The Return Of Star Battle!

*** TODAY’S PUZZLE *** The return of many wonderful things on the channel today: the constructor AFrayedKnot, Star Battle and LITS! Moreover Simon mistakenly decides it would be a good idea to “quickly“ solve the example 8x8 puzzle - not realising that this is a treat in and of itself! So there’s two “Let’s Get Cracking“s in the video today. Play the example 8x8 puzzle at the link below: Play the main 12x12 puzzle at the link below: Rules: Normal LITS rules apply. Ie Shade one tetromino in each region. (A tetromino is a shape of four orthogonally-connected cells.) No two tetrominoes of the same shape may share an edge - reflections/rotations count as the same shape. All tetrominoes must form a single orthogonally connected area. No 2x2 area of the grid can be completely shaded. Additionally, each row, column and region must contain exactly one white star and one black star. Black stars must be located on tetrominoes, and white stars must not. Regardless of colour, stars may not touch each other - not even diagonally. For answer check to work, use the digit 1 for unstarred white cells, the digit 2 for starred white cells, the digit 9 for unstarred black cells and the digit 8 for starred black cells. Thanks to all of you who have helped us achieve the milestone of 600,000 subscribers on YouTube. Below you can find a link to a free puzzle pack we have curated to celebrate :) *** NEW SUDOKU HUNT BY PAWS RELEASED 1 JULY *** We’ve just launched a brand new competition - a sudoku hunt by Paws featuring lots of smaller-sized sudokus. It’s intended to be a bit easier than usual as July is a holiday month for many of us so do have a go, especially if you’re new to variant sudoku! Other treats on Patreon include: - The Lord Of The Rings Sudoku Hunt by Blobz (and Simon’s solve videos) - Simon’s solve of Sky-Skyscraper by Phistomefel has just been uploaded for our patrons. - and Mark’s latest solve of The Times Club Monthly cryptic crossword *** BRAID STREAM *** You can watch our recent stream at this link: ▶ SUDOKU PAD - Use Our Software For Your Puzzles ◀ You can input classic sudoku puzzles into our software and help support Sven, the programmer responsible for the wonderful user interface we all use to play these puzzles everyday. The app also comes with 12 handmade puzzles from us: iOS: Steam: Android: ALSO on Amazon: Search for “SudokuPad” ▶ Contents Of This Video ◀ 0:00 Theme music & puzzle intro 0:29 Star Battle is awesome 2:20 Paws’ Sudoku Hunt Released! 3:17 Rules 6:00 Start of Solve 1: 8x8: Let’s Get Cracking 21:41 Start of Solve 2: 12x12: Let’s Get Cracking ▶ Contact Us ◀ Twitter: @Cracking The Cryptic email: crackingthecryptic@ Our PO Box address: Simon Anthony & Mark Goodliffe Box 102 56 Gloucester Road London SW7 4UB (Please note to use our real names rather than ’Cracking The Cryptic’.) ************************************************************** ▶ CTC FAN DISCORD SERVER◀ ▶ OUR BACK CATALOGUE – ALL CATEGORISED WITH LINKS!◀ ▶ *NEW* CRACKING THE CRYPTIC MERCHANDISE◀ ▶SEND US PUZZLES TO SOLVE/CONTACT US◀ crackingthecryptic@ ▶FOLLOW US◀ Twitter: @crypticcracking Instagram (for how to solve daily clues from The Times): We also post the Wordle In A Minute videos on TikTok.