Oh, thank goodness! Whenever a puzzle is described as "easy", it almost certainly guarantees I can't solve it, no matter the time or effort, despite solving other puzzles with twice the solve time by one of you. Got this one without throwing in the towel (though I will admit to a hairy minute in the early-middle).
A newbie here: It was very indeed pretty begginer-friendly. After watching a few videos here on the channel I felt like this is the one that I can do. And indeed, I made it in 15 minutes. It is a pretty good entry point
That's how I started, too: after watching for long enough, if a puzzle was described as 1* difficulty and looked interesting I'd try my hand. After a few successes I'd try a couple of harder ones, and suddenly I've solved a 4* Dorlir puzzle! I don't know that I ever would have solved any of them, even the easier ones, without the skills I picked up by having watched this channel for long enough.
I've been playing the easier puzzles on this channel for a couple years, and was happy that I clued onto the coloring strategy pretty immediately, but I would say it wasn't trivial for me. For a digitless miracle puzzle, it's VERY approachable. Loved it!
Solved it in 17:06 :-) What a lovely puzzle! And indeed I have to say I am very glad that there are some shorter videos lately, with just as enjoyable puzzles as the longer ones... But which are slightly less compromising on my need for enough sleep...
I ❤ to see the easier puzzles!! Your engaging personality still makes the puzzles entertaining to watch! And allows me to include myself in the Sudoku solver community!
I myself think this only deserves a 1* difficulty if you are kind of used to variant sudoku - if you've never heared of coloring (or the law of leftovers, which put you in the same place in this puzzle), you might not be able to solve this one. But what a lovely little puzzle that was :)
An internet search of "Law..." Does show sudoku variants at the top of page one so that must be correct. "Lore..." however makes it sound like all the leftovers are going on an epic quest! Nothing wrong with that either!
I have tried so many puzzles on here and never been able to finish them. I'm so happy to say I've finished my 1st cracking the cryptic puzzle!!! Very approachable. Thankyou so much
I finished in 5:18 minutes. This was a nice friendly puzzle. The break-in involving the long diagonal felt very cool to spot and continued being satisfying from there. I tend to enjoy these short and sweet ones a lot. As always, it feels good to beat Simon's time. Great Puzzle!
Quite a newbie - and used a little colouring but in a very different way. Started on he diagonal, seeing that the bottom right 2 squares had to be the same, and got the 1,1,1,1,2,3 reasonably quickly. Moved on to the 2,3 pairs after that and that's where I started colouring.
You always look so happy when you start a video, Simon! It really puts a smile on my face too! I'm not entirely new to variant sudokus, but when I was, I would have struggled with this puzzle for sure!
Rules: 02:53 Let's Get Cracking: 04:47 What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?! Three In the Corner: 1x (14:05) And how about this video's Simarkisms?! Lovely: 4x (10:49, 11:59, 13:44, 18:07) Ah: 4x (03:23, 09:24, 10:17, 14:00) Beautiful: 3x (17:16, 17:37, 17:37) Brilliant: 3x (02:07, 17:21, 17:23) The Answer is: 2x (13:42, 15:26) By Sudoku: 2x (06:12, 12:48) Cake!: 2x (02:09, 02:51) What on Earth: 1x (11:19) Sorry: 1x (14:54) In the Spotlight: 1x (14:05) Break the Puzzle: 1x (15:38) Shouting: 1x (14:57) In Fact: 1x (01:29) Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video: Ten (6 mentions) Three (19 mentions) Green, Blue (20 mentions) Antithesis Battles: Column (9) - Row (7) 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!
Loved this one. I like when a less advanced solver like myself gets a chance to actually solve it lol. I also love watching you solve the really hard ones though so it's a win for me either way
I feel like the people who get upset when Simon "solves" during the rules need to lighten up, since sometimes rules require specific examples to understand and Simon is explaining them for our benefit; which if anything, usually takes him longer to solve than it otherwise would (and I know people get upset far more over that), so it's not like you're in competition with him.
