'One Of The Best Puzzles I Ever Solved': WARNING: VERY Hard!

*** TODAY'S PUZZLE ***
We had a really lovely email from Jakhob telling us about his friend (with whom he constructs puzzles) wooferzfg's birthday and requesting we take a look at Loop Nurikabe, a puzzle they are so proud of they made a fridge magnet of it!

This puzzle has a 100% rating but very few people have managed to solve it in nearly a year. (One of our testers spent HOURS on it and couldn't finish.) Simon decided to give it a go and started early this morning... it was a good job he didn't start later!!

Play the puzzle at the link below:

Rules:
Every cell is either water or land. All water cells must be orthogonally connected, and no 2x2 area may be entirely water. Groups of orthogonally-connected land cells form islands, which do not touch orthogonally, but may touch diagonally. Draw a non-intersecting loop through the centres of some cells which passes through each island exactly once. The loop may only visit one cell in each island. If a clue is on a land cell, it indicates the size of its island. Every island must contain exactly one clue. If a clue is on a water cell then the loop must pass through that cell and the clue indicates how many water cells are visited by the loop between the previous island and the next island. Every water section of the loop must pass through exactly one clue. A '?' can represent any non-zero value.

Note that, to check whether you have the correct solution, either compare your solution to Simon's in the video (which is correct) or play the puzzle in Penpa at the link below (which has an inbuilt answer check function for loops!):

*** NEW SUMGEONS & DIAGRAMS PUZZLE ***
If you enjoyed our recent Dungeons & Diagrams streams then definitely check out the new puzzle by sunnyjum, Sumgeons & Diagrams, which combines D&D and sudoku in a brilliant way. The puzzle can be played completely free over on Patreon (and Simon's solve of the puzzle is available behind the paywall).

Other treats on Patreon include:
- the new James Bond sudoku hunt competition;
- 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...!);
- and Mark's latest solve of The Times Club Monthly cryptic crossword

*** GET OUR FOG KICKSTARTER DELUXE & OUR BOOKS ***
Check out this link for the kickstarter books and Fog Novella we've created over the years:

▶ 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”

▶ Contents Of This Video ◀

0:00 Theme music and puzzle intro
2:48 New Snake Egg Sudoku Hunt coming soon
3:28 Dungeons & Diagrams sudoku & video!!
4:05 Happy Birthdays
8:37 Rules
16:12 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'.)

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Twitter: @crypticcracking
We also post the Wordle In A Minute videos on TikTok.

[davidenas]

Purple water? Grey islands? Relevant comment from Mark on a video a while ago: "I'm not going to make the water cells orange, I'm not Simon."

[hom-sha-bom]

Purple and grey are the most unhinged color choices for water and land.

[brobzoid]

"grey is the right colour for an island, not green" an extremely english statement 😅

[puritan]

I just took an epic 2 1/2 hour journey on a ship. I thought I was promised a relaxing cruise visiting some islands but instead I was in constant awe of the mad genius captain that managed to navigate the toxic waterways using a nearly useless map with most of the information missing. Instead of visiting the islands, he crashed into the rocks 21 times, hitting every possible island and blaming the map each time but at least he only hit each one once!

[Vivisions]

I’m sitting here under a gray palm tree on my little gray island, enjoying the wonderful view of the azure-pink sea and looking forward to a new episode of Cracking the Cryptic.

[drlabos]

As an update to the anniversary shoutout, Kelly has agreed to marry me. ❤ Tobi and Kiki are very pleased. Thank you Simon and Mark for highlighting these major milestones in all our lives. Your little sudoku channel means so much to so many.

[abcde_]

29:00 Simon is going for this huge deduction why this can't work, while missing the first line of the rules: Water cells must be orthogonally connected. :D

[neilkightley]

21:48 Simon: "Grey is the right colour for an island, not green". Proof that Simon is not from planet Earth!

[benterra]

29:47 "But Simon!" I scream, tears streaming down my face "All water cells have to be originally connected!"

[enchanter]

Simon always makes jokes about don't talking to him in parties because of what he finds interesting. In that case, I shouldn't even be invited to parties, since I'm sitting here and watching a man solve a puzzle for 3 hours because I find it interesting.

[wooferzfg]

thank you for solving this one - a wonderful belated birthday present!

also lovely to see a non-sudoku pencil puzzle on the channel. it would be cool to see more pencil puzzles (ideally far easier than this one!), even if the audience is initially a bit smaller :)

[maximilianosalvador]

In what universe is gray the right colour for an island over green?! 😂😂 and purple for water? This is a madman

[suspicious_door]

I think I’ve decided that solving this is a great way of avoiding my final exams coming up, wish me luck

[alienrenders]

Just under 2h for me. This puzzle is a masterclass in game design implementation. The center section teaches you a bunch of simple and basic techniques on how the puzzle works. Water streams needing a clue before it can go on land. The implications of no 2x2 water blocks. How all cells with digits around an island must be water. And then you get stuck and you have to think about the overall path of the loop in each section. The puzzle just builds on each technique as you make progress. It's really incredible how it was able to accomplish this.

[dty]

21:42 "Blue and green. No, that doesn't feel right to me." Madness. Utter madness. In all seriousness, they have much better contrast than purple and grey for us colourblindies. Also... islands are green, and water is blue. smh

[sacredsock]

Anyone remember the days when Simon used to apologize for a long vid when he was hitting the 45minute mark?

[RoderickEtheria]

Green is a perfectly reasonable color for an island. If you look at the globe, it is not appearing as purple touching gray, but as blue touching green.

[MrWaffles]

The fact that THAT square of all squares was the final one to be colored is a thing of true beauty. A perfect way for a loop puzzle to go full circle.

[davidrattner]

Wow...jaw dropping when saw the length. Lets settle in for popcorn and movie night!! Cant wait. 😁

[馬善萄]

I do dare have a go with this one, and I'm glad that I managed to solve it in 138:42 ! But every single second spending on this is worthy and I can see that every clue is carefully put together and formed a masterpiece! And the most lovely clue imo is the "?" clue in the middle of the top row, which is amazing!