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Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Nathaniel Firethorn on February 19, 2006, 04:21:52 AM

Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: Nathaniel Firethorn on February 19, 2006, 04:21:52 AM
Mine mostly come from what I've read in the fronts of the mags. If you've got your own, please post!

- NF
Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: 280plus on February 19, 2006, 04:33:44 AM
Do not use a pen...

Tongue
Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: Phantom Warrior on February 19, 2006, 04:53:59 AM
If you want to never enjoy a Sudoku puzzle again, do this.

1.  Make out an oversized copy of the 9x9 Sudoku grid.
2.  Write the number 1-9 in the top of each box (I recommend a computer, unless you feel like writing out 729 numbers).
3.  Fill in the clues.
4.  For each clue, cross of that number in every box in that row, column, and box.
5.  When you have one possibility left, fill it in for that box.
6.  Repeat until done.

*shrug*
Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: Nathaniel Firethorn on February 19, 2006, 12:56:35 PM
I'm no expert, but I've already solved some puzzles for which that algorithm won't work.

Example here.

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Do not use a pen... Tongue
At least don't use the kind that bleed through the cheap paper... shocked

- NF
Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: brimic on February 19, 2006, 02:47:47 PM
After scribbling about 50 numbers in the margins and a headache caused by 20 minytes of thinking and getting only 1 number which you think might be right, crumple the damn thing up in a ball, throw it agaisnt the wall, go to the fridge and get a beer.
Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: brimic on February 19, 2006, 02:48:47 PM
I think Soduku is an Asian word for Satan.
Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: zahc on February 19, 2006, 07:10:58 PM
"I'm no expert, but I've already solved some puzzles for which that algorithm won't work"

So have I, I tried come up with an algorithm for it (until I found out it was nontrivial) but found there's also more than one solution.
Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: Strings on February 20, 2006, 08:01:15 AM
So sayeth Spoon, who's a fanatic on these things: "if you're writing numbers in margins, you're not doing it right! Try reading the instructions!"

 She's got these on her Palm pilot, too...
Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: Nathaniel Firethorn on February 20, 2006, 09:58:49 AM
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I think Soduku is an Asian word for Satan.
Lady at a CVS saw me buying a Sudoku mag and asked me how to pronounce it. The closest she could come was "Soodookoo."

The game has an interesting history. Like LCDs, it was invented in the US, pretty much ignored until the Japanese capitalized on it, and now ubiquitous in the US.
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The name Sudoku is the Japanese abbreviation of a longer phrase, "suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru (数字は独身に限る)," meaning "the digits must remain single"; it is a trademark of puzzle publisher Nikoli Co. Ltd in Japan. Other Japanese publishers refer to the puzzle as Nanpure (Number Place), the original U. S. title. In Japanese, the word is pronounced [sɯːdokɯ]; in English, it is usually spoken with an Anglicised pronunciation, [səˈdəʊkuː] (BrE) [səˈdoʊkuː] (AmE) (suh-DOE-koo) or [ˈsuːdəʊku] (BrE) [ˈsuːdoʊku] (AmE) (SOO-doe-koo).
The "single" means single as in "bachelor," IIRC.
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The puzzle was designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor, and first published in 1979.[13] Although likely inspired by the Latin square invention of Leonhard Euler, Garns added a third dimension (the regional restriction) to the mathematical construct and (unlike Euler) presented the creation as a puzzle, providing a partially-completed grid and requiring the solver to fill in the rest. The puzzle was first published in New York by the specialist puzzle publisher Dell Magazines in its magazine Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games, under the title Number Place (which we can only assume Garns named it).

The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Nikoli in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984 as Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru (数字は独身に限る), which can be translated as "the numbers must be single" or "the numbers must occur only once" (独身 literally means "single; celibate; unmarried"). The puzzle was named by Kaji Maki (鍜治 真起), the president of Nikoli. At a later date, the name was abbreviated to Sudoku (数独, pronounced SUE-dough-coo; sū = number, doku = single); it is a common practice in Japanese to take only the first kanji of compound words to form a shorter version. In 1986, Nikoli introduced two innovations which guaranteed the popularity of the puzzle: the number of givens was restricted to no more than 32 and puzzles became "symmetrical" (meaning the givens were distributed in rotationally symmetric cells). It is now published in mainstream Japanese periodicals, such as the Asahi Shimbun. Within Japan, Nikoli still holds the trademark for the name Sudoku; other publications in Japan use alternative names.

In 1989, Loadstar/Softdisk Publishing published DigitHunt on the Commodore 64, which was apparently the first home computer version of Sudoku. At least one publisher still uses that title.

Yoshimitsu Kanai published his computerized puzzle generator under the name Single Number for the Apple Macintosh [14] in 1995 in Japanese and English, for the Palm (PDA) [15] in 1996, and for the Mac OS-X [16] in 2005.

Bringing the process full-circle, Dell Magazines, which publishes the original Number Place puzzle, now also publishes two Sudoku magazines: Original Sudoku and Extreme Sudoku. Additionally, Kappa reprints Nikoli Sudoku in GAMES Magazine under the name Squared Away; the New York Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle now also publish the puzzle. It is also often included in puzzle anthologies, such as The Giant 1001 Puzzle Book (under the title Nine Numbers).

Within the context of puzzle history, parallels are often cited to Rubik's Cube, another logic puzzle popular in the 1980s. Sudoku has been called the "Rubik's cube of the 21st century".
- NF
Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: Ex-MA Hole on February 28, 2006, 02:50:40 PM
Quote from: Nathaniel Firethorn
Mine mostly come from what I've read in the fronts of the mags. If you've got your own, please post!

- NF
Yeah- just one.

Don't start.  You can't stop.
Title: Secrets of the Sudoku masters?
Post by: Fly320s on February 28, 2006, 03:17:58 PM
What secrets?  It's just a process of elimination.