about 2 months ago - No comments
Jigsaw 6×6 puzzle 2Jigsaw 6×6 puzzle 1I just made some Jigsaw Sudoku puzzles for a book and had a couple spare which I thought I’d post here. Just place A to F once each into every row, column and bold-lined jigsaw shape.
about 1 year ago - No comments
Sudoku 6×6 puzzleJigsaw 6×6 puzzle
I had a couple of 6×6 Sudoku puzzles left over when making issue 58 of Sudoku Pro magazine, so I thought I’d post them here.
Just place 1-6 into each row, column and bold-lined area.
about 1 year ago - No comments
Sudoku 16×16 puzzle
And to complement the Killer Sudoku I posted a moment ago, here’s a 16×16 puzzle for those who like these. Just place 1 to 9 and A to G in each row, column and 4×4 box. Only “scan and place” logic is needed for this, I promise!
about 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 2 years ago
Welcome back to your blog. I have been busy myself.
Good easy sudoku.
What I find funny is not only the shenanigans you mention but the fact that Thomas Snyder’s hubris got in his way and he lost it. Haste makes waste, and I do have some vindication (and schadenfreude) to see this proven on such a big scale.
about 2 years ago
Well, I am not going to comment on Thomas’s result but I must say that, whilst I’ve never met him in person, over the past few years I’ve had a couple of private conversations with him by email and I’ve always found him very polite and decent. If he comes across as arrogant, perhaps it’s just a natural result of being light years ahead of most other puzzle solvers – his times are unbelievable. But I don’t know him, so I’m just guessing. In any case, no matter what you think of him I must say that his new book, Mutant Sudoku, is truly excellent – I’m sure you’d enjoy it!
about 2 years ago
I thought what I said might be taken incorrectly. What I was trying to say was that I am against the ideology of haste, and not Thomas as a person. I have seen too many times in this world where haste gets rewarded with a disregard for the consequences that arise from it.
There are many times I do a sudoku and intuitively say “that’s a 6, I know it” … but I can’t prove it yet. So I take the time to prove it. My times would be faster if I relied on my intuition more but part of my grounding is the proof and understanding.
If this comes across as grumpy I apologise. I recently read “Full Contact Sudoku” and was one of the few that was not amused.
To show I have no personal beef with Thomas, one of this things he has said about sudoku I am in total agreement with: “The place in a puzzle where you think that progress will not be made is EXACTLY where you should be looking!” Amen! I use that principle all of the time.
I plan to get Mutant Sudoku when I can find it on the store shelves. The other contributor is Wei-Hwa Huang, who not only is a Sudoku Champion, but is a fellow game designer who recently worked on the icons for “Race for the Galaxy”.