here is the best media i have consumed all day

[kaberett]

courtesy of me_and, natch: solving a (specific) sudoku, by a guy who is (0) incredibly enthusiastic about what he does, (1) clearly good at solving puzzles, (2) really good at explaining his working to an audience, and (3) terrible at anticipating how constraints propagate.

it's very soothing. I recommend it highly.

Comments

[kaberett]

for values of "very soothing" that included me shouting at the TV a lot, I will grant >_>

[alexwlchan]

Oh he is so good, and his sense of joy as it unfolds is delightful.

I think you wanted the link to the YouTube video, rather than the puzzle software? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKf9aUIxdb4

(also lol YouTube gives me a link that’s 22 minutes in, I’ve watched it so many times)

[alexwlchan]

I have also enjoyed watching him solve other puzzles by the same setter, most recently this absolutely monstrous one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8LB_Er6BJo

[kaberett]

yes indeed; fix't! <3

[gumbie_cat]

These videos are very soothing to watch. I can follow what he's doing just well enough to make me feel clever, while knowing I'd be totally lost looking at any of these puzzles by myself.

Also, occasionally I'll spot what a number should be before he does. Which means I can be smug and yell: "3! It's a 3!" for sometimes almost a whole 30 seconds before he gets back to that part and fills it in. Delightful!

[kaberett]

ISN'T it. :D

[vass]

That was beautiful and soothing as promised, and I have shared it with one person already and will be sharing it further.

terrible at anticipating how constraints propagate.

I'm curious about this bit. Do you just mean because he kept initially saying "you're joking" and "there's no way this is solvable" etc? Or something else?

(Thinking about it a day later, I wonder whether the "there's no way this is solvable" thing might have been like that one girl in high school. The girl I'm thinking about was called Penny, but you probably knew her by another name when she went to school with you: there's one in every sufficiently large and high pressure academics school. I mean the one who, before every exam, paces back and forth muttering "I'm going to fail, I'm going to fail, the world is coming to an end, the world is coming to an end." And then gets full marks. Or at least 99%. If she gets 98% she will obsess for days about how could she have been so stupid, what is WRONG with her etc, but that almost never happens. So, about the puzzler's self-confidence rather than about the material.)

[kaberett]

Yep, I do in fact mean because he kept saying THIS IS OBVIOUSLY IMPOSSIBLE, when, no. :D Like it looked fiddly but I believed it would work from the get-go?

(I... was possibly Penny? Or maybe not, I think I mostly wasn't scared I was going to fail, just that I wasn't going to do "well" (enough)...)