This Might Make You Feel Really DUMB!

*** TODAY'S PUZZLE ***
The return of an old friend to the channel tonight with the Dying Flutchman's sudoku Three Is A Crowd. The premise is a very simple (in theory) twist on a familiar idea but the implications are seriously interesting. How did you get on?

Play the puzzle at the link below:

Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply. Digits in cages sum to the indicated value; some of the values have been replaced by question marks. White dots connect consecutive digits. Along purple lines, any consecutive group of three values (digits or cage totals) must sum to a multiple of three.

*** MONUMENT VALLEY STREAM ***
You can (re)watch last night's Monument Valley stream here:

*** APRIL SUDOKU HUNT COMPETITION JUST OUT ***
Our April Fools themed sudoku hunt went live on 1 April. You could win Emily Williams' homemade sudoku cushion cover!!

Check it out for as little as $2/month here:

*** BONUS SOLVE ON PATREON ***
Simon couldn't resist the Scrabble Sudoku mentioned during last week's videos. His solve of LMDemasi's puzzle is available on Patreon now!

*** NEW FOG APP IS OUT ON APPLE (!), STEAM & ANDROID ***
Brand new incredible Fog Sudoku puzzles by the likes of Phistomefel, Marty Sears, James Sinclair, Qodec, Dorlir, ThePedallingPianist, Sandra&Nala, Peter Veenis, Mr Menace, Florian Wortmann, Math Pesto & HalfBakedLunatic.

*** CRACKING THE CRYPTIC APP ***
Our main app (which is itself completely free) contains packs featuring Fog, Domino, Lines, and GAS puzzles, with a few special free sets as well! All the puzzles are hand-crafted by us and some of the best constructors in the world, with hints by Simon and Mark.
AppStore:
Android:

▶ Contents Of This Video ◀

0:00 Intro music & puzzle intro
2:30 Last night's stream
3:18 Patreon Update
4.14 Happy Birthdays
4:40 Rules
6:18 Start of Solve: Let's Get Cracking

▶ Contact Us ◀

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Simon Anthony & Mark Goodliffe
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56 Gloucester Road
London
SW7 4UB

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#sudoku #puzzle #modulo

[NieniesRevenge]

I think it's important for all of us viewers to be reminded periodically that though we may spot some sudoku Simon has missed or shake our heads at a rule he's forgotten, he is capable of teasing logic out of puzzles that I could stare at blankly for days and never get a single pencil mark.

[dkamm]

Simon, watching any video of yours longer than an hour is sure to make me feel dumb.

[DyingFlutchman]

Hi Simon,

This is Flutchman.

Great to be back again :) Haven't been setting any puzzles for a long while. Lack of inspiration and busybusybusy life.

Now to watch...

[Nemo-kkqg]

I'm at 41 minutes and I can't help admire how truly the title applies to me specifically. I have been stuck on this puzzle for days, gave up and only now, while watching Simon, realized that for some dumb reason, I have convinced myself that the 5 cage is either 1+4 or 2+5🤣🤣

[MaierFlorian]

Simons biggest problem while solving was that he never got rid of / replaced the blue green once he got a grip on orange/black. Nearly made him make some false pencilmarks and also caused a lot of confusion in some stage of the puzzle where he could easily determin a lot more colors if he would've seen those green/blue as orange/black cells.

[emilywilliams]

Fantastic video and solve, Simon. I certainly will not be attempting a puzzle which was over an hour for you, but I did enjoy watching you and following your reasoning. Thank you!

