greens made this one a breeze.

no greens, a bit harder :)

still truckin without green

i almost had it - then screwed up a bunch - since then i've restarted 3 times

got 16 filled in, feeling a little stuck

I'm still in the holiday spirit, so mine is lit up like a Christmas tree.

i'm - on the jan 15 puzzle by the way - an "easy" one - i totally suck at sudoku

festive!

im in the same boat. I have 18...

12 :-)

whoops 13

\are you on todays or yesterdays, philsown?

yesterdays :-(

jan 15

i'm about to break down and start in with the greens, so i can get back to work :)

im still going with no greens fro now... Im pretty stuck though

now im stuck too, no greens, 16

i hate this game :-)

behold! a hidden pair!

pair?

hidden pair is one of the names for sudoku strategies

googling

you narrow it down to where a certain pair of numbers can only be in two spots in the same row, column or region

when there are the same two possibilities in a line or square that can eliminate those numbers in any other square within the line or box

lol, skizzy worded it much better than me

chrissie, that's a naked pair i think

right b4 u typed the hidden pair, i found a hidden pair and now im cruising

i am decidedly not yet cruising

the three center regions horizontally are all pairs

right, i got that much

I havnt found any other pairs though...

theres another one somewhere else that gives it all away

done

oh there we go, I found one. That help[s a lot. I wasnt looking at it right

progress!!

lol

aight, im off to bed, its 1:30 AM here, gl to all

i read about it online... so - when you have a naked pair - you can eliminate those 2 numbers from other boxes in the same column/row?

night!

right

yes

a hidden pair is the opposite

huh?

when you find 2 squares where a pair of numbers have to go, you can eliminate the other possibilities from those 2 squares

you find the pair by eliminating the other numbers?

hmm, no

i'm not clear on how naked and hidden differ

oh... see i have a lot that I know that I use, just never know any of the names for them. I didnt realize that hidden and naked were different

so let's say you have a region with a bunch of green numbers filled in

and you notice that 1s can only be in two of the squares, and 2s can only be in two of the squares, and they're the *same* two squares

then you can get rid of all the other green numbers from those two squares

thought I would do one more thing b4 bed, i googled 'sudoku strategies' and the first hit seems pretty darn useful. might want to try it urself

ok - i get it - is that naked? or hidden?

that's naked, right?

that's hidden

naked is where they're on their own -- bare, so to speak

yay, i made it without green :)

im getting close

thanks :-)

I want to type, "I really need to see a picture of naked pairs in order to understand"

but that's the type of thing that's easily taken out of context.

i googled it - found a page that explained it - and only kind of get it

yeah, this isn't really that kind of website :)

I think youll understand once you do and realise :oh, that's what it is..."

done. no greens. took a little while but raggedy was right. there's a couple naked pairs that opens it all up.

im most deffinatly stuck!

and you found hidden pairs in the jan 16 puzzle?

and i refuse to guess or use greens for this one

ive found a lot of naked, but no hidden yet

go for it chrissie

you can do it!

chrissie, that's a pot sticker with a heart burnt onto it, right?

for some reason it reads as a goat's face at the smaller size

lol,, no, i took it at my friends house. he was making peroguies and burnt them. when he flipped it over that wasa the mark on the back. i though it was pretty sweet

you mean pot as in marijuana??? cause i dont see it...

potsticker, like a dumpling :)

yeah, potstickers are fried chinese dumplings

oh... ive never heard that before....:)

d the hidden pair!

not unlike a pierogie, but usually filled with pork and/or veggies

ooh, i just found another one myself

yeah, this one's gonna clear the board for me

still stuck

so i have - on the jan 16 - a column with 3 empty squares - 1 square has 3 possibles - the next has 2 possibles - and 2 of those match

as in, two of the same numbers are in two of the same squares?

so are there any rules for leaving hints for players who are stuck, like in babble?

is that a hidden pair?

it depends on what's in the third square

yes, skizzy

only if they are not in any of the other squares

do those two numbers occur in the other square?

Like, hey, I want to that Van Halen Concert today, but my seats were in the LAST ROW, and I thought that they would suck, but I was surprised at what I could see all the way back in the LAST ROW.

the 3rd square actually eliminates those 2 numbers, due to those numbers appearing in the row - so - it kinda leaves the 3rd number as the only possibility

austinuu, most people here don't like it when people leave *any* hints about specific numbers

well no one is making them look at the chatter box

hehe, cute. even that's a little too specific for some

myself, i just ignore it whenever someone's giving out specific hints

Did I say last row? I meant my seats were randomly distributed across a grid, let's say numbered 1 through 9.

lol

just kidding. everyone knows that Van Halen isn't even on tour anymore.

