The Magical Thermometers

*** TODAY'S PUZZLE ***
A quite ridiculously beautiful sudoku today from Jobo. Look how symmetrical the grid is!! You can fold it in half and only the given 2 and 4 would not exactly match. Moreover the logic baked into this one is sublime (and not too difficult). Give yourself a few minutes of joy and have a go!

Have a go at the puzzle here:

Rules:
Normal sudoku rules apply. All thermometers are slow thermometers, as well as region sum lines. ie Digits along these thermometers must either stay the same or increase from the bulb end; and box borders divide each blue line into segments with the same sum. eg r8c2 + r7c3 = r6c4. Digits separated by a white dot must be consecutive. Not all dots are given.

*** NEW JAMES BOND SUDOKU HUNT OUT ON 1 APRIL ***
Do you know your Drax from your Goldfinger? Make sure you've got your licence to kill renewed to enter our latest competition: a brand new James Bond-themed sudoku hunt!

Apart from the new James Bond sudoku hunt, there's:

- Simon's latest forays into the world of Islands Of Insight
- Mark's video looking at the new OneUp puzzle from Rodolfo Kurchan.
- his solve of Region Geometry by Emre Kolotoğlu (3hr 36min long...!)
- Mark's solve of The Times Club Monthly cryptic crossword

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▶ Contents Of This Video ◀

0:00 Theme music & puzzle intro
1:21 Please check out our Sudoku Club
2:20 Rules
5:05 Start of Solve: Let's Get Cracking

▶ Contact Us ◀

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We also post the Wordle In A Minute videos on TikTok.

[johnboender]

Hey Simon, thanks so much for featuring this puzzle! You followed the exact intended solve path, well done. :) Hope you enjoyed and thanks for the wonderful words. - Jobo

[gianlucatartaro]

It’s crazy how I can sit and do a puzzle in almost 2 hours, and then Simon can just figure out in 10 mins what took me over an hour to do. It legitimately took me over an hour to place that 1 in box 4 as my first digit by creating a 34 pair in column 2, and so watching him do it so quickly just feels superhuman. Simon, you are a genius!

[utsavbmusic]

29:35 “if I could get rid of 5 in orange”

The 5 in box 4: 😕

[anaayoung]

I was super lost. So I decide to only watch you instead. But when you said something about lows in 9min, that make sense in my head. I try again the puzzle and was able to solve it! Yey! Super happy for that! Thanks 🎉😊

[MattYDdraig]

34:37
The symmetry in this was superb, and the way the region sum lines acted like an invisible force on the two-box thermos was sublimely clever.

[dysphoricpeach]

26:40 love this, the excitement and shock in his voice

[Swisswavey]

A really surprisingly beautiful puzzle. It looks so simple but the way it unwinds is incredibly elegant. Look at the final solution and think about the genius needed to make it end up that way. Top marks!

[janerobson]

I love the fact that Simon ignores boxes, columns and rows with 8 digits in and then gets frustrated when he can't resolve boxes with 6 digits in. Keep being you Simon ❤

[chocolateboy]

I finished in 67 minutes. This was a really fun one. Seeing how the numbers bounced around each line was very fun to solve only using my visualization skills. Great Puzzle!

[theneilpowers]

26:37 "So, I've got a 2-3 pair, now. Oh, I've got a 2-3 — OH! I've got a 2-3 pair!"

[gandalf_le_rouge]

Typical Simon getting me shouting in front of my screen when asking "can I get rid of the 5 from orange somehow?" Yes you can, and you literally put your mouse over it two seconds later (and earlier for what it's worth) 😂😂😂

[fulltimeslackerii]

The way that given 3 disambiguates the bulbs is sheer GENIUS

[naomis]

I object to you saying you aren’t cool when it comes to Sudoku. You are amazingly cool!

[HunterJE]

41:10 The sudoku on the column gets there just fine but another elegant way to fill r7c5 here is to note it's on a white dot with a 6 or an 8, and there's already a 5 in the box and a 7 in the row, therefore it must be a 9 with an 8...

