The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[Shahrazad]

Sudoko puzzles are printed in the 'Haarlems Dagblad' since a week now. This newspaper is the oldest paper in the Netherlands and exists since 1656.

Now, these puzzles they print are crap. I don't know where they come from or who puts them together, but I already stopped attempting them.
Not that they can't be solved, but they don't have unique solutions, which make them BAD sudoku's, and I hope you guys agree with me.

I'll show you the 2 last ones they dared to publish:

Thursday December 8

Code: Select all

3 . . | . . 1 | . 7 .
4 . . | . . 2 | . 3 .
. 1 8 | 6 3 . | 2 . 4
------+-------+------
9 . . | . . 3 | . 8 .
. 4 1 | 8 9 . | 3 . 2
6 . . | . . 4 | . 9 .
------+-------+------
1 . . | . . 5 | . 2 .
2 . . | . . 8 | . 1 .
. 3 9 | 2 1 . | 5 . 7


Friday December 9

Code: Select all

. . 7 | 6 . . | . . .
6 4 . | . 2 5 | 7 8 .
. . 9 | 4 . . | . . 5
------+-------+------
. . 2 | 1 . . | . . 3
. . 8 | 7 . . | . . 2
9 7 . | . 5 2 | 8 1 .
------+-------+------
8 3 . | . 9 4 | 1 2 .
. . 5 | 8 . . | . . 4
. . 1 | 2 . . | . . 8


Now if you agree with me, all send massive complaints to this paper
(www.haarlemsdagblad.nl mail them at: redactie.hd@hdc.nl )

thanks for listening
Greetz
Shah

[rubylips]

Shah,

You're right. The first puzzle has 44 solutions, the second 13.

[Shahrazad]

good grief ... 44 solutions ...

'bad' isn't beginning to describe this. It's abominable


What program are you using to count the number of solutions ?

Thanks,
Shah


EDIT: I see you,re the admin of the Su DoKu solver on SourceForge
I dowlnloaded the java source code, but I don't seem to be able to load this project into NetBeans. My knowledge of Java is minimal anyhow

[Pappocom]

Shahrazad, you can let Haarlems Dagblad know they can get my Pappocom puzzles for free, if they want them. They just have to email me to find out how to go about it.

- Wayne

[Bigtone53]

Sudoko puzzles are printed in the 'Haarlems Dagblad' since a week now. This newspaper is the oldest paper in the Netherlands and exists since 1656.

I flew from Schihol to Luxembourg a couple of weeks ago and picked up a freebie Dutch paper which had Sudokus. Nothing too strenuous but it passed the time. I dont remember the title (perhaps the Algemeen Dagblad) but obviously not the Haarlems Dagblad!

[Shahrazad]

Shahrazad, you can let Haarlems Dagblad know they can get my Pappocom puzzles for free, if they want them. They just have to email me to find out how to go about it.

- Wayne

Wayne,

I will point them to your site and tell them they should email you , but I have no idea if they are willing to change their ways. No doubt they think they're doing a swell job.

thanks,
Shah

[Shahrazad]

Sudoko puzzles are printed in the 'Haarlems Dagblad' since a week now. This newspaper is the oldest paper in the Netherlands and exists since 1656.

I flew from Schihol to Luxembourg a couple of weeks ago and picked up a freebie Dutch paper which had Sudokus. Nothing too strenuous but it passed the time. I dont remember the title (perhaps the Algemeen Dagblad) but obviously not the Haarlems Dagblad!

The 'Haarlems Dagblad' newspaper isn't a national newspaper. It's focused on the city of Haarlem and direct surroundings. Of course the national and international news is just as good as the in the national papers.

Schiphol being only 15 Km or so from Haarlem, could very well have copies of the Haarlems Dagblad though

Thanks,
Shah

[Shahrazad]

good grief ... 44 solutions ...

What program are you using to count the number of solutions ?

ok, change this line in gridContainer.java:

Code: Select all

old:      int nSolns = grid.solve( strategy , 2 );
new:      int nSolns = grid.solve( strategy , 100 );   // calculate a maximum of 100 solutions


and change the switch statement in controlContainer.java:

Code: Select all

   int nSolns = grid.evaluate() ;
   int tmp = (nSolns>1?100:nSolns);    // 100 is an arbitrary value

   switch( tmp ){
   case 0 :
       solns.setText("None");
       break;
   case 1 :
       solns.setText("Unique");
       break;
   case 2 :                                    //this is now obsolete
       solns.setText("Multiple");
       break;
   case 100 :
                    solns.setText("(" + nSolns + ")");   // don't know java well enough to cast an integer as a string like in c# (nSolns.toString())
                    break;
   default:
       solns.setText("Error");
       break;       
   }


This will show the number of solutions in the screen, where it now shows "multipl" (yeah the 'e' doesn't fit in the textbox)


Greetz,
Shah

[rubylips]

Shah,

The GUI form of the solver only ever returns the first solution it finds, so you'll have to use the command-line solver:

Code: Select all

java com.act365.sudoku.Solver < Dagblad.txt

will count the solutions while

Code: Select all

java com.act365.sudoku.Solver -v < Dagblad.txt

will display the solutions and the reasoning, where Dagblad.txt is a text file that contains the two puzzles. The ASCII format you've used for the puzzles is fine but please make sure you add a blank line after the second puzzle as the parsing code isn't as good as it could be.

You might like to send me a Private Message if you have further questions as a debate about the source code isn't likely to interest many other people.

[Shahrazad]

Those are options I didn't know about.
That's really cool

thanks
Shah

[Shahrazad]

The foolheartedly keep messing up their puzzles and give Sudoku a bad name


Monday's sudoku in my paper:

Code: Select all

. 5 2 | 1 8 . | 7 . 9
7 . . | . 3 6 | . 2 .
4 . . | . . 7 | . 1 .
------+-------+------
5 . . | . . 8 | . 3 .
. 8 3 | 4 2 1 | 9 7 .
. 2 . | 3 . . | . . 1
------+-------+------
. 6 . | 5 . . | . . 3
. 3 . | 6 . . | . . 7
2 . 5 | . 4 3 | 1 9 .

Getting a bit tired of this. They know they publish wrong ones (they wrote so in Saturdays issue) but they don't seem to care at all.

Greetz
Shah

[rubylips]

To be fair, the newspaper has improved a little. This puzzle has only three solutions!

[Shahrazad]

Even if it had only 2 solutions, it would still be a faulty Sudoku