done!

Me too! Not too bad.

I had to use a few greens towards the end - but probably could have done it without.

Not that hard. No greens even being sleepy. good nite.

Done

go

done, no greens or reds... pretty easy.

hi all

Difficulty score 29. I agree with h, not very hard. Computer says hidden and naked pair analysis is needed.

got it, but I needed greens and an hour.

my brain says more coffee is needed...

not too hard

my brain is terribly silent, not even asking for coffee

nor getting very far with the puzzle ;)

done

took a moment for the fog to clear, but then it opened up. yay!

too easy

board today was a breeze

Piece of pie ...

apple?

Whatever ..

YAHOO! FINISHED THE ARCHIVES!

Congrats!

Congrats! So now what are you gonna do with all your time?

maybe will get some work done now

... find the cure for cancer...

good answer

Go. But I seldom finish a Hard.

Done!

go

go

How did you choose the name HelenKeller?

i used to use it in football pools - i wanted 'da boys' they were being beat by a girl - hahaha, oh yeah, plus i really admire her!

*to know*

done

very easy for a hard one

Wow, you did it so fast. Did you take any guesses?

no guesses at all

Wow.

hunter - do you know how to use the green & red markers?

Well, I use the greens. Not the reds. Are they helpful at all?

i don't know, i never use red - it just confuses me more, but this is an easy one to solve with just greens

don't let their ranking of 'hard' throw you - many that are ranked hard, really aren't so hard at all & only require the simplest elimination methods - this is one of those

Well, it seemed pretty easy for a long while. But now I've got 30 cells undecided and can't see any clues.

part of the 'trick' (for me anyway) is not to fill the squares with too many greens, only put in what is absolutely certain (but then again, i am easily confused)

keep looking, you will break it, it really isn't hard at all

good luck, i'm outta here, bye

I take a time to fill in all greens, during which I sometimes see some final answers. But if I leave out any greens, I think I would make mistakes.

I used to fill em all in, now I just do the pairs, so I can remember them.

ohhhh, that's not how i do it at all, i look to fill in as many squares as i can before i even start on the greens & then i just use minimal greens

yes, what grigs said

*phew* now *i'm* confused!

first all the pairs & then sometimes add a thrid # & rarely a fourth

but then we all have our own ways of doing things - bye guys

UtH, sometimes it helps to look more at rows/columns than boxes- like if you have most of a row filled in, all that's lacking as, say, 1, 4, 7 in the row, and only one of those can be the 7...

by, hk.

you can do this one without green. not too bad.

And I'm stuck even with greens.

if it makes you feel better, i'm stuck now too.

i'll get unstuck, though, maybe I just need to walk away, eat food, come back later.

It does. How many cells remaining?

i dunno, 30 or so to go. I bet there's something right in front of my nose.

I got 30 exactly. Nothing in front of mine.

Any principles for taking good guesses? I see one trail of guesses that doesn't end for a long while. The other seems to fill in only four and then quit. I think I'll try the long trail. But if I'm wrong, I won't be able to put it back the way it was.

I've never had to guess on one of these. I've met OTHER sudoku online that I needed to guess on, but I've always been able to work through these with logic.

Well, I'll try my long trail guess.

these 8's are driving me nuts :)

So far so good. Stuck again with 22 cells remaining.

lunch break over... I flee!

Another guess needed.

Sixteen cells left. Two guesses, each 1 out of 2 options. Fingers crossed.

9 cells left. Do some of these have more than one solution?

Mistake. Two cells left. Both impossible to fill. Rats. I guess one of my guesses was bad.

Okay. I've got an insight that you people better than me must have known all along, but I just now figured out. I never saw it written. For example if in one constinuent (line or box) you have one pair of greens in a cell, (3,7) and in another cell you have these two, but more also, (3,7,8,9), then the 8 and 9 can be removed. Because once the 3 or 7 is decided in the first box, the second box is determined to be the other.

Yep, Unike, IF those are the only two boxes in a row or square that the 3 and 7 can be in.

Corolary. If you have three numbers that appear in just three cells of a constinuency, any numbers other than those may be eliminated. Example (1,2,3,5) (1,2,3,6,7) (1.2.3.5.8.9) Everything can be removed from these three cells but the 1,2,3.

uth - i find (doing things mentally) that the opposte is what happens more often. ie - i find two cells with only 3&7 as options - this is a "naked" pair - and so any-other cells can remove the 3 and 7.

in particular, if you havent looked at EVERY cell in the row/column to check for the 3,7 possibility beforehand - then you cannot remove the 8,9 in your example... (ie - the 3,7 might be occurring elsewhere)

however, if you are using the autofill-green things - then your descriptions make much-more sense and are correct!

hi all :)

hi

how are you Stephanie?

okay, and you?

pretty good!

did someone say autofill green things? how do you do that?

if you're using firefox...

javascript:for (i=1; i<=9; i++) {for (j=1; j<=9; j++) {if (grid[i][j].value == '') {ClearTinySquares(i,j);}}}for (i=1; i<=9; i++) {for (j=1; j<=9; j++) {if (grid[i][j].value != '') {var tmp_value = grid[i][j].value;for (k=1; k<=9; k++) {for (l=1; l<=9; l++) {if (grid[k][l].value == '') {if ((Math.ceil(i/3) == Math.ceil(k/3) && Math.ceil(j/3) == Math.ceil(l/3)) || i == k || j == l) {grid[k][l]['mini'][tmp_value] = -1;}}}}}}}for (i=1; i<=9; i++) { for (j=1; j<=9; j++) { if (grid[i][j].value == '') { for (k=1; k<=9; k++) { if (grid[i][j]['mini'][k] != -1) grid[i][j]['mini'][k] = 1; }}}}for (i=1; i<=9; i++) {for (j=1; j<=9; j++) {if (grid[i][j].value == '') {for (k=1; k<=9; k++) {if (grid[i][j]['mini'][k] != 1) grid[i][j]['mini'][k] = 0;}}}}PopulatePuzzle(grid);void(0);

paste that in your window thingie where the URL goes.

I don't normally use FF, but I'm assuming I can stuff that into greasemonkey

it doesn't really work under any version of IE I've tried.

Anyway... I try not to do itunless I have to, but sometimes just eliminating human error on greens can save a puzzle :)

Hmm... I just pasted a pile of stuff into IE7

I mean I just pasted the script into IE7, and it filled in the greenies

If IE7 wasn't such a giant gaping hole into my system, I'd give it a shot. They're about 2 patches, maybe 3, away from being secure enough for me. but I'm a geek and I'm paranoid. I'm glad it works for you.

I suggest pasting the script into a text file on your desktop or something where you can find it easily. Or, Art has it in his profile.

I don't browse where I don't know I'm safe, so I'm reasonably comfy with IE7... and I need to test it with the products I'm in charge of.

fair 'nuff. my kid sister comes and looks at porn on my computer while I'm at work cause my connection is better than hers... so I try to be as secure as I can.

go

done

go

done