That was kind of complicated for an easy, to me

i thought so too

Done. It took a lot of green.

go

12 filled going green

done

slow start

what a meaty easy.. I liked it

what does 'going green' mean?

using shift to fill in the possibles, or using a script to do it for you.

hi all

not too bad

good morning

back up to date

wow, meaty easy indeed

Difficulty score 28. I think it was more difficult than usual for an easy because there was a lot of need for missing digit scans.

What you mean by missing digit?

This is an easy? I've been looking at it five minutes without finding any crosshatch or loner.

yeah, this is pretty tough!!

Thank you! I thought a few days away had rotted my brain!

Found just one crosshatch. Going green. What a disgrace!

Rats. I missed a loner.

UTH--missing digit scan is probably what you mean by loner. When an empty cell has 8 of the 9 digits in its set of buddies, then the missing digit must go in the empty cell.

Okay.

but loner conjures up those high school memories more vividly...

And that's a good thing?

lol

DrWho, loners are hard to find at first, but very easy later on. Does your program score for that difference?

I've put them behind me!

No.

It should.

However, it usually finds the later loners by cross-hatching.

I did think about having a couple different levels of difficulty assigned to the missing digit scan, but I just didn't see any easy way to distinguish a hard missing digit from an easy.

i adore unique rectangles

How about squares?

How about scoring by the number of filled spaces in one constituency? They are difficult to find at first because the buddies are distributed among rather sparce looking rows, columns, and blocks.

Well, the obvious test would be if there were no more than 3 digits filled in in the row, column and block. But it seemed more work to test for that than it was worth.

The number of unfilled cells in the most filled constituency is the telling point of difficulty. How about just multiplying by some factor based upoon that?

Anyway, I'm done with today's. After the loner and a triplet it became really easy with greens.

My scores don't have that much granularity in them to begin with. It's an interesting idea, but the result would be a totally different scoring system.

So the new scores wouldn't be comparable to the old ones...?

Probably not even close.

It would probably raise all the scores

Compared to a crosshatch, how much score does a loner get?

perhaps by as much as a factor of 2.

http://pauls-pc-repair.com/sudoku/

Well, maybe that's about right, averaged over the game.

I just have to get better at finding loners. I think some of you can see these things immediately. I need to go through the digits 1 to 9 and carefully check candidate cells.

DrWho, I've never seen mention of what I call "needs based thought." Such as "This row needs a 3. It can't go here, here or here, therefore it must go here." Does your program do any of that?

That is cross-hatching.

But it is different when you say "this block needs a 3"... different from "this row needs a 3."

Yes, I do distinguish between cross-hatching rows and columns from cross-hatching a block.

However the logic is totally the same.

But the blocks are easier to find.

It just seems to me it is more natural and easy for me to cross-hatch blocks.

So I give a higher score to cross-hatching rows and columns.

Good.

Then there is sometimes the other way of thinking. "This row needs a 3, 5, 8. But this cell cannot be 3 or 8, therefore it must be 5." What is that called?

That is the missing digit scan.

I guess so, but come at it in a different way.

Although you may have used more indirect means to eliminate the 3 and 8, it is the same logic as if you could point to an actual 3 and 8 in the cells buddies.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion. I'll go make breakfast for my daughter now.

You're welcome.

UTH--if you're still monitoring this, I remember why I rejected the idea of more than one level of difficulty for missing digit scans -- it seems that it is about as hard to do in most cases. The factor you mentioned is more a measure of whether I will try a missing digit scan on a cell when I am manually solving the puzzle than an actual measure of the difficulty of the scan.

blah

khykjttyop jmyd

BLAH

go

easy?

tricky tricky

done but the "loner" escaped me until i read the comments and went looking for it. this felt like a medium. dang it.

go

done.

tired. used greens.

done

go

this was the third one in a row that I found difficult, yet I could go into the archives and knock off a "hard" in ten minutes. I must need help!!

