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GAS #5: Thermo Sudoku

by Clover

Lately I've been diving deep into the Cracking The Cryptic rabbit hole, watching videos of sudoku puzzles I could only dream of solving. After a bit of research I stumbled on their GAS playlist, AKA the "Genuinely Approachable Sudoku" playlist. I thought it might be fun to learn the variety sudoku format and experiment with a few puzzles on this site. Maybe once every week or two?

I find the thermo suduko variant visually appealing so that's the puzzle I selected from the first video.[1] It took me a few minutes of staring at the grid to totally comprehend what I was meant to do, but once I started thinking about the constraints of bulbs and tips the logic of the puzzle fit together beautifully.

I love how variant sudokus are so minimalist in their starting digits. In fact, this puzzle provides more than most of the ones that I've seen on the channel. I assume that has to do with maintaining an approachable level of difficulty. Regardless, there's something incredibly satisfying about slowly unwinding a grid of numbers from some abstract shapes and illustrations.

There are two basic rules of thermos that I found incredibly helpful:

In retrospect these rules are obvious, but when you're looking at a blank canvas it's nice to have a couple of logic rules to fall back on. It's a friendly nudge in the right direction, something to grasp on to when approaching a new grid. It also helps conceptualize the type of constraint that a thermo applies to the grid.

I solved the puzzle by focusing on the middle row, making an effort to fill out all of the thermos. Once I wrapped my head around the format everything slotted nicely into place, filled with lots of satisfying aha moments.[2] Then followed the normal rules of sudoku, searching for pairs and applying the process of elimination to the remaining cells.

I don't know how future GAS puzzles will fare but this one felt incredibly approachable. Watching Mark perform the solve is hilarious compared to my bumbling around the grid, but it was loads of fun all the same.

  1. Timestamp 37:50 for anyone who wants to watch Mark perform the solve. ↩︎

  2. I really need a new expression for "aha moment", I have the feeling this blog is going to be oversaturated with them very shortly. ↩︎

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