RACE FOR FIRST ONE DONE

go

done

expert, seriously?

totally

too hard for me

how ya doing michael?

done

bedtime. must be missing something. this is a toughie.

FINALLY

About time I caught that famous gremlin on the plane in the Twilight Zone.

Done

go

29 filled, but cant keep the pairs straight enough to finish it - aaargh - guess im going green now (manual)... sigh.

ok, either im missing something (noticed a hidden pair) else, or i will have to use a forcing-chain (guess)... so here-goes...

forced-out, now to confirm...

I am up to 29 filled but will need to start using greens as I need to have a shower soon

interesting - that single-force hasnt completely solved it - need another force/guess... sigh... uh, 22 left i guess.

done have a good day all

another block/force - back-tracking/checking...

good job moozey. id suggest NOT choosing top-right block for force-chain...

blocked again, now to check final...

damn - im completely blocked! mustve screwed up... i think im either starting over or giving up... sigh.

i used autofill, and eliminated, and am back to the same (i think) 29 filled - with forcing-chain required... huh.

you don't give up, h, you start over :)

is it very stupid to ask what 'forcing-chain' is?

yeah - im a bit of a stubborn-cuss... :)

love you for that, lol - I know the feeling

ok - tried a different guess/force and it all worked out. yeah... (well, i used reds - and now im just going to fill-in... can call it done now - that took awhile. suggest using the center-block for the force/guess...

good luck sprite! :)

ah, it is another word for guessing :D
Thanks, will struggle on for a while longer

5 points - gotta go for it! :)

Yay, finished.

I could never resist a challenge, sigh... will finish :)

yay Jen

yeah - the difference between a guess and a force (for me) is that i do it in-the-greens (with a red) and look for a block. if blocked, im forced to go back and it usually works out - since im a freebie - i cant use checkpoints! go get em sprite! to bed now... congrats jen!

night h!

:)

hurray, solved it without any guessing!

yay MrLandgenoot :)

29 filled in. Just cruising along. Hit the wall.

done! have had more problems with some of the 'easy' puzzles

Good for you Nooner, I must be blind today....

just pasted the wall...done

Done. Had to guess once. Darn.

ok. time to start.

whew, did it with one green guess. "ogg" puzzle.

"ogg"?

One good guess? Oh good god?

Hi spreadeagle. I was thinking one green guess, but oh good god works, too. Thanks

Who knows? Someday "ogger" might work in babble - someone who makes green guesses.

I like it!

In fact, many of us are probably oggers.

Well, gotta head out - car needs an oil change and I need a newspaper. Back later. Have a good day.

That's better than being an "obgger".

obgger? b=blind?

Yeah, or b=bad.

gotcha!

hi all

hola

go (again)

is this one doable without guessing?

not for me, i had to make one guess after filling in 29 cells

yeah, at 29

okay, one guess got it. done.

I didn't need to guess babsmgl

I struggled with yesterdays medium more than this one. Godd luck all.

Good luck

anyone know if the javascript autofill works in IE? firefox works fine, but i can't seem to get it to work in IE.

it works for me

IE6 or IE7?

I think 7 but i'm not sure

Interesting.

It is IE7. To make it work, first open the puzzle, then paste the javascript in the address line and press go (green arrow)

Ok. Yes, I understand, and it works great for me in Firefox. However, I'm trying to get it to work with IE6.

Let me see if I have 6 on another computer and I will let you know.

go

Sorry, all I have is 7 around here

ok...totally using the greenies today

nearly there

Hey smoothie - the fun doesn't start 'til you get 29 filled in

I've only got 12 to go

oh crap... I take that back. lol

ok... had to redo... but I think I'm going better now

hello everybody

hi yul

DONE!

I had to make one guess towards the end, but it wasn't too bad.

Done!!!! NOTTTT

gulp! expert! ooh I'm scared... diving in...

oh yeah? mr. expert puzzle? you think you're so tough, don't you? what're you gonna do, huh? you think you can take me? you're all oooh, look at me, i'm an expert. but i'll knock you sideways so hard you won't know if your socks are on.