I agree with you. Solving a good sudoku is like reading an excellent book - it is not spoiled if you know some of the plot points before you start if the book is truly excellent. So seeing a bit of the logic explained during the explanation of the rules themselves does not give everything away, or even, in a truly good puzzle, anything of importance.
Sure thing. If you really don’t want any spoilers, just read the rules. If you get them, start the solve. If you don’t, have Simon explain them to you with some helpful examples.
Definitely needed two attempts to solve this one, myself -- first attempt was about 30-40 minutes of various coloring attempts with some minor deductions but no noticeable progress, but the second attempt only needed about 9:21 because I realized that once I'd placed three colors along the largest diagonal clue, three different colors necessarily sum to >=6 (on a diagonal that cannot sum to >9) which allowed me to solve the first digit, which cracked the rest of the puzzle wide open.
I solved in 10:32. The very first thing I considered was the top left diagonal being limited to one digit, and then the double ? diagonal. Then I proceded to do the coloring exercise.
You are right, this had enough logical complexity to be truly interesting, but I still solved it in less than 15 minutes. Very enjoyable puzzle, and I enjoyed the video, of course, Simon!
It's late and my eyes are now saggin'. But I had to come get a quick gag in. I thank you, dear host For that nice verbal toast To my mommy, the great Nana Dragon. Happy birthday, Mom, and congratulations on your progress beating cancer!
I would like to say this puzzle is a fantastic way to prove anybody of any backround, anywhere in the world can click the link below and try it because the puzzle is not judging anyone. Be yourself and appreciate we all have our opinions. Take care ❤
I did the breakin a little bit different. I started with the main diagonal and after some deduction I saw that the top two cells could not include a 1, so it had to be a 2-3-pair and everything else in the diagonal became 1. Then worked on 23s vs 456. Did it in just over 20 mins with only a little bit of coloring. Very nice puzzle indead.
at 15:03 I nearly fell out of my chair, I did not expect you would know the old memes! (Do quote the old memes at me. I was there when they were written but they're still funny)
OOH cute, finally one I can do.. 12:31 after some tiny back tracking when I made a wrong assumption and found out it was the wrong one.. That was very enjoyable! thank you!
I think if you had to solve this without coloring it would be more than 1 star..I found it easy but if I had to do it on paper with just a pencil it probably would have been more difficult.
I'm embarrassed to say that I failed the puzzle overall. BUT amazingly, I independently chose the same colors as Simon, and I consider that a huge win!
solved in 8:48. I certainly took more time to think about the little killer clue on the negative diagonal than I could've, but it all worked together as I did some grid coloring for the puzzle.
I was very surprised and delighted to see I made the deductions in this puzzle in the exact same order. (Though, I used letters - much more color blind friendly. )
By the principle of Chekhov's Gun, the ?? clue _had_ to be 10 ..... Why else would it be mentioned in the rules that a ? as a units digit could stand for 0? Unless that's a deliberate bluff, and it's really 11 or 12 .....
95% of the time or more, a clue of ">8" will mean exactly 9, but in a non-trivial minority of cases it won't be. Some setters specify "digits cannot repeat in cages" even in puzzles where that would not be possible under normal sudoku rules. Sometimes there _isn't_ a 3 in any corner. You may feel you can safely make an assumption based on the laws of narrative, but that isn't solving the sudoku.
Deliberate bluffs are quite common amongst sudoku setters that have been featured multiple times on the channel. I imagine there is something satisfying about making Simon laugh...
Solved it in under 8 minutes, and that was despite making a mistake that caused me to invert the place of 2s and 3s. I did a hybrid of Simon’s approach looking at the geometry for unique colors and actually considering how the clues work, and the latter made the former much more useful. How can the long diagonal work if it sums to a single digit? Even if it is as high as 9, it forces the identity of purple, which in turn gives you the identity of blue and green, and orange too shortly thereafter.
11:09 for me. Got stuck for two minutes or so until I could prove the long diagonal to my satisfaction, then everything went relatively smoothly. Colouring helped immensely.
