We Asked For Beautiful And We Got It!

*** TODAY'S PUZZLE ***
In the video for yesterday's fantastic puzzle by Florian Wortmann we mentioned that the easiest way to have your puzzle featured on the channel was to submit something beautiful and approachable. (Because we are inundated with beautiful and impossible!) Well Nordy took us at our word and submitted this Snake Egg puzzle overnight. And we kept our word by trying it immediately!!

Play the puzzle at the link below:

Rules:
Shade some cells to form an orthogonally-connected, 1-cell wide snake that does not branch, does not loop, and does not touch itself orthogonally—but may touch itself diagonally. One end of the snake is given as a white circle. The remaining non-snake cells form ten, distinct, orthogonally-connected areas—one each of sizes 1 to 10. Areas of different sizes do not touch orthogonally, but they may touch diagonally. Each number in the grid must be part of an area of that size. A '?' represents any number from 1 to 10. [To enable the software to check your solution, in each non-snake cell write the size of that region. Use "0" instead of 10 for the 10 region!].

*** NEW SUDOKU HUNT JUST OUT ***
A sudoku hunt, Kraken The Cryptic was released on 1 July at 4pm UK time on Patreon. We're already hearing it's a lot of fun (and not too difficult) so do give it a try if you can.

Join us on Patreon for as little as $2 a month to play.

*** NEW GAS PACK: VOLUME 2 IS OUT ***
The new GAS (Genuinely Approachable Sudoku) pack is out on all platforms here:

60 original puzzles by Clover, Bill Murphy and Philip Newman!! Earn party hats and dinosaurs with these brand new puzzles!

▶ 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:

Android:

ALSO on Amazon: Search for “SudokuPad”

*** ORDER OUR UPCOMING BOOK HERE ***

▶ Contents Of This Video ◀

0:00 Theme music & puzzle intro
1:05 A Snake Egg puzzle from the past
2:53 Thanks to Elliot
3:08 Kraken The Cryptic - a new sudoku hunt for our Patrons
3:55 Rules
7:25 Start Of Solve - Let's Get Cracking!

▶ 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 - 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:

Android:

ALSO on Amazon: Search for “SudokuPad”

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[nordy]

Nordy here. Thanks so much for the feature! Wonderful solve as always.

To be fair, given the slightly-more-challenging step at around 16 minutes in the video, this puzzle is probably 1.5 stars for difficulty (I posted it as a 2-star puzzle, so I didn’t underrate this time!). Personally, I like my easy puzzles with a few small bits of struggle in the first half, so I kept these clues.

SPOILER: If you shift the given 4 down one cell, you can smooth out the hardest part, but I believe you lose more than you gain :) Cheers!

[tremkl]

Me, seeing the puzzle in the thumbnail, and the sub 30 min runtime: “Simon, you only uploaded 1/3rd of the video!”

[delta]

22:30 - logical error here, if the leftmost upper snake segment were to have gone around the snake end to the left, it could circle all the way around to the rightmost upper snake segment, and the end could join the middle upper snake segment. This can be proven impossible at this stage by noting that it would force the ? to be less than or equal to 4, and 1 2 3 4 are already used.

[Ardalambdion]

The triangular number of 10 is 55. Total grid is 10x12=120, giving us a 65 snake.

[ariavaggio]

I had never seen a Snake Egg puzzle before, so it definitely took me quite a bit longer than you to understand it, but it was delightful! Hope you can get to introduce us to a larger variety of puzzles in this approachable manner!

[Gliperal]

I remember that snake egg puzzle by Murat! That was one of the first videos I ever saw on your channel, if not the first. That and the subsequent pentomino snake by Nikolai Beluhov were such a wonderful introduction to the world of pencil puzzles, and this video is truly a delightful reminder.

[stevesebzda]

Lol
@0:35
"So, anything that happens, I'm pleased to tell you, it's his (Mark's) fault."

Hilarious, Simon.
😂👏🏻👏👏🏽

[markp]

16:33 finish. I tend to like the longer puzzles; they are more likely to show me a new trick that I haven't seen before. That being said, I don't always have hours to devote to solving them, and so the shorter puzzles can be a nice break. This one was straightforward. Excellent!

[Lumeth]

Am I the only one, or does someone else also get a more relaxed and energetic feeling from Simon since they made the 1, 5+ h monsters rarer and increased the amount of approachable puzzles?
I for my part like it :-)

[drum]

Amazing puzzle. I love when non-sudoku puzzles get featured!

[EchoMirage]

I'd definitely would love to see a 2 hour puzzle. I usually just put on one of your videos and lay down, and your solving puts me to sleep. It's nice.

[Ratzfaz]

23:00 there is the possibility, to connect this end all around the bottom to the right end of the snake, and sneak R8C8 to the circle....