THAT's the kind of sudoku attitude you need.

I can't say that I've ever heard anyone trash-talk a Sudoku puzzle before.... ;)

That was an easy expert. tata

what can i say? you can't let 'em intimidate you

:) especially if there's a huge amount of pairs

my cat is lying on a damp towel. why would she do this?

cat's hot

it's winter!

My guess is the dampness gets even warmer than a dry towel while she's lying on it

SHe'll just be a chilly kitty when she gets up

silly mitt.

Or possibly..... you just have a weird cat. ;)

and she's not even the weirdest of the 3! lol

Expert? Oh, no. This may take some time.

I got nothing done before I have to put in greens.

not bad, not bad a-tall. not too many greens, and then just a smidge of a forcing chain.

go

doner

Quick work, bun ..

If anyone wants to give this a shot, I've posted some scripts online. In particular, see what you think of the "Retasking the Reds" script. It uses reds to indicate two (or one) possibilities for a number in a 3x3 (and greens for 3 or more). brittlefish.com/2007/02/07/make-ironsudoku-ja
vascript-magic

Hey you guys I'm new here but you can call me DDgood.

howdy

Difficulty score 60. Hmm... no green. I error in logic which lead to a dead end, so I tried the other possibility and voila.

got it with one guess

crud... expert. I don't wanna.

SHOES!

GONE!

hmmmm........

gah. my head is starting to hurt.

=P

Gets a bit tricky at the end . .

only if you get there

something is wrong... this is going to well... waiting for the other shoe to fall

so far so good... not timing myself on this one...

*holds on to red shoes tightly* no, they're mine, you can't have them! they won't fall!

oh would never take yours, red!!!! no worries...

ok I think I got to the tricky part at the end that Mr. Gone warned about

yay! kept my shoes AND finished. Just required a little leap of faith, I guess.

off to Babble. =)

good job shoes!

"leap of faith" . ."forcing string" . ."guess" . ..

got it... no guessing needed. Lots of naked pairs and triplets which reduced to give me the answers

woo! done. I think I finished this one faster than yesterday's 'easy" puzzle.

no!!!! an expert on my second day back???

maybe it's beginners luck but this seems a little easier than an expert

dang it just lost all my work.

yeah, the difficulty ratings are a bit messed up. they seem rather arbitrary to me.

I finished this one faster than yesterday's "easy" puzzle.

it has something to do with the number of techniques you need to solve them...i think

As far as I can tell, the rating is based on the most advanced technique needed to solve the puzzle.

yeah that's what it is

most advanced technique? GUESSING???

just joking

hmm, I don't really use techniques. at least, not that i know of.

lol

i just kind of systematically figure it out. I use the greens, too.

me too

anybody ever try rating all of the puzzles in the archives and ranking them on difficulty?

You do use technique, you just haven't identified and named them.

yeah i know

Yes patgas, I have been putting a difficulty score into the chat log *almost* every day from when I first discovered this site.

i noticed that. do you have a solver that gives you that score?

I wrote a program that solves and rates the puzzles. My score is an attempt to quantify the amount of time it will take to solve, not the absolute hardest technique used.

and how did your program rate yesterday's and today's, out of curiosity?

what are the chances of having your program crawl through the archives and compiling a list of the rating for every puzzle?

Today

60

i would rather work through the archives in that way rather than stabbing randomly at them.

Yesterday 16.

lol

guess I'm just a freak, then <g>.

If I have time I may go through the archives and compile ratings. I am currently compiling ratings and times for those who say "go" ... "done" to see how well the score and times correlate.

oh, interesting. are you scraping the chat logs or doing it by hand?

Doing it by hand.

You are one hardcore sudoku-er, Dr. Who.

I was more interested in the programming challenge at first.

yeah, i have a few half-formed programs i've been kicking around. i can sympathize.

i took a year of CS in college. I thought about majoring in it, but then they made us do Java.

ended up majoring in Russian and Political Science <g>.

i've gone from CS to math to physics. but i'm a slow roller.

