The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[denis_berthier]

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One more post with no content.

[ghfick]

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One more post with no content.

Ridiculous. Dennis The Menace submits a post with no content claiming my last post had no content.
Oops. My last post did correct two errors from previous posts of Dennis The Menace [DTM].
I guess that DTM sees my corrections as 'no content'.

[ghfick]

How many of the 3583 posts by Dennis The Menace have no content?

[denis_berthier]

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Your last posts, I would call self destruction.
I admit the ghf*ck wasn't my smartest idea and I apologise if it hurt you (which wasn't my intent), but Jeez, do you have to make such a fuss about it?
Let's not turn this forum back into what it used to be.

[ghfick]

I am not letting you off the hook that easily. You need to realize that there are real implications to your actions.
I have watched you self-destruct on this forum for some time now. For me, your latest actions were the last straw.
You say 'IF it hurt you". You really have no clue.

I own the first edition of your first book [ THLOS ] that was self-published using Lulu. I have read about a third of it. I had to give up. There are so few ways for me to connect with the material. I tried to tell you this concern of mine some years ago. I get that your academic appointments were in Logic and AI. My background is an MSc in Mathematics and a PhD in Statistics but I cannot read most of your more recent work. Many people have reached out to you with legitimate questions but your response is typically and dismissively "Read my books".

You claim that the four views are your original idea. This claim is next to impossible to check in the Sudoku world.

You claim that whips and braids are your ideas. I do think you have given some structure to many old ideas on chains. Again, there are many people who have contributed related ideas so it is next to impossible to determine who was the first to suggest the crucial, original ideas.

The recent advances to patterns based around impossibility have many contributors. Again, you appear to have provided some structure but you were most definitely not one of the originators.

Your partial apology is noted but I need to see real changes from you.

[eleven]

As for the notation, your remark proves once more that you don't understand what you're talking about: BY DEFINITION, z- and t- candidates don't belong to my chains AND they don't need to be remembered. We have talked about this many times, but you keep repeating the same absurd lies. Can't you read a definition?.

Yes, your chains prove the elimination(s), because the program, which creates them, does know/remember the t- and z-candidates. After that YOU don't have to remember them, it did it for you.
But a reader, who wants to understand or verify them, has to remember them again.
So i don't understand, why you don't thank me, that i gave the hint, that with a simple solver everyone easily can do that by just fixing the target and then let the solver remember all possible z-candidates.

[denis_berthier]

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My books are written in a standard mathematical/logic way. Contrary to what you say, I've given many additional explanations here and on other forums - and I've added graphical representations to [PBCS] and to CSP-Rules User Manual.

At some point in time, you seemed to want to give me advice about what SudoRules should do, e.g. have a GUI - which I consider as irrelevant.
SudoRules is not comparable to other solvers; it is not intended for learning the basics of Sudoku and it doesn't claim to have the last variant of a myriad of rules.
It is made essentially of a small number of powerful universal / generic resolution rules that apply to any finite CSP. I want to insist on this because this is the hard core of my approach and it allows to define universal ratings.

What follows is not a review of my work. I only answer your few specific points.

You claim that the four views are your original idea. This claim is next to impossible to check in the Sudoku world.

FALSE. [HLS1], where the 4 spaces first appeared, together with the corresponding extended Sudoku-board, are dated June 2007. There is nothing before this about the 4 spaces and all the symmetries they represent. Anybody can check this. If you deny this, the burden of the proof is on you - i.e. provide references.

You claim that whips and braids are your ideas. I do think you have given some structure to many old ideas on chains. Again, there are many people who have contributed related ideas so it is next to impossible to determine who was the first to suggest the crucial, original ideas.

FALSE again. Of course, there were chains before I defined mine, be it only those of Sudoku Explainer (defined only by their Java code - if you call that a definition).
1) The most widely used chains were AICs - and the motto of chains was reversibility (a word never defined). Most of my chains are not reversible.
2) The crucial idea of my chains is their inherent length, defined in terms of CSP Variables. This is the idea that allowed me to define chains as logical structures. This idea dates back to [HLS1, 2007].
All the other chains (pre-existing or not) are based on the number of nodes (i.e. inferences) which cannot be defined in logical terms. This is a fundamental, existential difference.
3) Moreover, as I said before, my definitions of chains have allowed me to prove theorems - which no other chains have never done.

The recent advances to patterns based around impossibility have many contributors. Again, you appear to have provided some structure but you were most definitely not one of the originators.

Note first that this is a very marginal part of my work.
I've always been clear that:
- mith has discovered the tridagon pattern and the Loki puzzle; so you're correct, I'm not the originator - which I've never claimed to be; but it's good to blow open open doors, right?
- I have discovered that Loki is in T&E(3) - the first puzzle to be so. This is what got me interested in this
- this has led mith to replace SER by T&E-depth in the search for the hardest puzzles. Added to other techniques of mith (such as expansion) this has led to a surge in the number of hardest puzzles - mith's work;
- eleven has found 630 impossible patterns;
- using SudoRules, I have found which of them aren't in restricted T&E(2) or in T&E(2) - i.e. the potentially hardest ones;
- I have eliminated 38 of them, based on trivial impossibilities;
- I have used these patterns to automatically generate corresponding resolution rules;
- thanks to this, I can find real examples of using these patterns and determine which of them may be useful.


