When you realize, that quarantine opened you something really cool, love this channel

The first digit I discovered in the sudoku was the 6 at the bottom middle. It's crazy how emotional I got waiting until 8:00 for Simon to see it.

"Master the Basics of Advanced Solving - Experienced Beginners Only!"

It's nice going back to these older ones and seeing how far you've progressed in your puzzle solving. So much fun!

Love this guy, stumbled at the channel because of the "How to solve a Sudoku with only 4 digits" video and now I'm addicted to Sudoku and the channel. Thanks for showing how to solve the puzzles and for the possibility of trying them in your app!

"I went deliberately slow today" - solved it in less than 15 minutes while talking the whole time. Meanwhile it took me 1 hour 15 minutes on my own. I'm glad I solved it, but damn, I still got much to learn

“Deliberately slowly” lol

neat logic at 12:00! as a beiginner, it made me think about the importance of doubles again

I've been jumping around the older videos that have linked interactive linked puzzles. I managed to do this one on my own but I had a lot of difficulty with making absolutely accurate pencil marks and also unwinding without errors. It takes forever to find the block that breaks things open when the puzzle is half full and it looks like a confusion of pencil marked cells and finished digits. At that point, I'm usually just staring at it. Simon invariable finds what he needs quickly, while I'm down in the trenches marking all the things cells that what seemingly weak cells can be. He has a keen knack for finding that "weakest of all cells" and leveraging it to his immediate advantage such as the 3 at the bottom of Column 7 in the beginning and the 4 at the bottom of Column 8 near the end. That could have unstuck me if i'd noticed but i was mucking around with the empty cells in the bottom left block.

Very proud to say that after a couple of days of watching the channel and trying to solve the puzzles along with you (when there were numbers graciously included to start with!) but always inevitably hitting a wall that I couldn't find a way to get past I finally finished this one completely by myself. My brain is tingling from the rush I felt of finally seeing the next step after being stuck, and being able to fill the whole thing in! Thank you for this channel, it's been helping me so much with keeping my brain active in self isolation. My time was 47 minutes, so lots there to improve on for next time :)

Thx! Also for doing this slowly... and making the thoughtprocess clear!

Pencil marks are lemmas: simple deductions that facilitate later, more involved, deductions. I have never known of any mathematician or logician who considered the use of lemmas to be "cheating." In fact, lemmas serve to make proofs clearer and more efficient, just as pencil marks do.

This was a nice puzzle for using a variety of basic techniques. I gotta say again, as I have before, I think a few months ago this puzzle would have stumped me but now it was quite easy. Good work Simon and Mark! Keep up the great videos.

Thank you, was my 3rd puzzle, about 2 hours, so pretty happy with that

Yowch. I used to think I was good at Sodukus, but this took me just shy of 45 minutes! That's some great work talking us through the solve, and explaining the power of the pencil marking.

You are a good teacher. Thank you!

relatively new in this channel I love the possibility to solve the same problem before or in between your development. Yhanks for your nice work!

Damn you spot things a bloody sight faster than i can. Thanks.

I'm getting so much faster thanks to this channel. I did this one in about 22 minutes myself.

i got stuck on the 6-tuple in box 7. Never saw it. Good job!

Whoohooo 15 minutes I've finally learned to spot enough opportunities to cut the time.

Excellent, thank you.

Om new to soduko, i watched a few your videos, and this was my first ever solved soduko. The only hint i needed was the triple cells of 578 in colum 1 which removed a 7 just under the 9. I spent 2 hours when i resorted to the hint, and finished in 2.11 hours.

Yes, very cool Simon. I think I had to change to this notation about a couple months ago. (It's now quarantine time for a reference) You guys do good. I was notating it differently (having a single digit on a line between two cells signifying the column or row (so when I got a pair I could lightly circle it taking out those two squares for different reasons) but I it was cutting me short on the diabolical and such above puzzles. I sorta devised putting in the center with a comma showing between two boxes but that's difficult to do when 3 or more numbers come about in a Triple or quadruple between boxes. Ive come to really like it on the website (your website) so I can easily write in both the outer and inner part of a cell depending. Yes, you two got me to switch (I could easily do up to the hard ones in my paper notations but you got me to change lol) Thanks (and don't take away that website grid and nice buttons and colors if need be). Great job again lol Cheers 😅☕ PS: Oh, I couldn't notate the pairs between boxes in a given column/row. (And see the other ones). That's one of the ways I was cutting myself short.

I missed that hidden 3 in R9C7, so I got stuck. After I saw that in your video, the rest fell into place pretty easily (still took me over an hour though because I'm just learning to crack higher difficulty puzzles). I'll need to keep a better eye out for those hidden numbers!

