The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[jondent]

Please forgive my stupidity but I am new to Su Doku puzzles and am stuck on my first Fiendish one in The Times. It is 17th September no. 368.

This is what I have so far:
x21 x5x xx6
xx4 x6x 1x2
9xx 321 xx8
x9x x3x x7x
x5x 6x7 x2x
x1x x8x x6x
1xx 845 2x7
xx2 x73 6xx
xxx 2x6 xxx

So ya, I didn't get very far! I would appreciate guidance from those better than myself.

Kind regards,

[zebedeezbd]

Try fitting a 6 in column 1... which should allow you to solve all the cells in the left-centre block...

[jondent]

Thank you. Did that and got that middle box of left hand column. Also got the 2 in the middle box of the grid and the 8 in the right hand column, middle box. Then I'm stuck again. To clarify I have:

x21 x5x xx6
xx4 x6x 1x2
9xx 321 xx8
698 x32 x7x
453 6x7 82x
217 x8x x6x
1xx 845 2x7
xx2 x73 6xx
xxx 2x6 xxx

Many thanks for your help.

[zebedeezbd]

Yes it does get a bit tough at this point unless I am also missing something obvious.

I spotted that the 4 in the top-centre block must be in the top row, meaning that the 4 in the top-right block must be in the 3rd row, which eliminated a few candidates.

Then (this is the hard-to-spot bit) look at where the 1s and 8s can be in the bottom-right block, you should be able to eliminate quite a few candidates so that you only end up with one 4 in column 8. Good luck!