about 2 months ago - No comments
Killer Plus Minus Samurai puzzle
If you’re a Sudoku Xtra reader you’ll have seen these in their regular 9×9 form in both issues 5 and 6, but this is the first time I’ve made a Samurai one, and the first time I’ve posted one here I think.
This is essentially a regular Killer Sudoku puzzle, except that More >
about 3 months ago - No comments
Killer Sudoku Pro 6×6 Samurai puzzle
It’s been quiet here recently – much of my effort has been going on my UK General Election site, How To Vote, although Sudoku Xtra 6 was out on Saturday too. Anyway, there are still 10 days to go to the election but after that I’ll get some time back!
However I thought I should More >
about 4 months ago - 1 comment
Samurai 3-grid Calcudoku 6×6 puzzle
I’ve been posting a few new varieties of Sudoku puzzle in the daily puzzle section of PuzzleMix (i.e. the subscription section, which costs less than £1 a month for well over 1,000 puzzles a year). These aren’t especially unusual variations, but I’ve done a few different mixes (e.g. Sudoku-X 12×12 and More >
about 4 months ago - 3 comments
Toroidal Killer Jigsaw Toroidal puzzle
A while back someone asked for some variant toroidal patterns on PuzzleMix, so I was just adding a couple of them to the daily puzzles section when it occurred to me that I could put up a few toroidal killer sudoku too, for a change. However I then realised that the More >
about 4 months ago - 1 comment
Samurai Star XXXXX puzzle
I haven’t posted a puzzle for a week (it’s been a busy week, mind!) so it’s time to make up for that, just in time for the weekend.
In this puzzle the aim is pretty simple: place 1 to 9 in each set of 9 squares starting and ending with a bold line, More >
about 4 months ago - 2 comments
I wrote quite a lot yesterday about whether you “needed” the X in some Sudoku-X puzzles. I promised that I’d follow up with the result of analysing a stack of Killer Sudoku-X puzzles, and so here is that result.
I picked 64 Killer Sudoku-X puzzles (52 for the daily puzzlemix section plus 12 for the weekly More >
about 4 months ago - 3 comments
One of the perennial comments on PuzzleMix is that the diagonal ‘X’ regions aren’t needed in a particular Sudoku-X puzzle, or more commonly in Killer Sudoku X. Well, when I say “perennial” I mean to say that of the more than 400,000 puzzle plays that that comment has been made about 10 times. But an More >
about 4 months ago - 1 comment
Killer Sudoku Jigsaw puzzle
I’ve recently been working on refreshing the content for PuzzleMix.com, my play-online puzzle site, and one of the puzzle types I’ve been making is Killer Jigsaw Sudoku, where you not only have the jigsaw-shaped Killer regions but also jigsaw shapes instead of the regular 3×3 Sudoku boxes.
So I thought it would be a More >
about 5 months ago - 2 comments
Samurai-2 Odd Pair Sudoku puzzle
One of the brand new puzzles in Sudoku Xtra issue 4 is Odd-Pair Sudoku, which I wrote about last week here on my puzzle blog. As well as some regular 9×9 puzzles I also included a large 5-grid Odd-Pair Samurai puzzle, and to illustrate how the puzzle worked I included a More >
about 5 months ago - 3 comments
Samurai 8-grid Calcudoku puzzle
Here’s probably the largest Calcudoku puzzle you’ve ever seen! It’s made up of 8 underlying 9×9 grids, each of which must have 1 to 9 placed into each row and column, and then on top of this I’ve added the familiar Calcudoku regions.
For each Calcudoku region just place numbers such that the More >
about 1 year ago
Hi Gareth
I am really enjoying these consecutive puzzles. I have completed them all now and of the star, the skyscraper and the two grid samurai, found the latter to be much more difficult than the others – a real challenge, but manageable in the end! (I’ve never looked into some of the complex solving strategies you mentioned, so was glad they weren’t needed!
Have you considered adding a pdf file of consecutive sudoku puzzles to those you can buy on your puzzlemix site? I certainly wouldn’t mind paying for some more.
Thanks for providing these puzzles. It’s good to get away from the more standard puzzles.
about 1 year ago
I’m really glad you’re enjoying the consecutive puzzles – as I wrote a few days ago I’ve always wanted to make them but have just never got round to it! I tried one from a World Sudoku Championships a couple of years ago and thought it was fun.
I think the great thing about consecutive sudoku – compared to non-consecutive sudoku (where all of the digits are non-consecutive) is that the consecutive constraint eliminates all except two (or one) other digit, which makes the puzzle much more tightly constrained, and therefore entertaining to solve (for me at least!).
Now I know for sure they really are fun (and it wasn’t just a fluke) a book of them sounds like a great idea. I could add them to puzzlemix.com as an online puzzle, but a downloadable/printable PDF is a great idea. I will look at doing that this coming week.
about 1 year ago
I really enjoyed this puzzle with the flower design and all of the other elements. I also like that you start with only 4 givens and explode from the center outwards.
about 1 year ago
Thanks for all your comments, Spittledung, on this and other posts. Yes, I think that the way Consecutive puzzles ‘flow’ from the start point is really attractive, and it makes the puzzle feel pleasantly ‘manageable’ as you solve. Of course, getting started can be a different matter!