At 11;13 when you began looking for triples you missed the easier way....the Center 9 grid gave you a 4-5 pair in the middle giving you the 9 immediately and unravels the entire puzzle in a much better flow....

Solved it. Basics box ticked! :-)

I'm proud I've utilized uniqueness in my solve

Thanks for this Simon. I'm so glad to have found your channel. I struggle with the diabolicals, and i lack the tequniques. I have always written every single option! then I cant see wood for trees. Now ive got to lose that habit!!!

very nice video,very mutch clean

Decent puzzle, pretty enjoyable..

Thank you 🤗

yay, I got around 16:40 (timer did not stop when checking the sudoku ) Thanks, man for letting us solve alongside you on the sudoku. This is the first one I got to complete before you. (I did peek at yours and copied one number over to help. I'll plead guilty to cheating a little bit. If I ever solve sudoku on my own, I'll happily admit to it) You taught me a few new tricks and helped improve my skills. I look forward to seeing more sudokus!

im the biggest fan ever!! you guys are amazing

Well done sir.

The most important lesson I learned is - don't yield to your OCD for completing the columns, rows, and boxes, and make use of all the clues first. I used it in my very next game, and it helped me a lot! The difference I noticed, is that when I switch from tracing the clues to completing the columns, rows or boxes, I not only break the flow and lose track of all of my clues, I also am not able to complete the C, R, and B as efficiently as I would normally. It's almost as if I am jumping out of one flow and diving into another unprepared, which is damage x2.

I've just subscribed. I managed to get this one out without notation, though typically I use Snyder and subsequently cell notation. I think the only sticking point was finding the hidden 3 at the very start.

would it be possible to access the sudoku-app with just an empty grid so we could use it to solve puzzles that we find elsewhere?

36:30 And it's all thanks to this channel.

It tookme 3 attempts, the final attempt taking 90 minutes. That was a nice hard one. Thank you for the puzzle and the thought process.

Thank you for the X wings, love your work brother, so very articulate, and intelegent, and lovely voice too. Most satisfying to observe.

35:19. I’m pretty happy with that!

Very nice! Thanks so much! :-)

29:18 that was nice and basic. Off to see what I may have missed in the video

fantastic tips

Hi Mark, thanks for your time to share your knowledge, can you please tell me what software you are using and how can I get it. Thanks.

First time doing a sudoku puzzle in like 5+ years. Took me 1hr 9min, not too shabby and had fun doing it (:

17:38 thank you crpytic for improving my skill no end

I followed along trying to do one step, check it with you, and then try to do the very next step. In spite of that, I managed to screw things up. The moment I think I'm getting it....I'm completely humbled. BLAST! Ok. I'll keep working at it.

Keep up the nice work

I don't know what it was about that 6 in the bottom-middle 3x3, but it took me waaay too long to notice it, too.

Nicely done. I would like to comment on something you said early on. You said that filling in all the Candidates by hand is a tedious and time-consuming task. Couldn't agree with you more, there. But then you say that filling in all the possibilities causes one to miss all the beautiful logic that exists in the puzzles. Well, I would say there is another side to that coin. There is also a lot of beautiful logic that you will miss, by NOT being able to see all the Candidates. And I'm talking about all sorts of Chains & Loops, Sue-de-Coq, Swordfish, Jellyfish, various "Wings," Empty Rectangles, etc., etc. And of course, one can always use an App to automatically fill in all the Candidates, and it will update them for you, as you solve the puzzle, as well. There are all sorts of ways to solve the puzzles; each presenting its own set of challenges. I always tell people to solve puzzles the way that gives them the most satisfaction. As for myself, I like to switch back and forth between using automated Candidate Lists, and also doing them like you do, here on this Channel. Cheers! :-))

27:44! I feel like my times are getting much better, as long as there are not Y-wings or strange chains involved.

Nice! Somewhere between twelve and fifteen minutes, with interruptions.

Took 18:24, no special tricks just sneiderman notation that gave some pointing pairs eliminating possibilities and solving the puzzle. When I see a puzzle with a digit only in 1 square I look to see if there is a naked single in that 3x3, not always there but like in this puzzle it was.

18:36 solve time for me. That's the closest I've done to the video solve time ever.

Simon's shirt in this video be like "when you gotta solve a Sudoku puzzle at 5 and look for Blue's Clues at 6".

Just came accross this and must say I struggled more with others. a bit more than 30 mins it took which I am proud of but I am not really in a rush solving sudokus anyway..

I got it done in 27:37. Once I narrowed the 23 pair in C1 and found the 78, I actually guessed the 7 and it ended up solving the entire puzzle.

