Comments on: Just a couple of Calcudoku

By: Christine

Christine — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:26:23 +0000

Nice to see the puzzles coming again! It sounds from your posts as though you have an awful lot on the horizon at the moment.

I also completed these two puzzles very quickly. I really enjoy the Kenken/CalucuDoku puzzles but like Spittledung find most of the published puzzles too easy. I am by no means a puzzle expert (my brain will only take me so far!!) but when I do a puzzle I do like a bit of a challenge and for that reason would not buy the Dell magazines. There’s an invitation to produce a harder CalcuDoku for us!!

As regards symmetry, as an enthusiast rather than an expert, it’s not something I really take notice of. Sorry!

By: Gareth Moore

Gareth Moore — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:55:25 +0000

I have been pretty shocked by how (as you say) truly EASY the KenKen/CalcuDoku puzzles published elsewhere generally are! Indeed most can be solved without ever having to think about how the possible solutions in different regions combine and interact together – just a straightforward Sudoku-esque solve suffices, with the ability to do maths needed only to narrow down the candidates satisfactorily.

I also can’t spot the difference between Dell’s Easy Ken-Ken and their regular Ken-Ken magazine – they are both easy, and I think it is perhaps a marketing test? However that is just a guess!

I can make MUCH harder CalcuDoku if you like!

By: Spittledung

Spittledung — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:23:10 +0000

Very easy CalcuDoku for me. I did each one in about 2-3 minutes at a guess. I do like that you have dismissed the “subtraction and division can only be 2 boxes” rule that most other puzzles use.

I am finding most of the KenKen type puzzles out there are easy at best. The local paper has started including 6×6 KenKen and I usually solve those in 5 minutes or less. I saw a Dell book recently: “EASY KenKen” … Really?! … 1+2=3 … 1*5=5 … can I go play on the swing set now?

I think there is potential for this type of puzzle, but I feel as if it is being dumbed down. Thank you Gareth for working at making CalcuDokus interesting.

I have recently done a book by Conceptis puzzles called MathDoku. Their 5-star hard puzzles were very interesting … with cages such as 17280x-in-8 and 19+-in-8 (also in funky shapes).