No, your just like many of the rest of us...

dorens - so glad you said that - i'm having trouble with this one & same thing the last 2 also!

strength in numbers, helen. So I'm not totally insane?

we're all insane together - bwa - ha - ha!

yesterday i was saying i thought i needed a brain ct

but why does today's seem so much more difficult than an easy should? I know I am lacking in strategies... still don't recognize a unique rectangle, etc.

haha... well, helen, between this and babble... i think maybe I do need my head examined..... ii do nothing but sit at this computer in my free time, or at least it seems that way

i don't know what a 'unique rectangle' is, or x-wing or any of that other stuff, but i do know & can apply logic pretty well & this one & last 2 have been more difficult than what they're rated, at least that's what i think

i always knew i liked you helen!!!

i like you right back :))

Yay us!

LOL

wow dorens. I do the same thing. Babble and sudoku. An all day affair almost

haven't done babble yet today... you?

we all joke about being addicted, fit1--- but sometimes I don't think it's such a funny joke, if you know what I mean

nope haven

t been there yet today - can't remember if i started it or just looked at the size of it last night

I know exactly what you mean. Done my babble for today.

i looked at it this morning and took a quick pass.. then went out and lived my life a bit. now looking at tons of stuff i should do around the house, but need to babble first... absolute compulsion... yet my new obsession (this one) forces me to do at least one extra puzzle each day, so am in the archives now..then will babble soon

starting to green this puppy in now

babble is a biggie today.

i found it hard even with the greens helen

not over 300, i hope... don't remember

I seem to worse on "easy" than on any others

no not over 300

under two I think, not huge, but time consuming

nope, it's 182 - seems i just looked at it last night & didn't start it :(

cool, i can handle that.... and another day of not cooking dinner, but scrounging in the fridge

I was away for 2 1/2 weeks, and my babble ranking went straight south :)

12 filled in, going green

i don't bother with the babble rankings anymore\

i understand that.... i was away for a week and it screwed me up. i shouldn't care. i know i shouldn't care!
good luck green

nah, I just check once in awhile. :)

spread - huh, that's what i had when i started greening too - 12

well, I'm sitting here with green and scratching my head LOL

no, they really are silly.... i satisfied myself that i could be 1030 for a while.... did it enough... and now I'm almost at the point of not caring.

by the way, that was supposed to be good luck with the greens, spreadeagle.... still a tough one for me... but i am done

The 4's seem to be the key

i've been at this sucker for over 20 minutes now - that makes it officially "NOT easy"

As I said, when it's marked "easy" that seems to be my downfall :)

you may be right about that... my mind's a sieve.... i finished it about 20 minutes ago? don't remember how i did it now (think it was a guess... hope the sudoku police don't read that0

Done, really needed the greens tho.......

congratulations spreadeagle!

good job, spread

wd spread!

look at us babblers!!!!

spread, can you come to my house and finish mine for me. I'm stuck. LOL

done

YAY helen!

what a pain! good luck in the archives dorens, must go look after pups now

see you all later - bye

enjoy helen.. maybe see you in babble - i'll be there in a few minutes

fit... any particularly good clues for babble? :) just kidding

I use my trusty Lickety and a2z wordfinder when I'm stuck. It's called "research" :)

hahaha... i use morewords.... think it's similar to a2z... and once in a while i ask for a clue for fun

or to save time, it depends on the situation

me too. sometimes a2z lets me down

made a mistke in my archive, thought i was done.. now am here for a while longer

I took a huge guess, and I may have guessed wrong. I may give up

no, no don't give up... i can always look and give y ou a clue if you really need one

the thing is I don't have the pro. so it means starting again :(

i figured the $15 was worth it when you think about how much enjoyment you get from this (and time spent on it!)

yup

just didn't do it. I was away a lot recently. So I figgered I'd wait

understandable

but I have officially screwed up. so I need to take a break

ok.... see you again another time... good luck

thanks dorens. Nice chatting with you

you too

go!

done

hm... i couldhave sworn i did this one today

damn. i remember. and NOOOOO!!! NOT AGAIN!!!

all this for 1 lousy point. i give up

evening all!

Hi there.

hey Orange!

how've you been?

Reasonably well. Yourself?

pretty good. waiting for Spring up here in MA... it gets warm for a couple of days and then out of the blue it gets really cold

we've got another Spring Noreaster watch going on right now... supposed to be getting snow

Ick. It finally quit freezing at night out here a couple weeks ago, starting to look like Spring at last.

However, being Seattle, it still rains all the time.

I wish it was raining... I mean at least then it would feel semi-springish

Well, it will warm up soon.

Done. A lot of work for an easy.