A Perfectly Symmetrical Face

Normal sudoku rules apply. Along thermometers, digits must increase from the bulb end. Digits on a purple line must form a sequence of consecutive digits in any order. Digits separated by a black kropki dot have a 1:2 ratio.

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Hi! We're Simon Anthony and Mark Goodliffe, two of the UK's most enthusiastic puzzle solvers. We have both represented the UK at the World Sudoku Championships and the World Puzzle Championships. We're also "cryptic crossword" aficionados. Mark is the twelve-time winner of The Times championship and Simon is the former record holder for most consecutive correct solutions to The Listener crossword. We hope we can help your puzzle solving while also introducing you to some of the world's best puzzles.

Thank you for watching!
Simon and Mark

0:00 Theme Music & News around the channel
2:20 Rules of today’s puzzle
3:00 Start Of Solve - Let's Get Cracking!

[ridhwansudoku]

Thank you Mark for featuring my puzzle. A very enjoyable video and a fantastic solve. Glad you enjoyed it. There were couple of deductions that could save some time there. For example, R5C8 and R4C9 are not on the renban in box 3. So there are two high digits that can't be on that renban. Now the digit 3 and 4 must be on that renban. And that 3 and 4 sees R2C7. That means R2C7 is either 2 or 6. Now we can remove 6 from R2C7 using logic that Mark did on 13:14. Other than that, it is still very enjoyable video to watch.

[AFastidiousCuber]

This is just a puzzle where the solution path involves a million tiny steps that have to be spotted in a particular order, which means people are more prone to overlooking things. But also I think the fact that Mark was told that this puzzle would be very hard somewhat psyched him out.

[chocolateboy]

I finished in 146 minutes. This puzzle was an absolute joy to work through. The break-in on the bottom right side was one of the coolest that I have seen. The way the geometry worked there was incredible. There were so many good parts. I think my favorite part was ruling out 7 from r8c4 due to a 7 now being forced into r3c5, making r3c8 and r6c7 both 6's. This forces r5c7 to be a 3 and r4c7 to be a 7. This breaks as there is no 7 available in column 1. That was so fun to see. This has to be one of my favorites with the way the geometry worked. Great Puzzle!

[jaredgudnason]

I'm not usually yelling at Mark.. but he pointed out long long ago about 1 being in column three in box 1, but failed to see that resolved the 1 and 8 in box 7 so so much earlier than he managed to see..

[BryanLu]

@37:17 "That's a 3678 quad..." Better than that Mark, its a 367 triple!

[SamuraiPipotchi]

24:46 I got to this point in a different way - by noting that blue and pink CAN'T appear on the Renban, you can then figure out that blue and pink can't be 7 or less without completely breaking the Renban, therefore blue is 9 and pink is 8. This also proved that the Thermo starts with 12, which proves the middle Renban is 123.

[emilywilliams]

In these puzzles where pencil marking and close observation are required, despite your saying that you employ stormtrooper scanning, you actually see quite a lot - and you are looking at a lot of places I would never think to look. The break-in was especially marvelous! Thanks for yet another long and fun video from you, I always enjoy them. And no, I don't think I'll try the puzzle, at least not soon. I think it's beyond my ability. (I was especially amused when you were so excited about box 6, I think it was, and several things were occurring to you at once, and you said that you had to marshal your competing thoughts - I pictured you calling everyone to attention so that you could review the troops!)

[adrianhead]

Finally a puzzle that's puzzling!!! Completed in 40m15s.

[ericpraline]

Always intimidating to see an hour plus Mark video, but on the other hand often I manage to get through them in a reasonable time as in this case. You need to have your eye in for this one!

[inspiringsand]

Rules: 02:25
Let's Get Cracking: 02:58

What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Three In the Corner: 1x (1:11:44)

