December Monthly reward - The Cryptic Scriptures of the Secret Snake Society

I sent my answers in but didnt get a shout out?

Finally heard my name (today is the 23rd)! So don't give up hope if you're sure you got the answer right.

Benny Ng

Thanks for letting me know! I'll try emailing and see then.

Justin Dill

This morning I got my mention on the video (the one from the 19th), so if you haven’t heard your name yet, it may be worth rechecking that message; you can still send in a solution today (20th). Good luck!

Yep, I definitely got the puzzles correct, it's the decoded message I'm wondering about. Though I was fairly certain it was correct, given how thematically appropriate the answers I found were. I guess I'll wait until all the names have been read and send an email afterwards?

Justin Dill

The sudokus themselves have an answer check, so you should know whether or not you got those correct. The only way to get the answer wrong is to misinterpret the decoding grid. I sent in my answer a few days ago and also haven't heard my name, btw, so I don't know what to tell you.

Benny Ng

There is a different logic why the snake can´t go up to row 1. Look at some cages in c2 and c8 and the one in r9 (and in r8).

Alexander Herges

I’m still waiting also but only sent mine on 13th

For #5, I Am Steve, why are rows 3-9 brown? Leads me to believe that the brown is the ground and therefore the snake can never be in row 1, is that logic flawed?

Word Bird

Oh! Thank you so much! For some reason in my mind when it said "must be in at least two boxes" I was thinking 2 cells.

all snakes have to enter another box than the one they start in and they can't overlap or cross the diagonal. This provides the most restriction in box 1. (What's the shortest length the snakes can have and how does it affect their sums?)

This is exactly what I’ve been wondering as well. I haven’t been mentioned yet either and I sent my answer in on the 11th; so that does not help you much.

Does anyone know how far along Simon is in reading off the names of correct solvers (in terms of what date those answers were submitted on)? I sent in an answer on the 5th but haven't been mentioned yet and am wondering if I got the answer wrong.

Justin Dill

I'm having trouble with eight snakes. I haven't even gotten a single number. Any help where to start? (I saw someone said above to start with box 1 but I just can't see anything there.)

Scroll to the top of this page (or click on Cracking the Cryptic on the left) and you should see a tab called Membership. Click on that and scroll down a bit. There is a section that has a button called "Connect to Discord". That's probably the easiest way to get set up.

Cathy Bryant

Okay thank you, where is that located?

Megan join the discord community. There are a lot of people helping over there!

Just try to go from the 3 cage to the 17 cage, but obviously not in a straight line.

Alexander Herges

I'm also stuck at the 2nd puzzle. I figured the start of the snake is at r9c8 with a 9, followed by an 8 and 6 in the 23 cage, up into a 4 and a 2 in the 3 cage. But I can't find a way to connect the snake then.

Jan Knoeschke

Oh my gosh. I completely skipped over the “has to be in at least two boxes” part. I thought that meant two cells and I was like well yeah that’s a given lol. Thank you so much!

Remember every snake starts in a box but has to enter some adjascent box and the diagonals are not part of the snakes. With this if you look at the 8 snake in column 2 it has to be made up of 4 digits.

sampath kumar

In case this is still an unresolved issue - I had tripped up for a bit assuming non-snake digits brought over could be part of the new snake.

sampath kumar

Start with the 8 snake in box 1, that one has a pretty straight-forward structure.

Alexander Herges

That depends on where you are stuck. Start in Box 1 and work your way from there.

Alexander Herges

New to patreon and a little disappointed that I have been stuck on the 3rd puzzle for 3 days now. Can anyone assist with helping me see the next logial step?

Would anyone be able to help me with the break-in for XIV. Eight Snakes? I can’t seem to find a good place to start :,)

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm trying! Column 5 is mostly what's tripping me up. Not sure how to cover at least 7 cells with the restriction in row 9... I'll keep trying!

I used to hate snake puzzles. I love watching Simon solve them, but I had a hard time myself. I have to admit: this Patreon reward was my favorite yet! Some puzzles were hard, but I loved them all!

It often helps to minimize/maximise the digits. 35 can be done in 5 cells, 36 can use up to 3 non-snake-cells. You just have to try and get them in order.

