hi

very easy

Ha

Nailed that puppy!

Rank me, baby!

No greeen, red or checkpoints.

Cue theme music!

very easy

Ha

Nailed that kitten!

Rank me, baby!

No green, red or checkpoints.

Cue theme music!

Tah dah! No reddies.

go

done

I'm not finding this easy...

How do you like Baku, bunny/

?

Baku?

fried...

Your profile says Azerbaijan so I thought . .

Ahh, good case of the lazies there.

first one on the list?

You have me totally lost, but it is easy to do...

OK, I see. Yeah, it was a nice name. Have I mentioned I have a headache and two four year olds watching Harry Potter at full blast? I'm not usually so dense :)

I feel your pain .. I was just just trying to display my geographical superiority because I know where Azerbaijan is . . .

Hmm, I can't even name the capital's of all the states anymore, my children leeched my intelligence as they were born.

They'll do that, along with your money, patience, sleep, etc. . .

All that for 1 point, back to babble.

lol

Difficulty score = 22. It seemed hard because each new number only yielded one or 2 new numbers. Computer says that cross hatching is the only technique you need.

Done!

you know you CAN say it backwards, which is dociousaliexpiisticfragicalirupus, but that that's going a bit too far, don't you think?

aw man, i HATE when i make a typo in a quote.

Beyond precocious . .

Interesting puzzle: Few 'instant' crosses, where you can spot that a 7 "must" go in the upper right corner, because enough spots are blocked off by crossing 7's and prefilled items. But as soon as you start looking for what items can go in the rows, cols or squares with only two or three open spots, it all falls into place pretty quickly.

whatever spellacked just said lol.. Actually I didn't think it was tough at all

Easiest puzzle ever in the world...lol...ha

I think spellacked was describing the cross hatch method, which only yielded one or two numbers at a time for me. He seemed to be recommending what I call a missing digit scan.

I only used the missing digit scan technique once and the computer said that it only used cross hatching.

someone last nite was asking about the comic-sudoku from sunday http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2006/10/15/ and i required over five random-choices to solve-it. turns out it wasnt a unique-y sudoku... fyi.

I always scan to find the obvious missing digits and then cross hatch

h, it has a unique solution. Did you notice that the lower limit on the integral was 1, not 0?

hmm - yup, i had 7 there... maybe i screwed up elsewhere... howd we go about checking?

I have a program that analyzes sudoku puzzles.

ok - should i rattle-off my 'known'-values?

I am now try to manually solve the puzzle and so far it seems fairly easy!

basically, i manually solved until i got to a point where i couldnt see any more answers... then i asked a program and it wouldnt-solve from my stopping-pt...

Maybe you started with the right clues but made an error in logic and filled in a wrong answer...

That would normally lead to an unsolvable puzzle, not an ambiguous one.

hmm - i dont know... i havent really studied sudoku, just play it... maybe i just got [un]lucky?

I find it very easy to make logical mistake, probably because I am not very good at actually looking at the board. The post office refused to hire me to sort mail for good reason.

:)

ive been reading your number-analysis of these puzzles for a bit and they kinda make sense. todays was indeed easy, but it is hard to tell how 'constrained' i was since i typically can only fill in one number at a time anyway.

Well, if you are like me, you scan the board in some order, probably looking for a particular digit. One pass of that often yeilds several digits. Today's puzzle seemed to take many more scanning passes than usual.

hmm - yup - altho my first scan here was sevens i think and they came up quickly. it DOES seem that the initial scan usually sets-the-tone for the puzzle...

anyways - gotta go... nice chatting with ya. :)

The difficulty score comes from that program I mentioned. I am interested in feed back on if the numbers seem to make any sense.

hmm - the numbers always seem mid-20s to me when im reading here and _I_ seem to find significant difficulty-changes between them... but that is just me...

i think it is because i change-my-approach depending upon how-far-into the game ive gotten... does your program change-approaches as it gets filled-up?

Yes. But the puzzles are usually scored by the publisher as easy or medium. Hard and expert puzzles are rare.

I think there are some nuances of human perception that I have not adequately accounted for in the program.

yeah - and us humans seem to be different in our approaches as well...

The program tries the easiest techniques first on each pass, and only advances to the more advanced techniques if the easy ones fail to produce any results.

hmm - yeah, but i know that _I_ start doing 'advanced' stuff somewhere in the middle because the playing-field is so much more limited. in fact i only drop-back to easy stuff if i get stuck again...

unfortunately, i havent learned all the names of techniques. have you got a link to point me to?

www.scanraid.com

personal link, sudoku

That may be the correct approach, but it seems counter-intuitive. After all the more cells filled in, the easier the puzzle should be.

thanx - will check it out...

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

yup - but if i dont get a chance to practice 'advanced' stuff, then i never learn it. somehow my brain is trying to train itself i think...

Also, Wikipedia has a good article on Sudoku. Very basic, but a good place to start.

ooph - just glanced thru the link. wow... i only use basic-stuff. by my earlier comments, i start using reduction once the squares start filling in... ive never needed more than pairs/triples before i think... ive really gotta go now - thanx a lot for the link! :)

Bye.

go

done

hey everyone :)

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