I used a hidden rectangle (27) at some point. Some people don't like this technique but i think it is valid, a Sudoku should only have one solution. Now i am looking forward to how it is solved in the video.

Finally a score that's close to the video duration haha

what software do you use for putting the numbers in the sudoku boxes?

My but the software has come a long way!

13:58, love watching old videos of Simon before he became a global superstar

What about the "Shifter Shaft" and that part of the shifting process?Isn't this part of the Clutch adjustment?

24:04 Expert 😎

When I look for only two places in a box that has a number I do so in an orderly manner, not haphazardly. Sometimes I see it before you and sometimes you see it first. I look for all the ones in each box and if there are only two then i mark them and go on to the next box.

Was so glad when he realised the six

i went to the link and did this puzzle, but how do i try more sudokus from your site? i couldn't find a way to play other sudokus there. nice app, works well, but no puzzles!

I'd love to submit a puzzle that took me over three hours across four days. I had erased and restarted my notes multiple times. Would love to see him make quick work of it.

I can't flip back and forth between the video, and the link to the puzzle, (to find out how to proceed when stumped) without my puzzle getting wiped out. Is there a way to save it?

Nice one, took me 30m 05s :)

@8:06: That was one of the FIRST things I spotted. It could be deduced from just the original grid.

I know Simon doesn't tend to use uniqueness, but at the 16 minute mark, I would probably do that to say that the 4 and 5 in Block 4 have to be on the diagonal of R4C3 and R6C2 and will resolve, therefore R4C2 is 2. That places 2 in R6C8, R6C1 is 3 and so forth. There you go, Simon, puzzle sorted. Ah, and I've just seen my comment from 9 months ago!

At about 0:45 you say there is a link to try the puzzle. I don't find it in this video but do in others. Do you remove this after some period of time?

Thank youuuu. Took me 22 minutes. Phewww. Head aches 😑

Is standard and Snyder notation the same? Why is it so much easier to solve the puzzles using an app or program compare to to pencil and paper??? I have a lot of trouble using pencil and paper but the difficulty using an app seems to be less than half of the trouble??? Great videos. Thanks

1h, but the video help me two times (first with the three in r9c7, and then with the 4 in r3c4, I could have find this one if I had pay more attention but that's okay)

1:06:43 for me. I missed some obvious stuff like the naked single 3 in Box Nine and the two candidates for 5 in Box Eight ruling out a 5 in Box Two. I must be really blind today.

I love your way of approaching those puzzles. There is one thing I don't get though: You seem to deliberately not look for the plain singles in favor of the pencil marks. (e.g. in the very end here, the 9 in row 9 was already clear because of the 9 in row 3... Still, you solved it up with the pencil mark in row 7. Feels like a detour to me... (Similar thing with the 7 in row 2... And the remaining 2 in the same row.) Is there a deeper reason for doing it that way?

16min54sec not as fast as I would've wanted, but Ok. Thanks, misters, pretty fun as always

easy peasy!

OK, took me a long 41:54 to do it. Now let's see what clever paths I missed.

I tried a slot machine with 2s but didn't get anything out of it.

Nothing fancy necessary to solve this puzzle. No empty squares, wings, fishes. Just doublets and triplets. (Simon went as far as to use a sextuplet once, but I managed with I think a quafruplet maximum.) (I also monaged to overlook one number by sudku, which got me stuck at one point...)

16.33 on my own!

13:35, quicker puzzle for me, nice

21:02 for me best one yet

at time # 10:28, you deduce that a "1" can ONLY go in that position, but actually it COULD go into any other three positions along that row, depending on the final position position of the "1-9" pairs above

there could be a 7 in the 3rd block of the 5th grid, how did you assume that the 7 would be in the 5th block? (10:56)

Huh. I immediately got the center 7, but missed almost everything else along the way to that.

i tried this as my first sudoku. made a couple mistakes. but managed to finish after 3 hours

Finished in 9 min. quite an easy sudoku. no x wings, xy wings, or xyz wings.

indeed a hard one.

At about the 11:00 mark he says the 7 has to go in the middle square but the 7 still could go in the bottom 2 and a 4 could still go in the center.

Is there any chance you can walk SLOWLY thru the solution for today's (12/12/23) NYT "Hard" Suduko solution? I've tried using your "threes trick" but just can't make any progress. Thank you

Still don't see how you placed the "4" at 16:05.

It’s hard to argue with the king, but I do fill in every possibility when I get stumped, and it is often the only way I can solve the thing. I may miss the beauty of the logic, as he said, but at least it is solved when I finish.

I found that tough. 52 minutes + 3 hints from the video.

Initially a hard puzzle to get started, but finished it in 23:05.