[ymiros]

In my opinion the hard and the easy puzzles are very different, on the hard puzzles it is a delight to see you power through even the most mind boggling deductions and it's exciting to try to figure out a solution alongside you when you're stuck while not having the feeling of hopelessness that might at times overcome you when solving on your own and not making any progress.
Meanwhile easy puzzles are usually beautiful showcases of an elegant solution path and your joy discovering it is simply infectious. However they are usually not as .. I guess thrilling in my opinion and I am less often impressed by the wonders your minds have come up with (Though Mark's gas puzzles are still very impressive), as there's rarely deductions that leave me stunned.
In the end I do enjoy both variants very much though and I think the setters can be admired equally for both types of puzzles.

[AugustoValentini]

I saw the video was short, so I tried doing the puzzle without watching but couldn't comprehend the rules. Then I watched Simon's explanation and tried again. Got it in 12:52 😄
After understanding it, the puzzle became genuinely approachable!

[longwaytotipperary]

Beautiful solve, Simon! Thanks to Nordy for another “ just the right amount of difficulty” puzzle that allows me to watch both Simon and Mark at dinner time!

[_Baku]

9:56 for me. I'm always happy to see more pencil puzzles on the channel, both approachable ones like this one as well as the 90+ minute solves.

[inspiringsand]

Rules: 03:55
Let's Get Cracking: 07:43
Simon's time: 19m36s
Puzzle Solved: 27:19

What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Three In the Corner: 1x (10:22)

And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Snake: 114x (00:53, 00:56, 01:13, 01:19, 03:56, 04:13, 04:22, 04:47, 04:47, 05:00, 05:04, 05:08, 05:35, 05:51, 06:02, 06:23, 06:54, 07:07, 07:50, 07:53, 08:00, 08:04, 08:11, 08:23, 08:38, 08:43, 08:51, 08:53, 08:58, 09:03, 09:07, 09:09, 09:13, 09:17, 09:22, 09:25, 09:30, 09:32, 09:36, 09:38, 09:38, 09:54, 10:56, 10:58, 11:01, 11:01, 11:03, 11:13, 11:17, 11:28, 11:35, 11:39, 11:42, 11:42, 11:59, 12:16, 12:18, 12:21, 12:25, 12:28, 12:30, 12:49, 12:52, 12:54, 12:56, 13:20, 13:23, 13:25, 13:28, 13:31, 13:33, 15:16, 15:31, 16:10, 16:42, 16:52, 17:20, 17:39, 18:23, 18:29, 19:06, 19:25, 19:27, 20:23, 20:25, 20:46, 20:48, 20:52, 21:05, 21:27, 21:29, 22:06, 22:07, 22:10, 22:18, 22:44, 22:56, 23:33, 24:04, 24:12, 24:41, 25:12, 25:12, 25:26, 25:52, 26:04, 26:04, 26:15, 26:39, 26:45, 26:51, 26:54, 27:00, 28:09)
Touch Itself: 11x (04:16, 04:18, 04:49, 04:57, 09:25, 09:42, 11:43, 23:53, 24:15, 26:09, 26:43)
Lovely: 5x (02:57, 12:58, 13:01, 27:32, 28:10)
Beautiful: 5x (21:47, 23:10, 27:16, 28:10, 28:12)
Ah: 5x (10:45, 16:23, 17:14, 17:32, 27:16)
Naughty: 4x (00:48, 09:27, 26:43, 28:40)
Obviously: 3x (01:50, 04:27, 11:15)
Sorry: 2x (10:13, 13:55)
Clever: 2x (07:14, 19:17)
Gorgeous: 2x (21:54, 21:57)
Hang On: 2x (26:20, 27:16)
Surely: 2x (16:29, 16:29)
In Fact: 2x (00:58, 17:45)
Out of Nowhere: 1x (20:12)
In the Spotlight: 1x (10:24)
Stuck: 1x (15:20)
Astonishing: 1x (01:13)
Approachable: 1x (07:34)
Magnificent: 1x (01:16)
Propitious: 1x (28:43)

Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Ten (10 mentions)
One (28 mentions)
Green (26 mentions)

Antithesis Battles:
Even (2) - Odd (0)

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!

[tiagomarques]

This is a wonderful puzzle: not too difficult, yet with enough depth to give me sudden bursts of joy whenever I find the next step in the solving process. Thank you, Simon, and thank you, Nordy!

[LapsedMemory]

11:49, absolutely wonderful snake puzzle with some really nice, flowing logic.

[emilywilliams]

Very enjoyable. Since you have given the invitation, I will say that I love the occasional lovely easier puzzles, especially if they are sudoku or sudoku hybrids with pencil puzzles. I really love the harder puzzles, though, because I love to watch you figure out the amazing things that I just don't see - and I always learn things from the harder puzzle solves. (There are other places on the internet for easier puzzles, not very many for the truly "monstrous" ones, as you call them.)