I'm reasonably proficient (can usually do a 6-7 star puzzle on the CTC app without hints, if I give myself a few days) and I'm not sure I would have found my way into this one.
So I ended up solving a part of this in a bit of a "meta" way. The rules state that the ? can be a single digit from 0-9, but that specifically the leading digit in a ?? cannot be 0. This entire rule tells you that one of the ?? will include a 0 in the second digit, otherwise the rule wouldn't need to be so specific about it. Considering there is only one ?? in the puzzle, we know that is going to be ?0. There are only two squares available for it, so it can never reach 20, therefore it must be 10, and you can fill in 456 pencil marks on the diagonal. So by looking at this puzzle from the perspective of a setter, you can get some pencil marks down.
If it wasn't written that way, a total of 10 could be prematurely ruled out and that would act as an extra clue we weren't intended to get. Conversely the setter could have added another ?? clue somewhere else in the grid but it wouldn't have been necessary to disambiguate the digits. Phrase it exactly that way or add an unnecessary clue. I think they made the right choice.
I was faster than Simon (which never happens) - mostly because he did a colouring exercise while I concentrated on the little killers (the 2 pink cells to start saves 5 minutes)
I’m glad you’re getting to do some shorter videos. Also nice to see easier puzzles so is noobs can try. 💜
Yay! I can do this one! ❤🎉
As the old pop song says.....................More, More, More.
Simon casually dropping an "all your base are belong to us" reference was certainly not on my bingo card
Somebody set us up the bomb!
Now I had to go listen to Zero Wing Rhapsody again.
He plays starcraft so I imagine he's familiar with Warcraft and those references.
Oh, thank goodness! Whenever a puzzle is described as "easy", it almost certainly guarantees I can't solve it, no matter the time or effort, despite solving other puzzles with twice the solve time by one of you. Got this one without throwing in the towel (though I will admit to a hairy minute in the early-middle).
A newbie here: It was very indeed pretty begginer-friendly. After watching a few videos here on the channel I felt like this is the one that I can do. And indeed, I made it in 15 minutes. It is a pretty good entry point
Welcome!
That's how I started, too: after watching for long enough, if a puzzle was described as 1* difficulty and looked interesting I'd try my hand. After a few successes I'd try a couple of harder ones, and suddenly I've solved a 4* Dorlir puzzle! I don't know that I ever would have solved any of them, even the easier ones, without the skills I picked up by having watched this channel for long enough.
A very neat and beginner-friendly demonstration of using colouring and the Law of Leftovers. Well done GBPack!
I've been playing the easier puzzles on this channel for a couple years, and was happy that I clued onto the coloring strategy pretty immediately, but I would say it wasn't trivial for me. For a digitless miracle puzzle, it's VERY approachable. Loved it!
Solved it in 17:06 :-) What a lovely puzzle! And indeed I have to say I am very glad that there are some shorter videos lately, with just as enjoyable puzzles as the longer ones... But which are slightly less compromising on my need for enough sleep...
I ❤ to see the easier puzzles!! Your engaging personality still makes the puzzles entertaining to watch! And allows me to include myself in the Sudoku solver community!
I agree!
Yay! I enjoy watching the epic solves but when I see video times like this I immediately jump onto the puzzle to do it myself. :)
I'm a newbie to these variants of sudoku, I did give it a go, and it took me a while to understand the power I could get from coloring!
I myself think this only deserves a 1* difficulty if you are kind of used to variant sudoku - if you've never heared of coloring (or the law of leftovers, which put you in the same place in this puzzle), you might not be able to solve this one. But what a lovely little puzzle that was :)
Could not agree more!
Is it lore of leftovers? I always thought they were saying "law of leftovers"
An internet search of "Law..." Does show sudoku variants at the top of page one so that must be correct. "Lore..." however makes it sound like all the leftovers are going on an epic quest! Nothing wrong with that either!