May we now know your original contributions to Sudoku?
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[denis_berthier]

As for the notation, your remark proves once more that you don't understand what you're talking about: BY DEFINITION, z- and t- candidates don't belong to my chains AND they don't need to be remembered. We have talked about this many times, but you keep repeating the same absurd lies. Can't you read a definition?.

Yes, your chains prove the elimination(s), because the program, which creates them, does know/remember the t- and z-candidates. After that YOU don't have to remember them, it did it for you.
But a reader, who wants to understand or verify them, has to remember them again.
So i don't understand, why you don't thank me, that i gave the hint, that with a simple solver everyone easily can do that by just fixing the target and then let the solver remember all possible z-candidates.

You're wrong from A to Z.

My chains prove the eliminations by (trivial) pure logic arguments. They require no program to do it.
The logical formulæ expressing these rules don't have any variables for the z- and t- candidates.
CSP-Rules, the program implementing my chains - which is not a program at all in the classical sense, but a mere re-writing of logical formulæ in a syntax close to FOL - doesn't provide for any possibility for the chains to "remember" their z- and t- candidates. CSP-Rules is public - you can check this.

The user/reader doesn't have to remember the z- and t- candidates. At any point of resolution, the remaining candidates are on the grid. What the user has to do to check a chain step by step is to note what the next CSP-variable, the next llc and the next rlc are and to check that the other remaining candidates for this CSP-Variable are linked to previous rlcs. The only thing the user has to remember is the chain itself (i.e. the sequence of csps, llcs and rlcs).

You have done interesting work by yourself. You don't need to beg thanks for something that is false and useless.
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[ghfick]

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May we now know your original contributions to Sudoku?
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As I said above, originality is tough to arbitrate in the Sudoku world. You repeatedly blow your own horn. Most people in the Sudoku world do not do so.

I can say that I have had the good fortune to assist and work with many contributors to Sudoku knowledge. The list of contributors includes Bernhard Hobiger [ It is HoDoKu not Hodoku ], David P Bird [ He kindly credited me and thanked me on more than one occasion], Philip Beeby, Andrew Stuart and a few others. It was amazing to assist Bernhard. I do not think he realized how important his project was. It was a joy to assist David and so fine to see the Compendium get deserved attention.

My peer-reviewed publications are in Mathematical Statistics and Biostatistics; not Sudoku. How many peer-reviewed publications do you have in Sudoku? Proceedings from conferences do not count.

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Anybody can check this.
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Anybody, eh? ...and how would that be done? References? Really!
As a further note, there is a massive amount of material on Asian Sudoku sites. Much of it remains unknown to the West.
The four views may have been new in 2007. Searching for precedence in a real peer-reviewed research literature is possible. Sudoku does not have that history. Wonderful work was done and is being done. So much goes uncredited or is imperfectly credited.

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my definitions of chains have allowed me to prove theorems
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Sure. You can be a mathematician. Let us know when you prove something that matters to anyone but you. The recent results with the 17 Givens problem were so impressive.

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that this is a very marginal part of my work.
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You are very fortunate that mith, eleven and a very small set of others have taken the time to try to understand what T&E(2) and T&E(3) mean. I am not in that set.
I really do not see any point to posting long impenetrable sets of SudoRules output. Most Sudoku people can read the output from HoDoKu or YZF_Sudoku or even XSudo.
Almost noone can read SudoRules output [ beyond the easy stuff ]

[denis_berthier]

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You didn't need a full page to answer my question. A word would have been enough: nothing.

[ghfick]

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You didn't need a full page to answer my question. A word would have been enough: nothing.

You have not answered my question. How many peer-reviewed Sudoku publications do you have? Conference proceedings do not count.
I think one word would have been enough here as well: NOTHING

[ghfick]

Your partial apology is clearly meaningless. You are so self-absorbed and haughty. Several people advised me not engage you. They were correct.

[denis_berthier]

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You claim to have a PhD in stats. Do you have any statistical results about Sudoku? No.
I do have: see chapter 6 of [PBCS].

Your partial apology is clearly meaningless.

I'm not responsible for you being bullied for your name during your childhood. Grow up.
But my apologies about the stupid joke were sincere.

Several people advised me not engage you. They were correct.

Yes, they were perfectly right. If you have no rational arguments, it's better not to pick a fight with me, because I do have some.

[ghfick]

Your partial apology is clearly withdrawn. As far as I am concerned you are now "Dennis The Menace".
Get used to it.

[denis_berthier]

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There's nothing I could care less about. I don't feel so unsafe as to care for a joke name.