about 2 days ago - No comments
Samurai 8X puzzle
When I was making Sudoku Xtra 10 I wanted to put in a really big Samurai Sudoku puzzle. In the end because I had a square page area available beneath the instructions I went with a 13-grid one (just as a one-off to see what sort of reaction it got!) but I had More >
about 3 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 4 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 5 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 6 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 6 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 6 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 6 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 6 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 6 months ago - 3 comments
Sudoku Odd Pairs puzzle
Now here’s something I can guarantee you won’t have seen before, because I just invented it! Well, I suppose with a world of people creating Sudoku variants it’s possible there’s been something similar before, but I’ve bought a lot of puzzle magazines and books and never come across it, so More >
about 1 year ago
Pretty simple puzzle. I really like killer sudoku and would like to see one of these with no singles and no repeated digits in cages.
I see one of the challenges in designing a puzzle like this is having people need to use more than one puzzle area to crack it. I found with this one that I could do each part separate and join them at the end. With most samurai, you are forced to hop between puzzle areas.