this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation
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Cracking the Cryptic has shown me the wonders of variant sudoku. My personal favorite variant is thermo. Their GAS series is a good introduction, or jump right in at logic masters
Cracking the cryptic is awesome! They opened my mind to the wonderful world of puzzles
Simon's enthusiasm is infectious. I am up to the point I can do most of the puzzles that don't involve set theory or really heavy math. So much fun.
I used to just passively watch all their videos, but I recently started "having a go" if the video is less than 50 minutes. It always feels good when I can actually complete one.
Their android apps are awesome as well. Much more approachable than the puzzles on the YouTube channel.
It was probably a year after I started watching before I started attempting the puzzles myself. It started with Mark's videos that were under 45 min and Simon's that were under 30. Now I think my limit is under 90 minutes for Simon, except pencil puzzles, I'll try any of those. The video length can actually be a bad indicator of how difficult I find it. They both do math heavy puzzle really fast, and Simon has a knack with set theory.
That's a good point. Simon seems to have every killer cage committed to memory lol. Set isn't too bad if it's the Phistomefel ring (and clearly signalled by the clues), but some of the other sets I've seen him spot are damn near impossible for me to see.
They both worked in banking, so the math makes sense. For the sums I have a feel for most of the extremes and common ones, the triangular numbers, the maximum numbers, the missing or extra "ones" (4 digits that add up to 14, 4 digits for 11...). I usually just use the killer calculator for the other ones. At least on the desktop site its under the advanced settings.
That too is about my limit for set, although I might see the expanded ones too. As soon as Simon highlighted the cells in yesterdays feature he immediately knew it was set. I don't know how he does it.
To be fair he has done a LOT of set puzzles haha
I don't know if Simon has played set https://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle . Sorry. But yes he has experience.
Thanks for sharing this. Never been trained formally, just picked it by doing it in the papers. Would definitely check it out and see how I would do.
I wouldn't call their videos training, more of guided solving of easy to monstrously difficult puzzles. You solving is the training. As a warning, if you start enjoying solving the featured puzzles, your old sources might lose the allure they once had.