The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[Karyobin]

Yeah. I threw them in to see whether anyone was paying attention.

[Lardarse]

I was...

[Enigma]

I got a mauve Sudoku today... my printer's ink was clogging up so it came out a lovely colour Was as easy as usual though !

[Enigma]

Thanks for the challenge, Paul.... just did today's in 5'20" I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Paul

[Heuresement]

Interesting.. I certainly hope that the puzzles are remaining conistently fiendish. One of the enjoymnnts that I get is the challenge of being able to solve something that initially looked impossible to me, like the new Sunday ones.
Of course, I hope that my times are getting faster because I am improving. Yesterday's and today's fiendish puzzles also seemed quite straightforward. However, I am going to have to work a bit faster to get my times down to those quoted above. My personal record is still about 22 minutes without distractions for a Fiendish. Unfortunately, I often tend to miss some of the singles and I hate to write or make marks inside the squares except when I find things too difficult.
Finally I have agreed with my wife that I will not do the killer puzzles for the time being because I also have a life outside. I will just do the fiendish ones in prepration for the Times competitions at Cheltenham next month. Anyone else going?

[Enigma]

Check out Wayne's post in the thread on the Jul 12th puzzle....


Thanks Wayne - that does explain why yesterday's could be done in 5-6 mins - that's what I'd expect for medium/difficult puzzles. I'd have thought it's bound to simply be a marketing ploy by the Times to try to hook people into the killers (only available currently in the Times of course) by convincing more that they're "Too good for fiendish". Good old product differentiation at work.

So how soon until another paper does a Killer ?

Paul

[Heuresement]

Thanks for that. I have now read Wayne's posting. I will be keen to see whether we actually get an explanation from the Times for this.

I just hope that I am still improving.

Michael

[The Druid]

Fiendish are USUALLY easier than Difficult! Always have been!

Well, they are for me, anyway, and I have never worked out quite why. I think Paul said something similar in an earlier posting.

The Druid

[PaulIQ164]

Indeed I did. The strange thing is though, from what Wayne says, the recent Fiendishes in fact really were Difficults, and yet they seemd easier still! So maybe it's more of a psychological thing with the Difficults? Who can say?

Anyway, there's a new style of T2 (the section which has sudoku in it) in The Times tomorrow apparently. I can only imagine this will mean even more sudoku than before, and hopefully maybe a return to form for Fiendish.

[Pi]

It's like that bit in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, except they're stockpiling Fiendishes instead of crops.

They must be collecting them for the championships

[possum]

Anyway, there's a new style of T2 (the section which has sudoku in it) in The Times tomorrow apparently. I can only imagine this will mean even more sudoku than before, and hopefully maybe a return to form for Fiendish.

The new style T2 isn't much different, is it? The back page hasn't changed at all. Today's prize su doku is rated as 'difficult' and there is a 'moderate' killer.

[PaulIQ164]

No, as it turns out it's almost exactly the same. Although this is the first day in a while that they haven't at least claimed to have had a Fiendish puzzle.

[possum]

Is today's fiendishly simple, or has my brain suddenly improved immensely? (referring to Wednesday 7th September)

[Pi]

I thought todays was harder than some of thew ones we had towardw the end of last week but still too easy, a feindish should be harder than that

[PaulIQ164]

I agree. I only did it using a pair, which I've not needed for recent ones, and it took a little longer (~10min), but then again, I put it in Sudoku Susser, and it turns out you can do it using just singles, so I'm not quite sure whether it's a proper Pappocom Hard or not.