The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[Sudtyro2]

In this notation both a simple move (as here) can be hidden and a complex network or base/cover move.
It might be useful to have a program, which finds such moves for harder puzzles, which then can be evaluated manually. But posting moves in this form is like giving readers a riddle (why is the elimination correct?).

Thx, eleven, for the clarifying feedback!

SteveC

[DonM]

A notation i like, should
- give a hint for a manual player, how she could find a move herself
- show the complexity of a move

JC's does neither.
A known pattern is a known pattern, and an AIC or similar at least shows where to start and how the candidates/cells are connected to get to the conclusion.

I agree. A few solvers here are still trying to figure out AICs. This isn't a math logic class. Posting using an obscure format that most, if not all, here would not be familiar with is an exercise in elitism.

[David P Bird]

For me the most elegant solutions are those that can be expressed as a chain of logical OR and NAND operations stemming from an observation that at least one of two seed conditions must be true - the opening premise. The chain segments away from the seed conditions then propagate that premise but at any stage there are only the truth states of the two ends of the chain that need be under consideration. If a third truth state is required to prove a deduction, it introduces a branching AND operation that lowers the status of the proof.

Therefore in judging someone's approach I want to know how many ANDs were involved and for how many links did they have to be followed before they converged back to consider only two truths again. If I can't easily determine that from the notation then I don't bother following it.

I should point out that many of the patterns we need to use can only be proved using internal branching but the more compact and easily recognisable they are, the more acceptable they become.

[eleven]

... posting moves in this form is like giving readers a riddle (why is the elimination correct?).

btw do you have interesting eliminations of that form ? Feel encouraged to post them.