[gregind]

11:35 Simon: "this goes round in a circle"
Actually it's going round a parallelogram. 😄

[inspiringsand]

Rules: 04:46
Let's Get Cracking: 06:23

What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Bobbins: 4x (14:51, 30:10, 47:12, 1:24:05)
The Secret: 2x (1:23:03, 1:23:15)

And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Hang On: 22x (15:44, 16:11, 16:11, 16:20, 20:23, 20:28, 22:43, 28:24, 30:51, 30:55, 35:41, 35:41, 36:23, 36:23, 37:56, 41:42, 1:01:55, 1:10:17, 1:12:02, 1:13:18, 1:16:57)
By Sudoku: 14x (19:48, 25:13, 41:31, 50:09, 1:01:13, 1:01:27, 1:03:48, 1:16:34, 1:19:55, 1:20:34, 1:20:40, 1:22:01)
Ah: 14x (11:31, 18:31, 30:51, 31:39, 31:39, 36:46, 45:12, 56:37, 57:17, 1:01:23, 1:04:47, 1:13:01, 1:17:04, 1:17:07, 1:19:53)
Sorry: 10x (18:23, 30:24, 41:42, 41:59, 43:25, 46:30, 1:05:44, 1:06:29, 1:09:35, 1:15:44)
Obviously: 8x (06:42, 12:50, 14:34, 17:54, 19:40, 41:14, 48:14, 1:02:16)
Nature: 8x (12:59, 14:37, 14:40, 17:36, 17:38, 17:40, 50:18, 53:40)
In Fact: 7x (08:23, 26:50, 32:12, 56:00, 1:10:38, 1:15:05, 1:20:29)
Wow: 5x (18:23, 51:11, 51:11, 1:03:37, 1:05:49)
What a Puzzle: 4x (51:16, 1:20:41, 1:24:20, 1:24:20)
Lovely: 4x (20:49, 24:15, 40:33, 58:58)
Pencil Mark/mark: 4x (30:40, 1:06:49, 1:07:14, 1:07:53)
Clever: 3x (01:07, 18:27, 49:40)
Beautiful: 3x (02:43, 24:07, 1:17:11)
Going Mad: 3x (16:15, 16:20, 43:25)
What Does This Mean?: 3x (33:42, 34:56, 52:17)
Bother: 2x (14:03, 1:03:05)
Stuck: 2x (1:03:41, 1:03:45)
Fabulous: 2x (03:39, 1:24:16)
Weird: 2x (23:15, 28:16)
Good Grief: 1x (1:21:23)
What on Earth: 1x (51:24)
Bingo: 1x (41:52)
Horrible Feeling: 1x (29:37)
Brilliant: 1x (00:49)
Take a Bow: 1x (1:25:10)
Famous Last Words: 1x (1:15:56)
Puzzling: 1x (04:13)
Whoopsie: 1x (06:52)
Prize Charlie: 1x (1:21:06)
That's Huge: 1x (41:34)
Cake!: 1x (04:32)
Symmetry: 1x (05:21)

Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Seventeen (24 mentions)
Three (149 mentions)
Yellow (125 mentions)

Antithesis Battles:
Even (11) - Odd (2)
Black (49) - White (8)
Column (22) - Row (16)

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!

[na]

Sorry, I couldn't watch much of your stream last night, after watching you do a couple of levels I had fallen in love with the game and had to go play it myself, I had so much fun completing it

Can't wait to watch this solve I always enjoy your videos

[HunterJE]

Knew when Simon left the 258 he put in as an example that it'd come back to bite later...

[fgjhham]

Yup. Can't believe I spent 4 hours on one sudoku. I felt pretty dumb during the whole thing, but pretty smart when I finally finished it. 😅

[justinchutkow]

@ 1:01:47 How did he deduce the 7 needs to be in Row 5 of Box 5? Nevermind! I love seeing Mark or Simon catch their mistakes; it's sometimes more insightful than the solve. :-)

[scarletmanuka]

What a fascinating puzzle that was. Having the interaction between the cage total modularity and the modularity of the cells in the cage made for some very neat deductions. Though I think my favourite part was working out that 1 and 4 couldn't both be in the lower third of column 7, thus finally resolving which way around the cages at the top went.
Now to watch Simon's solve to see what things I missed out on picking up :)
Hmm, not too much, but we did certain sections in completely different orders, which is always interesting. What worked for me in regards to colouring was accepting that I couldn't relate all the colours to each other initially, and having a different colour set (except for the 369s which were more easily placeable) for each line or area, and then working to match them up as I filled in more of the puzzle. A lot of the deductions required multiple clues working together so I feel this was a good approach.

