The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[Carcul]

Hello everyone! It's nice to be back here. I have some questions:

1) What is the current hardest Sudoku?

2) Any new technique available?

[wintder]

For the new techniques, I think combining y-wing with other flavors is cool.

[Ruud]

Hi carcul, welcome back.

What is the current hardest Sudoku?

There have been several record-breaking puzzles the last year. The most recent one being the Golden Nugget by tarek (SE 11.5)

Any new technique available?

Kraken techniques have expanded a little and there have been some developments in AAIC and exotic fish patterns, but the only real innovation is a Hidden Pairs Loop posted by steve k.

[Mike Barker]

Carcul - welcome back. You have been missed. I'd be a little more expansive in my list of changes since your last post, though I'd say the most exciting was Steve's hidden pair elimination in the Easter Monster that Ruud refered to.

Denis Berthier has expanded Arcilla's set approach to fish by introducing RN and CN space - hidden XYT-chains. More importantly his concept of nrc(t)-chains is a simple, but powerful, method to expand nice loops to include multi-valued cells or multi-location units whilst maintaining basically a chain structure.

Myth has developed Almost Hidden Sets which is a useful compliment to the ALS in nice loops.

Champagne has developed Full Tagging which is similar to Myth's Molecular method.

Steve K has emphasized the use of Matrix Representations for evaluating multi-implication networks.

Ruud has developed Deadly intertwined Patterns which is similar to your Two Incompatible Unique Rectangles.

Note a couple of the links won't work until the Discussions Forum is back online