@@user-gj5uc4yx3i sorry must have been autocorrect 😂
I have tried so many puzzles on here and never been able to finish them. I'm so happy to say I've finished my 1st cracking the cryptic puzzle!!! Very approachable. Thankyou so much
44:01 coloring is very helpful for this one
I finished in 5:18 minutes. This was a nice friendly puzzle. The break-in involving the long diagonal felt very cool to spot and continued being satisfying from there. I tend to enjoy these short and sweet ones a lot. As always, it feels good to beat Simon's time. Great Puzzle!
that was very very pleasing. especially enjoyed the final single question mark clue
Can't you immediately pencil mark 456 on the two cells pointed at by the two-digit little killer?
Sure, but it wouldn't help Simon in the solve... and Simon is veeeery resistent to pencilmarking when it doesn't help him immediately...
Yes indeed.
Which immediately rules out blue & orange from R4c4, placing blue in c4
Loved it. Fun, approachable and makes you feel clever.
Did it in 35 mins+ distractions from everyone in the house, very fun to see an approachable puzzle that I could solve before watching the video
A really nice one, definitely on the 'easy' side of things; completed in 5:38 (conflict checker off), many thanks to GBPack for a great puzzle!
Quite a newbie - and used a little colouring but in a very different way. Started on he diagonal, seeing that the bottom right 2 squares had to be the same, and got the 1,1,1,1,2,3 reasonably quickly. Moved on to the 2,3 pairs after that and that's where I started colouring.
That's exactly how I did it. Slower, probably, but it works!
I loved this puzzle. It is the perfect difficulty level for me.
You always look so happy when you start a video, Simon! It really puts a smile on my face too!
I'm not entirely new to variant sudokus, but when I was, I would have struggled with this puzzle for sure!
Just as you said Simon. Pretty easy but very enjoyable.
six minutes on the nose. Very satisfying puzzle! And an excellent introduction to irregular sudokus.
Rules: 02:53
Let's Get Cracking: 04:47
What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Three In the Corner: 1x (14:05)
And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Lovely: 4x (10:49, 11:59, 13:44, 18:07)
Ah: 4x (03:23, 09:24, 10:17, 14:00)
Beautiful: 3x (17:16, 17:37, 17:37)
Brilliant: 3x (02:07, 17:21, 17:23)
The Answer is: 2x (13:42, 15:26)
By Sudoku: 2x (06:12, 12:48)
Cake!: 2x (02:09, 02:51)
What on Earth: 1x (11:19)
Sorry: 1x (14:54)
In the Spotlight: 1x (14:05)
Break the Puzzle: 1x (15:38)
Shouting: 1x (14:57)
In Fact: 1x (01:29)
Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Ten (6 mentions)
Three (19 mentions)
Green, Blue (20 mentions)
Antithesis Battles:
Column (9) - Row (7)
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!
Wonderful little puzzle.
I always appreciate Simon completing the coloring rather than removing it (or worse, leaving it partially done)
Loved this one. I like when a less advanced solver like myself gets a chance to actually solve it lol. I also love watching you solve the really hard ones though so it's a win for me either way
I feel like the people who get upset when Simon "solves" during the rules need to lighten up, since sometimes rules require specific examples to understand and Simon is explaining them for our benefit; which if anything, usually takes him longer to solve than it otherwise would (and I know people get upset far more over that), so it's not like you're in competition with him.
I agree with you. Solving a good sudoku is like reading an excellent book - it is not spoiled if you know some of the plot points before you start if the book is truly excellent. So seeing a bit of the logic explained during the explanation of the rules themselves does not give everything away, or even, in a truly good puzzle, anything of importance.
Sure thing. If you really don’t want any spoilers, just read the rules. If you get them, start the solve. If you don’t, have Simon explain them to you with some helpful examples.
@@stangerrits6712 Yep, they even have timestamps for that.
this was wonderful!
CtC is a fun on every level!
19:49 - That was very enjoyable with some lovely logic.
great for self confidence 1st time ever to solve it faster than you. thank you.
Lovely puzzle.
Definitely needed two attempts to solve this one, myself -- first attempt was about 30-40 minutes of various coloring attempts with some minor deductions but no noticeable progress, but the second attempt only needed about 9:21 because I realized that once I'd placed three colors along the largest diagonal clue, three different colors necessarily sum to >=6 (on a diagonal that cannot sum to >9) which allowed me to solve the first digit, which cracked the rest of the puzzle wide open.
