Sudoku Xtra

Issue 7 of Sudoku Xtra contains even more large-page Japanese puzzle fun, with an incredible 116 varied logic and number puzzles. A special section in this issue is devoted to giant puzzles, with the 13 full-page puzzles including Hanjie, Nurikabe, Yajilin, Slitherlink, Hashi, Samurai Sudoku variants, Kakuro and more.

Sudoku Xtra offers greater variety than any other puzzle publication, with a huge range of Sudoku variants that include Jigsaw, Extra Region, Skyscraper, Consecutive and many more. Other featured puzzles include Calcudoku, Futoshiki, Hitori, Killer Sudoku and a range of variants, including Zero Killer Sudoku Inequality!

Designed to print on either A4 or Letter paper, or pre-printed on similarly large paper, Sudoku Xtra features puzzles at a range of difficulties, so is suitable for both logic puzzle fans and casual solvers alike. No matter what you like, you’re sure to find many puzzles to enjoy in Sudoku Xtra issue 7.

There’s also another great Puzzle Community section too, thanks to the generous contributors. Puzzles sent in for issue 7 include Navigrid, Mini Killer Sudoku, Knighted Sum Sudoku, Fillomino and more.

Get Sudoku Xtra 7 now.

I’m very pleased to announce that issue 5 of Sudoku Xtra magazine is now available for download or in pre-printed form from either Amazon.com (US) or Lulu.com (recommended for rest of world).

This issue has even more puzzles than the previous ones, with a pretty mind-boggling 131 separate logic and number puzzles!

New content includes:

• Suraromu – the latest loop puzzle from Japan
• PivotPix (a.k.a. Tentai Show / Sym-a-Pix)
• -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 Killer Sudoku!
• An extra page of Yajilin, designed to help you get into the puzzle
• Some new Sudoku combinations

Plus the regular stuff is there too, including:

• Another Jigsaw 6×6 Variety Pack of miniature variants
• More Sudoku at more sizes than ever before
• Lots of Sudoku variations on a theme
• All of the other regular puzzles, from Skyscraper to Samurais to Calcudoku to Hashi to Hanjie to Kakuro and so on…

And the generous puzzle community contributors have been as creative as ever. Just look at some of the types that are in issue 5: 

• Kuromasu / Kurodoko
• Sudoku Times (outside products)
• Hexagon 25
• Shapely Alleys and Skyscrapers
• Modula
• Pathfinder
• and more!

As always, it’s designed to print well in black and white on either A4 or Letter paper, using up most of the space and without pointlessly wasting ink on large dark areas. If you have a colour printer there’s a small colour trim to each issue – this month’s is orange – but this prints fine as a greyscale. Pre-printed copies have a colour cover but black and white interior.

So check it out!

Issue 4 of Sudoku Xtra magazine is now with us!  I really think I might be putting too many puzzles into it, because typing up the list of content just knocked me out with how much is crammed into its 52 large-format pages!  Is too much possible?  I don’t know, but look at this enormous list:

128 puzzles in total, including several seriously giant ones.  Brand new for this issue:

• Samurai Star Killer Sudoku Pro
• Number Link Samurai
• Odd Pair Sudoku
• Samurai Odd Pair Sudoku
• Sudoku Inequality Jigsaw
• Jigsaw Sudoku 6×6 Variety Pack (including toroidal, inequality, X, consecutive and killer)
• Killer Sudoku Pro Jigsaw
• Sudoku 15×15 and Sudoku 18×18
• Killer Sudoku 15×15
• Odd & Even Pair Sudoku
• Killer Sudoku Prime

Regulars from issue 3:

• Hanjie
• Masyu
• Calcudoku (three times as many as in previous issues!)
• Slitherlink
• Consecutive Sudoku
• Hitori
• Samurai Star
• Samurai Star Jigsaw
• Number Link
• Jigsaw Sudoku 8×8, 9×9 and 10×10
• Toroidal Sudoku and Toroidal Inequality
• Kakuro
• Futoshiki
• Killer Sudoku
• Skyscraper
• Skyscraper Sudoku
• Samurai Sudoku
• SSSS: Skyscraper Samurai Star Sudoku
• Sudoku Inequality
• Sudoku Extra Regions
• Jigsaw Sudoku Extra Regions
• Killer Sudoku Jigsaw
• SOS: Samurai Outside Sudoku
• Outside Sudoku
• Sudoku 8×8
• Sudoku 12×12 and 16×16
• Samurai Extra Regions
• Yajilin
• Nurikabe