[psiphiorg]

I found something interesting when solving. I looked at where 1 and 2 could be within box 5, and they could only be in column 5. That meant that the 4 in box 2 could also only be in column 5. That, in turn, placed 4 on one of the regular thermo tips, which could then only be made with 1 and 3 on the first two places of the bulb. That couldn't be in the same column as the 1-2 pair to make a 3 sum, so the 1 on columns 2 and 8 could only be in rows 6 and 8, a nice little X-Wing. Simon found the 1 in column 2 a completely different way, which was great to see.

My time for this puzzle was 15:03, solver number 6681.

[emilywilliams]

Another very enjoyable video of a splendid puzzle. I thought that I maybe would give this one a try, but I'm glad I decided to watch first. I will consider trying it in a few days - thanks, Simon!

[inspiringsand]

Rules: 02:26
Let's Get Cracking: 05:16

What about this video's Top Tier Simarkisms?!
Bobbins: 2x (05:54, 28:24)
Three In the Corner: 1x (39:49)
Maverick: 1x (43:21)
The Secret: 1x (32:54)

And how about this video's Simarkisms?!
Ah: 12x (05:54, 08:46, 10:36, 13:50, 16:37, 19:08, 19:08, 23:51, 31:46, 31:46, 39:42, 42:39)
Hang On: 9x (04:14, 07:04, 11:47, 11:47, 11:47, 29:29, 29:29, 29:33)
Sorry: 5x (08:07, 19:39, 23:13, 24:03, 36:16)
Pencil Mark/mark: 5x (11:14, 11:34, 15:32, 20:43, 30:07)
Weird: 5x (07:14, 07:16, 26:18, 35:17, 37:29)
Beautiful: 4x (00:20, 01:00, 19:14, 26:48)
Incredible: 4x (07:50, 43:23, 43:25, 43:28)
In Fact: 4x (03:07, 28:49, 30:04, 35:19)
Surely: 3x (40:03, 40:03, 41:26)
Wow: 3x (01:11, 14:02, 15:21)
Symmetry: 3x (00:39, 07:46, 38:34)
Bother: 2x (28:30, 32:06)
Gorgeous: 2x (29:50, 29:55)
By Sudoku: 2x (16:02, 41:45)
Obviously: 2x (04:53, 05:43)
Box Thingy: 2x (38:44, 38:47)
Phone is Buzzing: 2x (17:55, 37:03)
What Does This Mean?: 2x (13:57, 40:07)
What on Earth: 1x (31:26)
Useless: 1x (35:37)
The Answer is: 1x (24:38)
In the Spotlight: 1x (39:52)
Horrible Feeling: 1x (43:53)
Extraordinary: 1x (34:28)
First Digit: 1x (20:07)
Disconcerting: 1x (06:45)
Shouting: 1x (11:26)
Stunning: 1x (44:40)

Most popular number(>9), digit and colour this video:
Sixty Eight (5 mentions)
One (85 mentions)
Yellow (29 mentions)

Antithesis Battles:
Low (6) - High (3)
Even (6) - Odd (3)
Higher (5) - Lower (0)
Lowest (2) - Highest (0)
White (4) - Black (0)
Column (14) - Row (7)

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!

[davidh.]

1:15:33@#2920. It took a while, and some almost straight-up bifurcation, but I finally figured out that the middle box had to have 3 and 4 in opposite corners. After that I was able to gradually deduce the rest of the grid, using colors similar to those of the video. Tough, but not the worst I've faced.

[frankjiang]

Finished in 16:58. Fairly straightforward sudoku. Not sure if I would categorize this as approachable as you have to have some knowledge to make it flow smoothly, but once you have those realizations, it flows very well.

Fun puzzle!

[crashtextdummie]

The logic that arose from the region sum & slow thermo combo lines was a very pleasant surprise to me. At first glance, I thought it was a remarkably convoluted way to convey very little information. Eventually I caught on. 😅