Only 11 People Have Solved This

*** IF YOU HAVE EVER ENJOYED ONE OF OUR VIDEOS... ***
Then give yourself 17 minutes of joy by watching this video... which features neither Mark nor Simon!

*** TODAY'S PUZZLE ***
Not one but two puzzles in tonight's video as Simon attempts Wessel Strijkstra's Never - a sudoku/yajilin hybrid which, we have to say, is just mindblowingly good. To prepare for the main event, Simon tackles shye's Yajilin from the Discord server Daily Pencil Puzzle channel first :)

Play shye's yajilin here:

Wessel Strijkstra's puzzle can be played here:

Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply. Shade some cells grey so that no two grey cells are orthogonally adjacent and draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of all the remaining cells (ie cells that are neither blue nor grey). Blue cells cannot be shaded grey, and digits in blue cells represent the number of grey cells in a straight line in the indicated direction (if given). All blue cells need arrows and some arrows must be determined by the solver. A clue outside a row gives the sum of the digits on the first horizontal loop segment passing through its row (including the cells in which it turns); likewise for columns and vertical segments.

Standard yajilin rules for shye's puzzle are:
Shade some cells so that no two shaded cells are orthogonally adjacent and draw a non-intersecting loop through the centers of all the remaining empty cells. Clues cannot be shaded, and represent the number of shaded cells in a straight line in the indicated direction.

*** NEW PATREON SOLVE ***
Congratulations to Holly Lay for winning the November competition, The 12 Labours Of Hercules by Peter Veenis, Aspartagcus and Panthera! Solution videos are out!

*** NEW GAS PACK IS OUT ***
The new GAS pack is out on Steam for PC here:

It's already out on Android and App Store. 60 original puzzles by Sam Cappleman-Lynes, Clover and Philip Newman!! Earn party hats and dinosaurs with these brand new puzzles!

We've also released a FREE app full of handmade puzzles to celebrate reaching 500k subscribers - simply download the Cracking The Cryptic app on Android, Steam or App Store and then select the 500k pack. We're streaming a playthrough of this app and you can watch all seven episodes

▶ Contact Us ◀

Twitter: @Cracking The Cryptic

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'.)

▶ SUDOKU PAD - Our New App ◀

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:

Android:

ALSO on Amazon: Search for “SudokuPad”

**************************************************************

▶ CTC FAN DISCORD SERVER◀

▶ OUR BACK CATALOGUE – ALL CATEGORISED WITH LINKS!◀

▶ *NEW* CRACKING THE CRYPTIC MERCHANDISE◀

▶SEND US PUZZLES TO SOLVE/CONTACT US◀

▶FOLLOW US◀
Twitter: #crypticcracking
@crypticcracking

[wesselstrijkstra]

Fantastic solve Simon, so glad you got everything out of it I put in :D Great idea to add shye’s puzzle as well! Happy to see you enjoyed it and hope others enjoy watching or solving it as well :)

Name pronunciation not bad at all btw ;)

[cathybryant]

This video epitomises what we love about Simon:
1) Spontaneous outbursts of poetry.
2) Revealing "the secret".
3) Creating new words (cul de sacage, greenlyness)
4) Directing us to: "pause the video if you can't see this".
5) The changing of the glasses.
6) Mistyping digits.
7) Discovering brutally hard logic but missing simple math.
8) Reluctance to do sudoku in a sudoku puzzle.
We are only missing visits from Alexa and Maverick. Don't ever change, Simon. ❤

[praematura]

So, I decided to give this a shot, knowing that Simon would take some time doing the Yajilin to explain how it worked, so the video length didn't seem _too_ daunting...

4:08 for the Yajilin...
52:09 for the main puzzle!