I think ive almost got it

sammy hagar forever! :-)

whoo! done, finally

45 minutes, with lots of chatting :)

im at 40 now

but close

i'm at suicidal now :-P

yay... I finally got it. I found that missing pair that really helped

onto the achivs

*archives

?

back to work for me :P

did you just join phils own?

no - i joined months ago

i've played like 4 games

finished: 0

dammit. I can't get that Sammy Hagar song out of my head now. It's being going on this continuous loop ever since philsown brought it up. Make it stop.

i *really* suck at this

but - i've played tons offline on paper

it takes time

(and i *really* suck at that too)

it feels as if i will not get sudoku :-)

i started with the super easy ones in a book, easier than any of the ones on this site

i like it on paper. this is the only site i like onine

you might try websudoku.com. You can select the level difficulty, and after you have mastered the easy, move on to harder levels.

thanks

have you guys ever done the 16x 16? those are awesome. super hard though

yeah, those are nuts

i dont like websudoku....

i've only played them in a book, and i end up scratching out about half of them

are those the ones that go 1 through 9, and then A through G?

I havnt been abele to find those anywhere thoiugh. I came across one by accident once but that's it.

as a programmer, i really appreciate that the 16x16 ones use hexadecimal :)

0-9 A-F in the ones i've played

the one i played was 1 through 16... no letters

does the owner of this site still take an active interest?

i like the jigsaw sudokus. first time i played one, it made my brain get all twisted around itself

what are those?

because I think it would be awesome if, let's say on April Fools Day, the letters were in Greek or Roman numerals instead of numbers.

the regions are oddly shaped

or perhaps symbols, like in the Da Vinci Code online game version

some people find this game easier to play with symbols. they always distract me, though

there's a contact form for him at the bottom of the page. i used that once, and he got back to me pretty quickly

oops. my five year old's favorite words are awesome, totally awesome, and super awesome. Roman numerals would clearly be super awesome, not awesome.

wow, can you imagine trying to tell the difference between I, II, and III in the tiny little green numbers?

ive never played with symbols. i like numbers though. they have logic and order. i guess letters would be alright too though

right, but as far as sudoku is concerned, the numbers are just arbitrary symbols

you don't use their numeric values at all. all that's required is that they're easily discernible

i just changed my setting to the animals.... id ont think i like it :)

yeah, they all look too similar to me. i've seen ones with stars and squares and things that were easier

Oh look, it's little penguins.

And a butterfly.

And an elephant.

well, i have early classes in the morning. goodnigh all

the symbolic-one that ive found that i like is at jigsawdoku.com - especially since you can do 2x2 for super-easy practice... (msg for philsown whos prolly gone now)

wow! did drwho give a rating for tonights? i just finished it fairly quicly without greens or reds... not trivial - but very easy for me...

also, what happened with the rankings? are they updating in realtime now? the elites are tiny, compared to normally...

not realtime, no - probably a glitch

hi balker - thanx.

rankings at babble are off too today - perhaps drG played around with them a bit.

Difficulty score 29. The computer needed to use naked and hidden pair analysis. Congratulations to h, I sure needed the greens today.

No greens? Good job. I sure needed them too.

yeah - it was odd. i normally start using greens after "memorizing" about 2 or 3 pairs, but i mustve hit it lucky and everything just opened up when i "solved" one of the pairs (they linked)... good luck folks...

Finished finally. Some people got rankings of 619 after yesterday! Shouldn't the maximum before today's be 616? Have a nice day, all.

Pretty easy for a hard. I used greens, but never got close to filling them all in -- a couple of things turned up early and filled in the rest of the box.

it says rankings are updated at 1am, and the puzzle comes at 12am, so if you finish in the hour, i think you get the points early. at least that seems to be what happened last night.

That was a hard?

good analysis kebek, maybe drG just changed the times a bit somewhere...

maybe a medium?

go

done

taylor?

Oooohhh

Oooohhh

i see you now, ready set go

go

ugh. messed up somewhere. dont feel like going back. oh well.

...

finally

gah took me 3 tried to get that one...

go

done

one of those easy 'hard' ones :)