Gorgeous puzzle. Loved that.
..a neewbie, skill wise. Delighted to colour it like you, and solve. Had to think about the 4's and 6's too. And was only two minutes slower!
Lovely puzzle and loved watching your solve after completing it myself! :)
I solved in 10:32. The very first thing I considered was the top left diagonal being limited to one digit, and then the double ? diagonal. Then I proceded to do the coloring exercise.
Quick note unrelated to the puzzle: Islands of Insight is currently free on Steam.
You are right, this had enough logical complexity to be truly interesting, but I still solved it in less than 15 minutes. Very enjoyable puzzle, and I enjoyed the video, of course, Simon!
17:31 for me, and a chance to utilize my new custom color palette 😄
That was a fun coloring puzzle
00:15:59 yay for reasonable solution, was fun coloring it
An excellent way to spend 9:04, fun little puzzle.
It's late and my eyes are now saggin'.
But I had to come get a quick gag in.
I thank you, dear host
For that nice verbal toast
To my mommy, the great Nana Dragon.
Happy birthday, Mom, and congratulations on your progress beating cancer!
Well shoot. What else am I gonna do with my lunch break?
06:33 for me. Delighted I got the hang of it so quick,I love the easier puzzles,especially when there's such nice logic
I would like to say this puzzle is a fantastic way to prove anybody of any backround, anywhere in the world can click the link below and try it because the puzzle is not judging anyone.
Be yourself and appreciate we all have our opinions.
Take care ❤
10:35 finish. Another fun little puzzle, and very colorful! Excellent!
8:45 is my time today, I can definitely recommend this puzzle to anyone trying to get into variant sudoku.
Great video and great puzzle most enjoyable
14’48 for me. Loved it.
I did the breakin a little bit different. I started with the main diagonal and after some deduction I saw that the top two cells could not include a 1, so it had to be a 2-3-pair and everything else in the diagonal became 1. Then worked on 23s vs 456. Did it in just over 20 mins with only a little bit of coloring. Very nice puzzle indead.
at 15:03 I nearly fell out of my chair, I did not expect you would know the old memes!
(Do quote the old memes at me. I was there when they were written but they're still funny)
14:33
A very beautiful demonstration of hidden simplicity.
man that break in almost stumped me! Lovely lovely puzzle!
Finished in 15:37. Great puzzle!
3:10 for me. I'm a big fan of easier puzzles, I don't know why they tend to get overlooked. Really enjoyed this one!!
Really nice deductions at the start and a good consistent difficulty level. Coffe break puzzle most definitely.
OOH cute, finally one I can do.. 12:31 after some tiny back tracking when I made a wrong assumption and found out it was the wrong one.. That was very enjoyable! thank you!
Either you or Mark should do One Up as a bonus on the 28th. It's their 100th Puzzle and quite difficult.
I think if you had to solve this without coloring it would be more than 1 star..I found it easy but if I had to do it on paper with just a pencil it probably would have been more difficult.
I'm embarrassed to say that I failed the puzzle overall. BUT amazingly, I independently chose the same colors as Simon, and I consider that a huge win!
Very approachable. Finished in 8:11.
7:33 for me. I saw the 414 in the bottom right corner and just flowed with it from there.
8:42... very nice, simple puzzle!
GB is a big icecream company in Sweden. They used to have these 2 liters icecream boxes named GB Pack. (apparently they're now named Big Pack)
I solved it, but maybe not in the most efficient way. Now, to watch Simon's solution.
solved in 8:48. I certainly took more time to think about the little killer clue on the negative diagonal than I could've, but it all worked together as I did some grid coloring for the puzzle.
6:21 "Blue is in one of those two positions in the funny shape region"
Well Simon, when an F pentomino and a giraffe love each other very much...
Finished in 9:46. Pretty straightforward irregular region sudoku.
Fun puzzle!