I can't believe I did it, but given that Yajilin was one of my stronger puzzles in the Nikoli days, I knew I had a chance of tackling this one. Pure joy throughout, only got stuck a few times briefly, but really loved the flow of this puzzle! Mad props to Wessel. 🙂

[nogravitas]

at min 22 he pulls a classic simon, spotting immediately the difficult reason why there can't be 4 grey cells in column 5 due to connectivity and totally missing the 17 clue at the top, which you can't fullfill if you have only single cell loop sections in the column. Love these moments <3

[Coyotek]

It took me 7 minutes to do the warm-up puzzle ... and over two hours (2:00:29) to solve the main puzzle. At one point, I broke and had to backtrack to spot my error (which I did). All told, though, I finished this one ... and I'm thrilled to have done so.

Incredible puzzle!

[MaierFlorian]

Thanks for the little bonus puzzle at the start - I both enjoyed it AND it helped me understand what the main puzzle was about :)

[richardfarrer]

The suspense is getting to me. Does Simon spot he has a green cell without a loop on row four? Tune in next week to find out.

Fortunately, our intrepid hero spots his error in just a few seconds and continues in pursuit of his quarry. But will he be able to shake off his lingering doubts and quickly reach the prize? Or will he get caught by the villain's traps? It's looking dicey for a moment but he wins through even though he eschews the easy 9 in R3C9.

[christophercordes]

Figuring out how Simon got to this part of the puzzle: Impossible.
Spotting Simon made a mistake: Easy.

I'm so glad you figured that R4C9 clue out quickly, I was extremely concerned there for a few minutes.

[MarushiaDark]

I'm amazed that not only are Mark and Simon grandmasters of sudoku, but they're brilliant solvers of all manner of hard puzzles.

[shye]

what a surprise! glad you had fun with the warm-up :D

[srwapo]

1 hour 20 minute video? Only 11 people could solve it?

I'll give it a go!

(by which I mean I will hit "play" on YouTube)

[bogdanlupu]

Yajirin is in fact the word in japanese. Is a compound word from 矢印リンク(yajirushi rinku short yajirin). First word meaning directing arrow and the second link. Japanese dont recognize L as a sound (in place they use R but sometimes they pronounce L )

Thanks for this puzzle. Is a treat as always.

[zmaj]

Yajilin - 2:29
Sudoku - 58:38

Fun! While common for me to outperform Simon on pencil puzzles, this is a rare case of being faster on the sudoku side as well.

[xnisfuzzy]

"Only 11 people have solved this"
Yeah I'm definitely not gonna be number 12 😂
Time to enjoy Simon's solve

[madisoncrowley]

I'm thankful for sudoku videos from Simon to binge watch while I'm sick on my 18th birthday as of midnight on the 25th

[yichen]

Fantastic puzzle! It's hard, but you never feel "stuck", the logic flows nicely from sudoku rules to the numbers outside to the Yajilin logic.

Took me 92 minutes and enjoyed every minute of it 😍

[markp]

44:38 finish. I kept shouting about the 16 clue in column 9. Once you eliminate 1-2-3, the only possible 3-cell combo is 4-5-7, and the two 10 clues give you a 5 in the middle. Excellent puzzle!

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it today!

[emilywilliams]

I had also started watching this video this afternoon before joining in the stream. So I had to pause the video (but not at all because I was figuring out anything before Simon did) and then come back to it. This was very fun, very interesting. I know you love the region-defining puzzles, Simon, it delights you - and it delights me, therefore. Thanks for this video!

[wpuymac]

Hi I’m just popping in here to tell you that my six year old son keeps asking me to print him “a by sudoku.”

He thinks that’s what the game is called “by sudoku.” I know where he got that from.

[th.nd.r]

Both the introductory puzzle and the main puzzle were absolutely wonderful! What an incredible combination of rulesets. Pure joy in every deduction, absolutely worth the run-time, well-set and well-solved!! Here’s hoping Wessel gets another channel feature in the near future!!

Favorite words and phrases from today’s video:
- “double-not-one, ” which reminds me of “doubleplusungood” from 1984
- “cul-de-sac-age”