanks, Simon!
27:33 for me, did way less on starbattle part by calculating the number of missing diagonal touching points and drawing the snake early (there is pretty low number of ways to make 10 regions in total)
Simon's observation about there being ten regions is actually helpful: if none of the remaining snake regions touched each other or the edge of the grid, there would be six, so you need to add four more. There are only four places to put them: the bottom one can't touch the edge anywhere new, so the only options are for it to touch the middle-lower one, that one needs to touch the middle-upper one, that one needs to touch the top one, and that one has to touch the top of the grid. In particular, there's only one place for that bottom-left touching to happen, and after his next observation, there's only one place for the second and third, and one more observation gives you the final one.
49:02 - That was really enjoyable. Some very original logic.
I approached this differently and focused on making 10 regions in the grid which ended being quite restricted and ruled out a lot of possibilities
32:27 finish. A very nice change of pace, though I was almost expecting a rule where each region had to be a different size, or something similar. Fun fun fun!
16:50 I would never...
I wouldn't have made a joke, but now I've shed my inhibitions! :P
I am absolutely amazed that such a puzzle can exist. The only clues are 3 grey circles?! And then there are enough constraints in that simple ruleset to solve it on a logical path?! This is about as close to a miracle sudoku as it gets!
and it's not even a sudoku
21:27 for me. I’m not good at star battle but I’m pretty good at snakes. The constant interplay between star battle regions and snake here was brilliant, exactly what I like in hybrid puzzles
I enjoy learning new words from Simon. Today’s is zugzwang.
21:07
Snake eggs and star battles are two types I typically struggle with so I approached with some trepidation but this wasn't excessively demanding. Each element had an interesting effect on the other and some of the logical steps were very neat and surprisingly varied. Very nice puzzle.
16:52: 😂 Simon knows his audience too well
I didn't know how to start this at all! Thank you for the solve 😁
From 21:00 to 42:00, kept thinking the logic would have flown so much cleaner had Simon seen that the egg in the bottom row had to grow since one of the stars in that row was already placed in the egg in column 10. Immediately you get almost the entirety of that egg defined, and that constrains all of the logic during that time far more cleanly.
Looking forward for more pencil puzzles! Nice one!
Feel better soon, Andrew!❤
I absolutely loved this puzzle. I decided to take this one on before watching Simon's video, and I am so glad I did. What a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Thank you JinHoo!
Why would say you haven’t heard from Maverick? You know he has your office bugged so he knows when to take off. Why do you always jinx yourself? 😂
33:58, I'm glad I play star battle puzzles, but I've never created my own! I'm impressed how you can get started with so few very unconstrained rules.
17:21 for me. a good clue is finding the 10 regions
Amazing construction and equally great solve by Simon. Loved it.
I love Star Battle puzzles. This was a cool twist
16:23 for me. Now I'm wondering why it took so long for Simon. That was really easy and enjoyable! :)
R7C5 was the critical deduction on my solve path as well, so I think that logic was intended. Nice solve, as usual, Simon.
I was worried about this including a puzzle I'm not familiar with and then I looked up "Star Battle" to find that it's a puzzle I know as Parks and have spent a lot of time on 😅
50 minutes for a drawing puzzle. Phew, that sure was something
I don’t normally wrote the sarcasm that comes to me but at 28:44 is when Simon realizes the snake egg/star battle puzzle changes from a snake drawing puzzle into a star battle puzzle.
22:40 for me. Nice change of pace. Loved it!
Fun puzzle! Took me about 20 minutes. Quite miraculous that so little clues give such a nice solve path! Now I Iook forword to seeing Simon solve it :)
22:55 for me, no clue how I did it that fast, normally I need twice the time of Simon. But after knowing where the ends are, I just tried to draw the snake trying to make 10 regions, which have to be big enough.
Maybe not the planed way to solve it xD
26:06 for me. Didn't quite find the regions towards the end (found the two stars of the top-right region before even being able to place where it was), but it was a fairly simple and enjoyable person. I kind of wanna see a fog star battle now.
this one was fun!
It's a shame how little attention the "grid puzzles" other than sudoku get.
icebarn-based puzzles for example, as well as the myriad of other Japanese number/shading/line-drawing puzzles ( seriously, why are there so many )
20:44 for me. What a fantastic puzzle, really enjoyed it!!
Finished in 29:39. Pretty interesting logic with the snake and the star battle regions it forms. I'm not that great at star battle, but this seemed to make some intuitive sense to me.
Fun puzzle!
My first Star battle puzzle. When I first read the instructions I thought I would somehow have to colour boxes to make stars in the boxes and spent about 10 minutes wondering how I could make the shape of a star… Thank you for the excellent explanation to save me from this spiral!!
I absolutely loved the puzzle!
You should definitely check some of Simon’s previous star battle solves. I believe he has done a few that fit into actual sudoku and a few pure star battle (without extra rules like the snake today).