Oh that coloring tactic would be easier than mine. I started solving that long diagonal but still manage to clear it before Simon :)
I was very surprised and delighted to see I made the deductions in this puzzle in the exact same order. (Though, I used letters - much more color blind friendly. )
Finished in 8:35, the 7143rd solve. For some reason I found it much easier to use letters
At the 13 minute mark, Simon knows where blue is on the bottom row. Even if blue is 3, 3 + 6 can not greater than 10.
5:44...that was a nice quick snack
By the principle of Chekhov's Gun, the ?? clue _had_ to be 10 ..... Why else would it be mentioned in the rules that a ? as a units digit could stand for 0? Unless that's a deliberate bluff, and it's really 11 or 12 .....
95% of the time or more, a clue of ">8" will mean exactly 9, but in a non-trivial minority of cases it won't be.
Some setters specify "digits cannot repeat in cages" even in puzzles where that would not be possible under normal sudoku rules.
Sometimes there _isn't_ a 3 in any corner.
You may feel you can safely make an assumption based on the laws of narrative, but that isn't solving the sudoku.
Deliberate bluffs are quite common amongst sudoku setters that have been featured multiple times on the channel. I imagine there is something satisfying about making Simon laugh...
Finished in 9:48! I don't often get a sub-ten minute time on a CtC video.
this had some real bite in it, that 1 star difficulty rating by no means it was a pushover...
Solved it in under 8 minutes, and that was despite making a mistake that caused me to invert the place of 2s and 3s.
I did a hybrid of Simon’s approach looking at the geometry for unique colors and actually considering how the clues work, and the latter made the former much more useful.
How can the long diagonal work if it sums to a single digit? Even if it is as high as 9, it forces the identity of purple, which in turn gives you the identity of blue and green, and orange too shortly thereafter.
11:09 for me. Got stuck for two minutes or so until I could prove the long diagonal to my satisfaction, then everything went relatively smoothly. Colouring helped immensely.
18:39 for me. Lovely puzzle.
7 mins for me. Thanks!
Two hats please!
10:30 for me, very nice!
I wasted time before trying the colouring. So 19:26 for me. But at least I made it without taking any dead end route. Thanks.
Me: simon should look at this cell. It's clearly yellow.
Simon: I'm going to look at this cell. It's clearly purple.
Me: oh........ok that works. LMAO
22:29. I'm surprised at how well I did there. Great puzzle!
I'm reasonably proficient (can usually do a 6-7 star puzzle on the CTC app without hints, if I give myself a few days) and I'm not sure I would have found my way into this one.
Got 16:30. Really liked this puzzle :)
It wasn't so very easy for me, but it was fun and didn't take too long. The coloring thing took a while to occur to me.
Whoever rated 1* was mental
So I ended up solving a part of this in a bit of a "meta" way. The rules state that the ? can be a single digit from 0-9, but that specifically the leading digit in a ?? cannot be 0. This entire rule tells you that one of the ?? will include a 0 in the second digit, otherwise the rule wouldn't need to be so specific about it.
Considering there is only one ?? in the puzzle, we know that is going to be ?0. There are only two squares available for it, so it can never reach 20, therefore it must be 10, and you can fill in 456 pencil marks on the diagonal.
So by looking at this puzzle from the perspective of a setter, you can get some pencil marks down.
If it wasn't written that way, a total of 10 could be prematurely ruled out and that would act as an extra clue we weren't intended to get. Conversely the setter could have added another ?? clue somewhere else in the grid but it wouldn't have been necessary to disambiguate the digits. Phrase it exactly that way or add an unnecessary clue. I think they made the right choice.
00:09:38 for me. Totally agree that this is a wonderful puzzle! Kind comment.
2:55 Rules actually start
I was faster than Simon (which never happens) - mostly because he did a colouring exercise while I concentrated on the little killers (the 2 pink cells to start saves 5 minutes)
4:44 on this one!
Yay! I solved one quicker than Simon!
12.34 for me. Fun.
And such a nice time! #ElectricDoormat
@@gordonglenn2089 Oh yes, I didn't see that. Lol.