And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Pencil Mark/mark: 19x (03:19, 05:44, 05:51, 07:41, 10:06, 14:06, 19:16, 20:58, 23:34, 23:36, 26:04, 28:54, 35:56, 38:36, 41:43, 42:07, 1:00:03, 1:00:28, 1:09:09)
Wow: 10x (10:00, 13:46, 25:29, 28:10, 54:52, 56:13, 59:13, 1:02:48, 1:02:48, 1:10:52)
Ah: 9x (40:42, 41:58, 43:07, 52:34, 53:36, 56:49, 1:03:05, 1:06:07, 1:11:26)
In Fact: 5x (14:06, 27:06, 56:26, 1:00:01, 1:10:14)
Goodness: 4x (37:41, 40:49, 49:10, 1:05:26)
Sorry: 4x (03:37, 15:46, 40:04, 47:13)
Symmetry: 4x (01:08, 03:47, 21:21, 1:12:27)
Clever: 3x (13:46, 56:18, 1:03:18)
Brilliant: 3x (22:35, 44:05, 52:08)
Hang On: 3x (02:08, 06:41, 1:11:13)
Stuck: 2x (28:13, 40:04)
Lovely: 2x (55:26, 55:38)
Fascinating: 2x (27:21, 27:55)
Extraordinary: 2x (1:11:54, 1:12:25)
Obviously: 2x (35:05, 36:04)
Progress: 2x (08:27, 27:37)
What on Earth: 1x (1:10:39)
Useless: 1x (1:10:12)
Nonsense: 1x (1:06:48)
Missing Something: 1x (44:09)
Beautiful: 1x (16:51)
Gorgeous: 1x (56:13)
Come on Mark: 1x (1:10:02)
By Sudoku: 1x (26:04)
Bizarre: 1x (27:21)
Surely: 1x (1:09:11)
1x (1:09:13)
That's Huge: 1x (26:23)
Crikey: 1x (08:31)

Most popular digit and colour this video:
One, Two (157 mentions)
Red (14 mentions)

Antithesis Battles:
High (9) - Low (2)
Even (6) - Odd (2)
Black (6) - White (0)
Column (36) - Row (11)

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!

[Coyotek]

1:21:34 (over multiple sessions) ... I'm in a stretch of puzzles where I find myself stepping away to try at a later point; I'm just glad to have made it through this one

Tough puzzle!

[srwapo]

@59:15, FINALLY got that 2 and I can stop screaming.

[TheBiggreenpig]

27:28 "this is 7 or 8", yeah, but where is 8 in that box?

[brianroberts]

That was a tough one. I always look at the length of the video as a guide to how hard it's going to be, but Mark seemed to make hard work of the middle section. Was doing quite well until I got to near the end. Couldn't work out how to get out of the seemingly deadly patterns. I broke the puzzle and had to backtrack a couple of times. Finally saw where the 3 was in column 2, which resolved it in box 1, and plain sailing.
Just under 1 hour.

[Raven-Creations]

@ 23:41 You know the renban in boxes 3/6 must contain 567, and R1/3C7 see all of it, so can't have 6 or 7, giving you an 8 and a 9, and removing 89 from the renban, making it 34567. Now, there must be an 8 or 9 on the renban in box 9, making it 678 or 789. This fixes R4C9=9, because the renban must have 7 and 8. This in turn makes the renban 678.
@ 27:50 You've now got a 367 triple in C7, forcing the 89 in C7 in box 3, making R2C8=7, R3C8=6, and R5C8=8. This makes the box 1 thermo end 89.
@ 37:30 "that's a 3678 quad" - how can you not see it's a 367 triple and an 8? It's now 14 minutes since you could have wrapped up C7-9, and you're still not spotting it.
@ 43:16 What are you doing? You pointed at the given 9, then deduced there's an 89 pair in box 5, one of which is directly above the given 9.

I've seen it a few times, where once you focus on the details of the ruleset, your normally excellent scanning goes to pot. Never forget sudoku. The feeling of helplessness while you were struggling was torture.

I'm not saying it was easy, but your almost total lack of scanning made this much, much harder than it should have been. There were so many different ways you could have resolved boxes 3 and 6, but you missed them all for what felt like an eternity. By the time you did resolve this, I think your brain was fried, so you were missing things that were not necessarily obvious, but which you'd definitely have spotted. Although there was a bit of chipping away at the start, once the lines/thermos became a bit restricted, a flow did develop.

[jimwittes]

110:17 and went through several pencils to get there. I used the thermals as a renban variant. Knowing that the thermal line contains unique digits. So R5C8 would be somewhere in C9 in the lower right box. Definitely not a single order to the solve.

[daveturner]

The renban in boxes 1, 2&5 can be deduced as being 23456 by noting that a 1 in box 5 c4 forces a 1 into r3c5 thus forcing a second 1 onto the renban. Hence 1's are in r2c4 & r3c3 and not on the renban. Did I miss this in Mark's solve?

[debrawilden]

Once again, I think Mark was not able to see cell options well due to that purple line being too intense and wide. When placing # options on those line cells, they are nearly impossible to see unless the cells are highlighted.

[phuybrechts]

Again, remind youre scanning, in both ways please 😊 ! You proved where 1 goes in box 1 (min 50 ). And look below in box 7 where 1 is !

[meirkara]

I spent forever trying to solve the puzzle and gave up eventually. Then I peaked at the solve video and saw that the rules in the video end with "not all dots are given". The app and the video description omit this. I should've double-checked...