Puzzled man solving 'miracle' sudoku becomes YouTube sensation

Lockdown turns mild-mannered mutterings from a Surrey loft into unlikely spectator sport

• Solve the miracle' sudoku yourself

When Simon Anthony quit his lucrative but miserable job at a London investment bank to solve sudoku puzzles on YouTube, it looked like a bit of a leap. His early posts had done well to gain 100 views. Perhaps he had overestimated the demand for long videos of a 46-year-old man putting numbers in a grid from his spare room in Surrey.

A year later, Anthony is one half of an unlikely viral sensation: Cracking the Cryptic, the channel he runs with his old friend Mark Goodliffe, has become a lockdown fixture for millions. Much to the puzzlement of both men, they have turned sudoku into what right now might be the world's most popular spectator sport.