November monthly reward - The 12 Labours of Hercules

Cracking The Cryptic

Hi Ian, $3-a-month Patreons get solution videos to the monthly challenges. Videos for the first six puzzles (including Hydra) are out already

you can use google presentations

Well I was definitely in over my head with these! I just joined the Patreon this month and was wondering if there will be a video solution to these at all? Would love to know why I'm getting stuck 🙃

Xynariz

Yes, I know this is over any deadline, etc. I just want to give a late-and-not-technically-in-season shoutout to the constructors. Not only did you give joy to hundreds of people who solved these puzzle during the "correct" window, but you also give lots of fun to many of us who follow up after the big day. I am not done with the hunt, but having solved Hydra was probably one of my favorite non-Wrogn feelings I've had doing Sudoku, so thank you!

I finally finished Hydra, my last puzzle holdout! It was a magnificent puzzle! Enjoyed the entire series tremendously. Thanks so much!

I finished all but Hydra. I can't seem to crack it. I've even tried taking a few days off!

Annie-Pier Tremblay

I'm sure I am making some dumb mistakes on the first puzzle... I can't find a way to crack it open

sampath kumar

Thanks!

Same. It's been a week for me and I haven't heard anything

DiceCupMerlin

I'm wondering the same thing.. I sent mine on the 9th

DiceCupMerlin

Yes, orthogonal only

sampath kumar

Is the river in Augean stables a series of strictly orthogonally connected cells. River can go from R1C1 to R1C2 but not diagonally from R1C1 to R2C2. Anyone ?

Benny Ng

Thank you for the help; this appears to be a very useful program. Unfortunately, I do not appear to be smart enough to use it - I was able to place all the pieces into a single image, but couldn't figure out how to rotate any of them. (It kept telling me to "rasterize" the smart object? I don't know.)

How many days after sending the answer should I be worried I somehow made a mistake or my message is lost?

I did it using photopea.com, it's a free photoshop-like webtool.

Benny Ng

i just said i was on a chromebook...

David Yingling

I am stuck on Hydra. This month is not going well...

you can try using paint if working on windows. It has a feature of line selection that might help you.

Hi I have solved all the 12 labour puzzle, got 12 clues at the last, combined them to get a message XYZ as a sentence, Now that message has a literal meaning which eventually points to a word ABC. So are we looking for XYZ or its associated/pointed message ABC to reach to the final answer.

Benny Ng

anybody else having trouble deciphering the message from the clues you get for solving all twelve puzzles? i'm on a chromebook and don't have any real image editing capabilities, and i can't draw well enough to duplicate them on paper.

Thanks! I totally had a mental block on that but DUH! Solved the puzzle no problem after you said that!

thank you!

enter row3 and col7 from puzzle1 and click the button. Repeat for puzzle 2-12

On the page to turn in our answers after finishing all twelve labors, I'm only seeing one box for Row 3 and one for Col 7, rather than one each for each of the twelve puzzles. Am I supposed to put all twelve Row 3s, one after another, and the same for the twelve Col 7s?

Alexander Herges

Haha, I finally did it. Right after giving up on the puzzle I stopped trying to just fill the thermos and started doing it with Sudoku (to paraphrase Simon "how dare you force me to do Sudoku in a Sudoku puzzle?"), and lo and behold, it gave up its secrets. I really managed to solve it with the old and tried "what numbers can go in there" approach. Funny how that worked out. What a great series of puzzles that was. Fantastic.

Athel Stan

Thanks to PjotrV , Panthera and Aspartagcus for a very enjoyable puzzle hunt. This is the toughest one I can remember for some time. I sailed through several in 15-30 minutes, but a few had me staring blankly for periods of time. The artwork and story were nice touches, particularly the naive style (no offence intended!).

Yes, it intersects. The result of this is 4 values in a row on the thermo that all have the same digit in the tens place!

Cathy Bryant

Yeah, I've given up on that one. I cannot figure out the right way to tackle it. I am also looking forward to the solution video. It's a shame because I've done most of the rest of the puzzles, but I think this one will prevent me from finishing the pack.

Cathy Bryant

Ha, I had a similar problem. No idea why. I restarted it twice. Third times a charm and once I finished it I couldn't figure out what I kept messing up!

Alexander Herges

So far I have solved 6 of the puzzles, but this 2nd labour is getting the best of me. I started out by proving that it is impossible to place a 6 in box 8. Proving it (to me) without a doubt, that is in fact not possible. No way. Until I figured out a way. Next I tried to fill in the 10s digits only for the green snakes. Again, it proved to be impossible. No way to do it without breaking the puzzle. Until I managed to do it anyway. After that I tried to fill in the 10s digits in all the snakes, but kept getting contradicitions no matter what I did. Until I managed to get all the 10s in the puzzle in a way to be possible for the sake of the thermo rules. Now I am trying to fill in the unit digits for the Hydra and am failing miserably. I am now back to juggling the 10s digits just to be able to put 9 different digits in a box. I am still waiting for the moment to figure out these problems like I managed to do so with the other insurmountable problems. But it seems to me like I am doing more of a pencil puzzle than a sudoku. I am sooo curious for that solve video. There has to be a sudoku solution to this, not just a way of bifurcating until I get it right, the way I am doing it.

I keep thinking I have sorted out the 1-4 and the 5-9 numbers on the grid for the first one but then keep putting some numbers in the same R/C! I must be missing something, been on for ages haha.

It does indeed intersect, and you're correct it's a 10s digit each time. That does not mean the thermo is broken though, the two-digit numbers can still increase...

Stephen James

For someone that is color-blind I cannot see the the difference between orange and green.

Sébastien lecoq

I probably will never finish those sudoku, but I really want to praise both the drawings (even if disappointed by the lack of nudity) and the sudoku composition themselves. Can't wait for the solution videos.

Cathy Bryant

Yes. I'm lucky that I do a lot of nonograms, so once I got a grasp of the rule set I was able to solve the puzzle.

I must not understand the instructions of the 2nd labour... the light green thermo intersects itself at 2 tens digit spots... I figured it made sense because one was a ones digit and one was a tens... but they're both an odd number of squares away from the bulb (3 & 9). Does the thermo not actually intersect?

Jon McGrath

Thanks! So I guess we're basically talking about the puzzle sometimes known as nonogram/picross?

Cathy Bryant

Thanks!

1) Yes. 2) They are a part of the river.

Cathy Bryant

That's correct. (I had the same question initially, but found the answer after a lot of searching)

Cathy Bryant

I'm a bit confused by the instructions on the 5th labour - The Aegean Stables. I have 2 questions: 1) Is is correct to assume that the river cells are all attached orthogonally? 2) It is unclear if the starting and ending points are part of the river, or if the river stops just before those cells. If working that out is part of the puzzle, fair enough.

Cathy Bryant

I had the exact same reaction. I've never seen one of these and didn't understand the rules. I searched around and discovered that there was a Patreon reward pack last November (I think) that were Japanese sums. I found this video the most helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCiSavF1KrM

Great, now it should be doable 😅

Yes, if it is gold or gray.

I can't access any of the links, it keeps saying "tinyurl server can't be found". Can someone please send me the complete links? TIA!

I'm unsure about the third labour. If there's a one-coloured clue in a row then the second color doesn't appear in that row?

Jon McGrath

I see puzzle 3 starts with 'Normal two-color Japanese sums rules apply' and think 'what the heck is that?' -- is there a solid introduction, either in video or puzzle form?