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*** TODAY'S PUZZLE ***

Today's puzzle is a debut on the channel for randomra with an "approachable" sudoku that features a lovely break-in. Our testers showed huge volatility in their solving times for this one so we'd love to hear how you all get on - do drop us a comment with your solving times.

You can try it at the link below:

Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply. Digits along an arrow sum to the digit in that arrow's circle. Cells separated by an X must contain digits summing to 10. Not all possible Xs are given.

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[ericpraline]

Not usually interested in solving times - as long as I get there I don't care - but will post my time here as requested - just over 18 minutes. This surprised me a little as while doing it I had the impression of having to sweat a bit, it was less approachable than some approachable puzzles. Very clever too, thanks.

[leftysheppey]

49:52.

I got really stuck for the first 25 minutes, so came to the video for help. When you pointed out the 28 pair at around 14:30, I could do the rest myself :) we did the solves very differently though. I ended up with a ton of 46 pencil marks and coloured them for parity, and the thing that broke that parity was having a 46 in the arrow and circle in box 3. The rest of the solve kind of fell from there.

I reckon I could have saved 5 minutes by tidying up my pencil marks better. Missed so many naked singles by not tidying them up. This is the first puzzle I've managed to solve from this channel. Thank you Simon ❤️

[johnh]

At 19:40, Simon does one of the things that just slays me. He gets the 1 in R7C3, looks up to the 135 and removes the 1, but doesn't immediately continue up the column to the 15, which would then resolve the full 135-triple. And then he wanders away and wonders: "Okey dokey, how is this resolving itself?"

[creepfacegaminpc]

30:32 for me, worked out the 8/9 pair in the middle pretty quick, but got a little stuck for 10 minutes right after. Once i got flowing again tho, whole thing went smoothly. Great puzzle

[Morti]

22:35 for me, I had the break in very quickly but then got stuck on something that should have been obvious, but oh well. Still happy with the time. :)

[victoriam]

It's amazing how easy it turned out for Simon comparing to my struggles :))

I've learnt so much information before really advance,
and my main break through was in the numbers that Simon did in the very end of his solution :))

[disneian]

25:24 Found the break in with the small digit and 8/9, then slowly unwinding the sudoku part.

[KANPAIOPPAI]

31:43 on my 2nd attempt - first time I just got completely mired in X logic + over penciling and failed to see restrictions on 8's and 9's in boxes 4, 7, and 8, which really let a lot of numbers fall into place afterward

[mc_davit]

35:01 after getting some pencil marks on boxes 1 and 9 it took me some time to figure out where to look next, briliant puzzle as usual!

[balanceseeker]

41:33 for me. I ended up getting to the top done before the bottom, working out a few of the X constraints using coloring and then it flowed down. Impressed with the different way Simon went about it. Less convoluted conjectures than I came up with. I'm still kind of new to this alternative Sodoku, but felt I had to give it a go on my own this time, using some of the tricks I've picked up on this channel given the title of the video.

[paulhelm]

43:02 for me spent ages colouring it in I did appreciate the two x clues in row 4 and column 6 which took out the 46 possibility on both the arrows. I totally missed the 28 on x in row 5 near the start bit otherwise a great puzzle.

[nileprimewastaken]

21:32, loved the logic with the double X's!

[georgeaman]

Thank you Randomra and Simon. What a nice puzzle!

[jensschmidt]

21:20 You are more than a little bit strange... which is one of the reasons we keep coming back day after day. That way, we don't feel too weird in our own strangeness...

[nibletsgo]

11:39 for me. I really loved this one. The arrows in the same rows and columns as the X dominoes really helped out eliminating 6 and 7s from the arrow circles. Having those 89 pairs really helped out with the rest of the puzzle. Those arrows leading into cells where you can do quick math to place 9's outside of the X dominoes was also really neat.

[celsoantunes]

27:44. It took me a while to shift from trying to get digits from the extra constraints to the normal sudoku logic. I enjoyed it quite a lot though, neat interactions!

[joec]

This one was really cool! Took me 16:15--it was so rewarding to play the two constraints against each other and discover elimination after elimination, noticing potential patterns and then unwinding them after a key deduction. This puzzle truly was propulsive!

[longwaytotipperary]

Love this! Also loved the live stream yesterday!

[DiMono]

I finished in 18:01. I took my time figuring out the right thing to look for, and then it flowed very smoothly. I found this to be a very nice puzzle.

[ConManAU]

I got it in about 35 minutes, after a false start where I incorrectly deduced that the arrows in boxes 1 and 9 were both 9s. Once that was fixed up, it was mostly smooth sailing.