The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[DavidB2]

I am just starting with Sudoku. I know this might be a naive question, but is it better to try to develop techniques on one's own or learn them from a book?

My concern is that if I learn someone else's techniques, I will only be plugging numbers into a formula I have learned by rote, which would eliminate the pleasure of solving the puzzle.

Your thoughts?

David

[eleven]

Its much more fun to find out the techniques yourself, though probably you will not develop something new. When you dont have no more ideas, you still can look, what the others found.

[ab]

i don't think it detracts from the fun learning known techniques. it's certainly still a challenge to apply them sometimes. however if your logic is sound and you enjoy solving puzzles with your own techniques then do that!

With some difficult puzzles you might struggle a lot when a known technique would help you find the solution quicker. one approach would be to use your own techniques until you come up against a wall or find a puzzle that was no fun to solve with your own techniques and then see what some of the programs/forum users suggest you use to solve that puzzle.

it's a puzzle and it's supposed to be fun. if you enjoy using your own techniques then do so. if at some time you decide to learn some well known techniques do that