I just heard about this on our local evening TV news. Apparently the craze has caught on in asia & europe. Just wonderin' why the heck i have not heard about in chicago sooner?

http://www.vnunet.com/spotlight/sudukoindex

It's certainly a craze in Europe but have to admit that I've never tried to do one. There are paper-backed books of them everywhere and in most daily newspapers along with the crossword puzzles.

Started hearing about it almost a month or so ago in the ST Louis area. This is the first I've actually seen it though.

I have seen that before (at least a year ago) and it's a tough puzzle form. The clues that you need to complete the puzzles are all there in front of you. What you need to do is figure out what numbers are available for a particular line by checking out what is already displayed in the other lines that cross it.

Tic Tac Toe isn't good enough?

Shelly

just fill up the missing numbers and look for a row/column where only one number fits, and so on...

requires observation and it is time consuming but eventually you'll get it

>Tic Tac Toe isn't good enough?

I'm with you Shelly!!

Mardon

Nah, I figured out how to never lose at Tic Tac Toe back in middle school.

Beth's father showed us some Soduko puzzles and now I'm hooked. Of course, my programmer's brain immediately set to work thinking of how I could program all possible Soduko puzzles and store them in a database. (Might work on that after I finish with a large freelance project I'm working on. Paying gigs before personal pet projects. )

I've been playing it quite a lot. It's great for long train journeys.

I've been playing it quite a lot. It's great for long train journeys.

So are serious non-fiction books. At least there your synapses are being exercised for a reason.

Dam that is as frustrating as trying to beat the Nim game.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pearl.shtml

Great site if you want to do some. I warn you though, it can be addictive.

http://www.websudoku.com

Here's a program you can run locally to complete Sudoku puzzles. It can also help by showing all possible values for boxes and highlighting certain boxes (all possible 1's for example).

http://www.angusj.com/sudoku/index.php

Cool.

Since I posted this originally, I've been doing these puzzles almost everyday and I'm completely hooked.

I found a website where a guy was talking about X-wing and swordfish techniques. I found it be confusing the way it was written and I didn't really need it for the easy-to-med level ones. But last week i found a a webiste that better explains those strategies.

http://www.scanraid.com/AdvanStrategies.htm


Jason - is this website similar to what you found?

http://www.puzzle.ro/en/sudoku_solver.htm

Not really. That's still an online game. This is one you download and play locally. No Internet connection needed. Here's the site's tips/strategy area (with screenshots from their program):

http://www.angusj.com/sudoku/hints.php

Oh, and I'm completely hooked too. Especially after installing Simple Sudoku.

OMG Jason they even have a forum for Sudoku, LOL.

http://www.setbb.com/phpbb/?mforum=sudoku

Wow. Now *that's* addicted.

BTW, I'm up to being able to solve Standard puzzles in Simple Sudoku in under 5 minutes (at good as 1:40-something) and Hard puzzles in under 10 minutes (sometimes as good as 4 minutes and change). The cool thing about Simple Sudoku is that it automates some of the more mundane things that Sudoku solvers do (e.g. writing possible numbers on each open square) that allow them to use more advanced techniques (e.g. Naked Pairs) to figure out what squares are and aren't.

>Wow. Now *that's* addicted.
>
>BTW, I'm up to being able to solve Standard puzzles in Simple
>Sudoku in under 5 minutes (at good as 1:40-something) and Hard
>puzzles in under 10 minutes (sometimes as good as 4 minutes
>and change).

That's pretty damn good Jason. I just installed Simple Sudoku on my PC tonight and I find even the standard ones to take me atleast 15-20 min to solve. There's a local free newspaper here that prints them almost daily and I can solve the easy ones in about 10 min. I'm so used to doing it on paper, it will take me a little time to adjust doing it on the PC.


>The cool thing about Simple Sudoku is that it
>automates some of the more mundane things that Sudoku solvers
>do (e.g. writing possible numbers on each open square)

I looked for that earlier - how do you turn that feature on? Maybe I should have just had one glass of wine tonight.

They should be on by default. In case they aren't, go under options and check:

Show Toolbar
Show Super Hints
Block Invalid Moves
Show Candidates
Show All Candidates While Filtering

>Show All Candidates While Filtering

Thanks Jason. I remembered i had turned all those options off because I didn't want any clues. Guess i clicked one too many.