The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[mello]

I'm kinda new to sudoku, and I've only recently started learning the x-wing, swordfish, and xy-wing techniques. I was just wondering how most people go through their puzzle.

Usually, I start by finding hidden numbers and going through boxes, columns, and rows finding obvious values. If I get stuck and can't find any more, I'll lay down the candidates for boxes I don't know, then find more now-obvious values. x-wing, swordfish, and xy-wing come into play here. But sometimes I still get stuck after doing all this.

Is this how most people go about solving sudoku puzzles?

[TKiel]

Mello,

Probably. Most people start with easy and work toward more complex, but what is easy and what is more complex sort of depends on whether you are a pencil and paper solver or program with filtering capabilities solver and what your natural capabilities are.

I use Simple Sudoku (available at www.angusj.com) which generates puzzles and also allows you to enter puzzles from other sources. It also comes with a guide that explains most techniques used for solving puzzles, though not all.

You didn't mention colouring in your post, but that is a technique that is very useful and sometimes necessary to solve the harder puzzles. Information on colouring is available on threads elsewhere in this forum and in the guide at the website mentioned above.

Hope this helps.

Tracy