Gentlemen, start your engines.

Go

Done no greens

Did it.

DING. It had a slow moment.

Difficulty score 23. No green. Slow and steady did the trick.

Start

go

Done, hard one

done, easy

:-)

start

ding

heh... seems to be a mixed concensus here today. Let's see how I fare.

sticky at first, but once i got about half way done, it just flowed

go

done

done, no greens

All this new lingo. What are greens?

Hi mikevan! "Greens" are like the pencil marks you use when doing Sudoku on paper. Click on a box, and a mini-grid appears; press [Shift] while you click on a number and it will appear tiny and green in its bos. You can enter as many little green numbers as you want or need to! There are also "reds": press [Alt] while you enter the numbers and you get little red numbers. Use them to indicate "can't be" numbers, or any way you like. Good luck & enjoy!

It seems to be a point of pride among members of the IronSudoku community to compolete puzzles without using pencil marks (hence the "no greens" announcements). My solving style is more one of elimination: I like to enter all possibllities and eliminate the impossibles. So I use a lot of "greens"!

Wow, I didn't know you could play the game using marks. I dont' use them at all. Even up to "fiendish" level.

I don't care about using greens ( or in fact reds ), I use the Sudoku as way of kicking my brain off in the morning, with a Coffee before embarking on the day ahead.

It's implied in my previous message, but not stated, so yes I use greens as and when necessary.

My only problem is that most "ranking" sites rank based on cumulative points rather than speed/difficulty. Sure, its nice to practice a few hours a day, but really, I'd rather be ranked on my ability to quickly solve extremely hard puzzles as compared to others.

I don't care about rankings either, it's just an exerciser for me!

I'm with you, Adr41n, only it's Ironsudoku and tea in the morning to launch the day! I'm doing several puzzles a day, trying to get back in the ranks of the Elite after being absent from the site for about a year. Liberal use of greens speed things up considerably!

I like the game also, I'm just a competitive person so I usually tyry to get ranked in games I play hardcore. You should have seen me with chess! LOL

Mike - you so outclass me as a solver!!!! Buat this is a very user-friendly interface, no matter how you choose to play i. Hope you choose to stick around!

My Nick puts at the top of rankings ( ish ) I been in elite since it pretty much started ( I think a couple of weeks in ).
But my Nick is a variation on my name Adrian ( swap the i and second a ) and do standard numeric substitution.
I use it for most of m ey emails addresses so I'm Adr41n pretty much everywhere!

Okay, Mike - here's a challenge for you: this site went online in March 2006. See how long it takes you to do all the puzzles, thereby joining the ranks of the Elite! (Access past puzzles throught the Archives>)

I find mediums harder than all the others ( or some of them ) the last few where easy!
I have no problems generally with experts even ( good for the brain ) but the only ones I've had to leave to come back to are mediums, unless life intervenes of course.
( All in general obviously )

See now, that's a great challenge, however, it would take years for me to get ranked on this site. The advantage goes to those who start first. I mean, its a great way to get a lot of return traffic to your site, but as far as real rankings go.. not such a good metric.

Yeah, I signed up pretty much the day it started and for a brief time I was Number One in the world! Then the scoring system changed and I had lots of company in the Elites. I think I'm about a month away from regaining my lost status. More if I don't use greens (and reds)!

Adr41n, I find the mediums the hardest also, and ofter find the hard ones the easiest! I put it down, again, to solving style.

I honestly think, the 'I've just woken up' brain state helps me complete them. Allows the 'inner self' to take over. ;-) too much thinking can be counter productive.

They have all these names for the various techniques ,haven't got a clue what they are myself, I just use my 'tricks' one day maybe I'll find out the tricks names so I'll know what they're all talking about XY wing etc

Adr41n, you must have just awakened! Isn't it about 4:30 am where you are? It's 10:30 pm here, so I have the end-of-day mental fuzzies. I'm staring at a Hard from Oct 2010 and not seeing a thing.

Ditto!

Just awakened! I wish! 3:34 am.
My wife has MS, I'm caring for her, she's 'having a bad night' so in between caring,
I'm playing on here,
writing some c# code
'Playing' with Nagios Netwoerk remote monitoring s/w
A quiet night here in the UK ;-)

You lost me at c#! But my heart goes out to you and your wife - she's lucky to have you. Not a quiet night at all!

My fastest time completing an easy puzzle is 2:51

you missed the element of sarcasm! ;-)
She's seems to be settling down now.
Haven't looked at the C# code for an hour or so, got to a point where i've got a blank ( like writers block )
The network monitoring stuff is cool allow you produce graphs, of uptime, traffic, web site hits and all sorts of goodies. Pie Charts and it's all free.
now there ya go mikevan I've never timed myself. Some of them are real clickfests tho,

That is fast, Mike! Players track their times by entering "Start" and "Done" in the Chat - then we can all see how long it took them!

I often start dead on 6 am ( when they change over here ) and usually finished by 6:15 if not earlier.
Cathy ( Wife ) needs meds at 6 so cup'o'tea ( for her ) is brewing while doing the puzzle. My coffee is already ready by then!
Dunno what I'll do tonight, prob stay up and sleep after 6, do the full 24hrs!

that was using a sudoku game that would highlight all the same numbers when you selected one in the grid, and then would highlight the rows associated with the selected grid.

So, if you selected a "2" in your grid, all other "2"s would be highlighted. This really let me solve the puzzle very quickly.

Mike - is that my any chance the Sudoku on the Brainbashers website? That's one of my favourite sites for flexing the mental muscles. Adrian - you could try it out, if you don't know it already, to pass the time 'til 6am ;)

if you are wondering there are some websites that explain the techniques. I've never really read over them but others seem to find them helpful. http://sudoku.pauls-pc-repair.com/index.php?p
age=Techniques and http://www.brainbashers.com/sudokuhelp.asp

I'll try the Brainbasher website. I was using Sudoku2 on the iTouch.

Thanks pocketmole, I think I've got enough to do for now ;-)

Prinise, I read a bunch of help sites, but honestly, practice is the best way to learn.

I agree.

I'm suffering from 'brain fade' trying to avoid coffee coz I'll OD"

I'm gonna try and get my wife up to bed ( she's asleep on the couch atm )
Nice talking to you all!

There, I just finished a clickfest Hard from last October that was easier than today's Medium (or was it yesterday's?) I challenge myself by targeting players in the Rankings list and trying to overtake them. I've done enough today to pass Andy, but don't think I'll catch Spud 'til tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm also suffering from brain fade, so I will also say adieu. Really nice chatting!!! p.s. Thanks for the links to the techniques explanations, Prinise. Maybe they'll offer better explanations than the ones I've seen! Nite nite, all!

nite.

Man, just got my butt handed to me on speedsudoku on easy level. suxors