@@stephenbeck7222 lll have a look! Thank you :)
*yells at screen* Yes, Simon, you do know how that snake must go, because you have two yellow regions with two stars each and there's only one way to divide them! XD
finished it 10 min faster! not sure if i did it the proper way tho, i first reached the same point as around 22:00, then i tried to link the different snake sections in order to make 10 valid regions where i could fit 2 stars in each, and then adjusted to fit the 2 stars/line
The decision around 44:00 over how the snake joins up in the lower left would be a lot more obvious if different colours (rather than only yellow) were used for cells that had to be in different regions to avoid having too many stars in a single region.
That seems tricky to generalize. Don't you still have a lot of cells marked "nonsnake, but might be connected to this or that or neither" color? Easy to make a mistake.
@@raisins7777 Simon has certainly done other puzzles with colouring and managed to keep track of "definitely not the same region" using colour.
The "non-snake but might be connected" is exactly what he was using yellow for, and there were indeed a lot of cells marked this way. But one can have one colour for region cells of unknown connectivity, yet still give distinct colours when regions are sure to be distinct. Doing this would actually decrease the number of such (yellow) cells.
In this case particularly, he had several minutes previously determined that the three regions in the lower left could not be connected and colouring them as such at the time would have later saved him a couple of minutes of angst later on.
42:44 for me. I am not used to the star battle thing, yet loved the puzzle.
Egg battle starring Snake
We need a gofundme to buy Simon some flyscreens (or a beekeeper hat)
i accidentally paused the video and thought that you were thinking too long 😭💀
Instead of using ones for the stars you should have used fives. Because THAT was a five star puzzle if I’ve ever seen one. 😊😅
38:00 for me - and totally not confident at all until I was done.
36:51 for where he finally has the key thought... and then dismisses it as too complicated
edit: Okay, he finally settled on an idea that honestly is simpler lol
No jokes 😂
This is the only puzzle that I ever got faster than Simon, did it in 26.59.
Thx for this puzzle.
Personally I’m not good in snake puzzles.
Can you recommend a snake puzzle for beginners?
I don't know if it could be described as easy, but the puzzle that introduced snake-eggs to the channel was one in a video called "One Of The Best Logic Puzzles Ever", and was solved by Simon in under 20 minutes.
There's a link to a back catalog of all the CtC videos in every video description, in which you can search for "snake" or "snake egg", and it shows the video length to give some idea of difficulty.
Another good snake-egg puzzle was Egg-Sighting by Nordy, featured in the CtC video "We Asked For Beautiful And We Got It!". This was rated as one star for difficulty on Logic Masters Germany, although again, I'm not sure I'd necessarily describe it as easy.
That may be another way to find "easier" snake puzzles, by searching for one or two star rated snake puzzles on the Logic Masters Germany web site.
@@RichSmith77 thx!
Arrived at a slightly alternative solution within the 3x2 rectangle that still worked but got told it was incorrect.
Fun puzzle though!
Are you sure all of your stars are appropriately distant from each other? That is what always trips me up in Star Battle puzzles.
@@emilywilliams3237 yeah I just had two flipped around. Still solved according to all the rules.
@@davec200iI reached the same solution as Simon, and I think it's unique. If your snake is the same as Simon's, don't you have a star in r6c2? That then determines where the stars have to go in the 3x2 snake egg, to avoid stars touching in r6c2 and r7c3.
@@davec200i Unless I'm misunderstanding, you probably had two stars diagonally touching each other. They cannot do that, even when the stars are in different regions in a Star Battle puzzle (and in different snake eggs in this puzzle). Thus, a star in r7c3 (which I presume you had one) would touch the star in r6c2 diagonally, and break the rule about distance between stars. But maybe you meant something else.
Really nice! 11:32 for me today.
16:50 me when I see a beautiful girl in the mall
one minute ago ive never been this early!
Simon I must admit you're getting better and better in your "no jokes" comments 😂
I'm half blind already, why are there holes in your grid?
Just a quick note if anyone gets bemused by the answer check for this one - only add the 1s for the stars, and nothing else before submitting. I made the mistake of adding 0s for where I knew weren't stars, and it meant the answer check failed as a result. Might be obvious to some people, but I was dense enough not to realise.
I did the same, then had to meticulously check all the 1s after getting a failure. Had to think for a moment to realize I shouldn’t have the 0s in the grid
i got the snake part, but as soon as it switched into star battle, i failed. i have not done enough of them to be even remotely proficient.
S for Snake... or... Dragon
I said consummate V's!
Stars cannot be placed in adjacent cells that share an edge OR a corner.
to me that means that: stars CAN be adjacent as long as it not on the edge of the “map” AND stars cannot be placed in corners.
English is not my first language.
33:01 for me
52 minutes of solving and not a digit was placed in the grid
55 minutes
[43:59] ""I know I'm being daft here. I'm not sure how I'm meant to know."
You're totally spot on about being daft, here, Simon! What are you going to do? Connect the snake in the way that leaves four stars in obe big region, or in the way that makes two different regions each with two stars? I don't see how that's even close to hard to figure out!
Please don't cry because I was mean, Simon.