That's an alarming combination.

Indeed. I got a lot of Condolezza Rice jokes. But now I'm in law school, and I play sudoku and babble during class (like right now).

I think sudoku is the only thing that makes civ pro and torts tolerable

i agree

torts can be amusing, if you don't take it too seriously

Lansing is at the very least finny.

I think tortes are delicious.

That's true

And tortes are delicious!

I much prefer the one with the "e"

mmmm, tortes

me too.

cheaper, too.

decidedly so, sinnergy. And more chocolatey, usually.

i was going to bring pie to torts one day, but snppngtrtle convinced me to skip class. not that it took much.

And less frivilous - empty calories are much better than empty threats

anyway, I digress. ;) Enjoy the freetime now ;)

well, civ pro is over, so I'm off. Later sudoku folks.

go - ack an Expert?

got it! And only had to print it three times. :)

I thought it was quite easy for an expert - i didn't need to do any guessing at all.

not to bad for an expert. I think it should be a medium.

First shot at an expert, I think -- definitely not doing so well. :D

go

ok

unique rectangles in this one! my favorite!

done

that was not hard at all - or else i'm simply brilliant, LOL

you're brilliant

quite a ride! two different types of unique rectangles and an xy-wing.

lol artlady - tx, but i don't think so - i have no idea what an x-wing is (other than a stars wars space ship) or a unique rectangle either

ditto

going to babble now -good bye & good luck

thank you and good luck

hm, took me about a half hour. I thought I was better at these.

wow--- one guess and a lot of luck

stuck at 29

29 is the spot where a forcing-chain from the center-block solves it. good luck.

Done! Not too difficult. Only had to guess twice.

force from the bottom right works also

thx. how do you know which cell ends your chain? or do you simply stumble into a good target?

Stumble away. Get a checkpoint and try it. If you hit a wall or hit an impossibility, start over with a different force (guess)

I do try to look ahead several "moves" in different cells to decide if I should guess a "1" or a "2" or whatever in a given cell. I seem to get it right about 50% of the time.

okay. i was afraid of that. :) i found one but one side of it seems too long. maybe it just takes more practice

done

thanks

I wish I knew. Some people said they solved today's puzzle without guessing and I don't see how. But I'm not an "expert", yet.

wow, things sure got quiet all of a sudden.........

Did I say something wrong???

Should I say I'm sorry??

I'm sorry. Really. I mean it.

Don't worry about it. Some of the people who were chatting before may be concentrating on puzzles from the Archives. I know I am. :)

True, I am too. I finished today's puzzle about 15 hours ago. But the earlier discussion seemed to be about today's puzzle and what happened after 29 cells were filled in.

That was probably about the point where I got stuck last night. Checkpoints are the way to go at those points.

I agree. Then it's just trial and error.

Definitely.

sorry spread. too many distractions. thanks for the help with forcing the chain (you too, h). as for checkpoints, some of us have to improvise. screenshot == poor mans checkpoint :)

I understand.

Fair enough.

sorry about the silence spreadeagle, i walk away from the confuser for long-stretches and dont close-down the browser... no offense intended by my (or other folks?) silence...

ouch! i was down to my last two squares when i realized it wouldn't work! yuck!

Just Me, I just did the same thing. Yuck is right

and now i have to rush to get it down before the flip!

done that is

Sometimes the greens get in my way. Too much information

what do you mean "greens"?

You can enter numbers you think might work in a square by pressing the shift key and then enterring the number

ohhhh. i guess it would help to read the directions! what a nifty tool.

Same with eliminating a number. You can enter a red number by using the alt key

that would have come in handy the first time i tried!

ci

I'm going to do something brazen.

and what would that be?

Something that strikes fear in the hearts of many soduko players.

uh-oh

I'm going to walk away from an unfinished puzzle and get a good night's sleep.

should i cover my eyes?

No, I

lol. good night then dave. sleep well!

No, I'll be coverring mine

good luck and good night