Adding to that already exhausting list still further are the community puzzles: 

• Heyawake
• King’s Journey (also known as Hidato[TM], Numbrix[TM] and many other names)
• Mosaic (Minesweeper picture puzzle)
• As Easy as ABC
• Knight’s Tour
• Shapely Skyscraper
• Isolate
• Klump

And all of this for just £3.99 or $5.99 – it really is fantastic value!

If you’d like to get hold of it just pop on over to the Sudoku Xtra website!

I’ve had lots of requests for a book like this over the past couple of years, so I hope if you’re one of the people who’ve wanted something like this that the book meets your expectations!  All of the puzzles have nice symmetry, and the difficulty level is set such that you won’t need to make lots of fiddly pencil marks in the grid (or indeed any pencil marks at all, if you don’t want to).

It’s printed on large paper (A4 at Lulu, 8″x10″ at Amazon), with just one puzzle per page, so you’re getting the puzzles at a comfortable size for solving. Full solutions are included, and with 50 puzzles it’s going to take you a long time to solve them all!

Please feel free to post any comments here, or head over to Sudoku Xtra and take a browse on the discussion forums – and maybe join in!

Right at the moment it’s only available in printed form, but I’ll have download copies available in the next couple of days – as soon as I’ve added a purchase mechanism to SudokuXtra.com in fact!

I’ve decided that I’m going to make a series of similar books of particular requested puzzles, all of which will be branded as “Sudoku Xtra Specials”.  In this way I can stay organised by keeping all of my download/printed content under the ‘Sudoku Xtra’ heading.  It means that you’ll always be able to find all of my new content in one place, without searching around my various sites.

This book is probably the nicest collection of 25×25 puzzles you can find, if you’re a fan of such things.  Every puzzle has really nice 8-way symmetry – having noticeable patterns in puzzles like this is pretty unusual, and it can help with the solve too.  Just as in my magazines, I’ve thought about what’s sensible in a puzzle like this so they can all be solved without needing pencilmarks.  How exactly would you go about making A-Y pencilmarks in each individual square anyway?!

If you get hold of it please do let me know any thoughts you have on it.  In the same way as for Sudoku Xtra magazine, it’s designed to be printed at home on either an all-together or a page-by-page basis.  And if you get a pre-printed version from Lulu or Amazon.com (already complete but waiting on listing now) then it’s on a large A4 (Lulu) or 8″x10″ (Amazon) page, so there’s plenty of room to write in the solutions.

If there are other books of puzzles you’d like to see, please let me know in the comments here or on the Sudoku Xtra forums – feel free to repeat any requests you’ve made before! Next up is 16×16 Sudoku but after that it’s all open. I was thinking of doing Inequality Sudoku third, but what do you think?

So if you’re in the US and fancy getting hold of a copy (they get really hard by the end!) then there’s now another way to buy it.  You even get 10% off if you’re a member.

My new book is out now – The Little Book of Hard-as-Nails Sudoku 5, from Michael O’Mara. It’s available from Amazon UK (link on the right) and, as they say, all other good book stores! (For now, it’s UK only, although importers have listed it on Amazon.com already). It’s part of the Little Book of Sudoku series, thus the number 5 on the cover (although confusingly it’s actually the 6th Little Book of Sudoku, since there was one by another author with the prefix ‘Quick’).

It has 201 puzzles of ever-increasing difficulty, starting at tricky and progressing to insanely hard. They’re broken down into 5 levels, each requiring additional solving skills, but within each level they also get tougher as you progress. Although the puzzles really do get very difficult, they never require ‘unfair’ logic or obscure solving techniques that you’d be unlikely to come up with just on your own. Take a look at my previous posting on hard sudoku for an example – although they get harder than this in the book!