[tdbraun]

"My coloring is up the Swanee." - Simon

[karenhorn]

Loved solving this myself, spent about 3 hours on it. Never felt totally stuck, just slowly made my way through it.

[chocolateboy]

I finished in 132:30 minutes. This was one of the most brilliant and joyous puzzles I have ever solved. The title did not reflect me at all, because this puzzle made me feel so clever for figuring out its secrets. Discovering the meta of it was a joy as it was revealed to be like a loose version of the modular ruleset with the possibility of a repeated set, which I'm so happy showed up in at least one of the lines. I was surprised at how quickly most of the lines could be narrowed down and colored in the beginning.

There so many sick parts in this puzzle, it's hard to narrow down favorites. One part that was nice to see was in box three and no matter what was placed in the 8 cage, a 7 always appeared on the kropki dot, either through 7's only spot being there or through an 8 that formed from when the 8 cage was a 125 triple. That felt neat. This next part blew my mind with how good it was to spot. With the way row six worked, pairs formed from the modular 1 and 2 sets that forced r6c9 to be a modular 2 set. This was clutch as it forced the 7 in box six to go in r5&6c8. If we assumed that 134 were the digits for the 8 cage in box three, this causes a surprising break on the complete opposite side in the 17 cage of box nine. In this scenario, the 17 cage was forced to contain a modular 1 digit along with a modular 3 digit. This forced the remaining cell of r9c8 to also be a modular 1 digit. However, the brilliance of this setting shows that a 7 was locked in that column from earlier and a 14 pair that formed in that column thanks to the assumption of 134 in the 8 cage of box three. This means that the 17 cage doesn't have a modular 1 digit to take in r9c8 and breaks. That made me lose my mind when I saw that. It was such a fun calculation to do. I loved that!

That wasn't the only brilliant piece of logic, though. Later on, after many digits were placed and cells were colored, I still had the colors of the big line in column four undetermined. This is where another sick trick was found. I had already determined that a 1 had to belong in one of r1&2c3, so I assumed what if r6c3 were a 4 digit. This breaks in such a satisfying way. A 4 in r6c3 would cause a 1 to end up in r8c4, which forced 1 into r9c1 of the 17 cage. This ended up needing a 79 pair, of which 7 goes in r8c1. This 7 forced r2c1 to be a modular 2 digit. The line in box one was determined to be a simple modular path in this scenario, which would cause r2c2 to also be a modular 2 digit. This breaks now as all modular 2 digits in row two have been used up and r2c9 had to be a modular 2 as well. That finally forced my column four line to disambiguate the colors and made r6c4 a modular 1 set. That was a big help.

The exact same logic was used shortly after this when a 4 was placed in r9c1. One possibility was a 67 pair with 7 in r8c1. This is the only option available if the box one line is a simple modular line. This again would force r2c1 to be of modular 2, which can't work if r2c1 is of modular 2 set. That logic worked beautifully and the puzzle finished itself quickly after. I was even able to get my single set line used in box one.

This puzzle blew me away in so many ways. I love this ruleset too. The way it hides itself as a modular line with an extra part that it could be a run of the same set was amazing to discover. This has to be one of my favorites. Great Puzzle!

[SafetyBoater]

Green should have been the 3, 6, 9 set because yellow + blue = green.

[GregoryLewis-kf]

Great puzzle! Took me just over two hours. There's just more information to keep in your head than you can annotate with this one, which is most obvious with the coloring. Not always the hardest deductions, but there are just so many areas of possible interest that it's hard to find the next step.

[srwapo]

Lol, I was sad about there not being a 3 in the corner long before the end of the video.

Edit: my comment was wrong. Feel free to ridicule me!

I like how you (logically) ruled 7 in box 5 had to be in row 5, then erased those pencil marks, then later (logically) ruled 7 in box 5 had to be in row 5 a different way.

[Paolo_De_Leva]

Wildly innovative twist on _"multiple of N"_ lines. Fascinating. I am looking forward to solving this.