Alexander Herges

Puzzle XIV, the Eight Snakes. I get three of the snakes, but is there a logical way for the other five? I am bifurcating like nobody´s business, but I guess that is not the way it is supposed to go. But there seem to be too many possible ways to build snakes to determine them by logic moves. Especially the 25 snake in the bottom part. EDIT: I got the fourth snake logically, the fifth and sixth because my guess turned out to be correct, the seventh was really hard work, and the last one solved a deadly pattern. Took only 182 min, only slightly hindered by the television which took some of my concentration away. But, alas, I got it.

Alexander Herges

Ah, of course! Thank you both so much!

#1 Snakes cells cannot be even. #2 When you import the cells from the previous puzzles, you must also import their "snakeness" or "non-snakeness". Good luck!

Sheepdude

The snake doesn't have to be a loop. It has a beginning and an end.

Remember the snake needs to start and end somewhere and these two points have to be determined by the solver

I don't understand how the second one could possibly be solved without breaking the rules. Even the very first move seems impossible. The cells in the three cages in the lower right must be connected as part of the snake, and there is only one way they could be part of the same snake without the snake touching itself. It is also extremely easy to see which numbers must go into those cages. But then there seems to be absolutely no way to follow the rule that no two adjacent numbers in a snake differ by more than two. What am I missing?

Can anyone translate the directions on Ouroboros for me? I feel like I'm missing something because the way I'm interpreting them it's not solvable. I'd ask on Discord but I haven't used it in a month and it's trying to make me verify with my email without sending me an email so I'm kind of stuck.

What is going on with Snake Sums #2? I feel like way too many rows/columns need large amounts of snake cells. I'm sure this solves, obviously, but other than the obvious start in the upper right, I have no idea how to get this right. I've gotten almost all the other puzzles! Any advice?

Sven showed me where to look. Thanks Sven!!

Chuck Simmons

Interestingly, not being able to solve Sidewinder doesn't actually prevent one from nearly solving the last puzzle and obtaining the phrase.

Chuck Simmons

Yes

Allan Bagg

Crap. I have a solid logical proof showing that Sidewinder can't be solved, and can't figure out where the logic flaw is. I created a video of my proof. Spoiler alert. https://youtu.be/d3zQ_IrxKKk I'd appreciate if someone can point out where I made a mistake.

Chuck Simmons

This confused me too. The trick was to see that the instructions said that the sweeper cell can touches 9 cells, and so it touches itself. Once I figured out that it touches itself, I was able to create a working mental model.

Chuck Simmons

Just an fyi for any SudokuPad app users, X. Entropic Snakes will show the solution as incorrect. Works fine on the website.

Scratch that. I’ve recognized the error in my thinking

Wayne Taft

Can the snake devour an entire killer cage?

Wayne Taft

Never mind, found where I kept going wrong - I was assuming that the snake's path was more constrained than it was.

Matt, thanks. Puzzle solved.

Mario

Agree, found that one quite easy as well, never have been able to create regions as quickly as that and after that is still is very straightforward

I think I had to restart twice, and look for places where the logic was simplest to avoid my wrong assumption.

Chuck Simmons

Entropic Snakes is not a 3* puzzle. There was never a time I didn't know what to do next.

Chuck Simmons

If you want to post an image of your progress at the first time you hit a contradiction, someone might be able to point you in the right direction.

If the sweeper cell is part of the snake, it counts itself.

Having solved this puzzle myself, you can assume this is the case.

Mario

For the «Disjoint Snake» we are told to connect cell r4c1 to r6c5. Is it fair to assume that these are the endpoints of the snake?

I have a major problem understanding the rules for puzzle VIII. The number in the sweeper cells, according to the rules, correspond to the number of touching cells that are part of the snake and the top left number corresponds to the sum of those cells. In box 2, where we see a 35 in the top left corner of a sweeper cell... The most cells that can be part of the snake around this sweeper cell is 5, but if we indicate a 5, we can never fill the cells around them. If we indicate a 4, then the touching cells would sum to a max of 30. If we include the sweeper cell in the snake, then the sweeper cell touches only 4 snake cells but there is a 5 inside. Contradiction. Can someone explain what is going on with the rules for the sweeper cell?

Mario

I think there's something I'm missing in "I Am Steve" - I've attempted it 3 times now, and every time I run into a contradiction somewhere. I think I grasp the rules pretty well (standard snake, cages where digits on the snake aren't included in the sum), but I don't see anyone else expressing difficulty, so I'm not sure where I'm going wrong.

Thanks for these, enjoyed them all.

Athel Stan