The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[george-no1]

thanx for setting up a junior forum

You're welcome.

I did my first difficult rated one yesturday in The Times

Well done. I remember my first fiendish took me 5 hours altogether, but it was worth it.

Ive been reading some of the posts and can i ask what is xyz-wing and xy-chain is??

Whoa! Hold on a minute! As you're a beginner, there are 2 reasons why I'm not going to try to explain it to you.

1. I'm not trying to be rude, I like encouraging beginners, but you won't understand it. To be able to understand those very advanced techniques, you need to have a lot of experience with Sudoku, and you need to already have a very good understanding of logic. Also, if you were going to be able to understand it at the moment, you would have understood it already from reading Jeff's posts.

2. There is no need to use those advanced techniques with The Times puzzles, not even with the hardest of the Fiendish (I promise), you don't even need X-Wing for those. Also, those techniques are very hard to spot if you're simply doing them with pencil and paper. Not only are they not necessary for Times puzzles, they are probably extremely rare even if you could spot them.

However, good luck with Sudoku in the future. You've started young, like me, (I'm 14) and you'll be able to enjoy Sudoku for many years to come.

G

[Scott H]

Ive been reading some of the posts and can i ask what is xyz-wing and xy-chain is??

Hi Socks, Welcome. xyz-wing and xy-chain are extensions of the "xy-wing", and that's the simplest type of forcing chain.

I think the best introduction to xy-wing can be found here and here. These are in a cousin to this forum, the Programmer's Forum.

The "Search" button in the forums (see top of page) will find articles containing a given keyword. After reading about xy-wings, search for "xyz-wing" or "xy-chain". Other useful background can be found searching for "implication chain" and "forcing chain". Good luck!

[hazza]

I'm pleased to hear it. If Sudoku is popular at your school and lots of people are good at it, perhaps you could consider trying to set up some type of club. That's what I'm going to do at my school in September.

G

Yeah. I think you registered on my forum didn't you george. What did you think about it?

[george-no1]

Yes it's good but it needs to be advertised a bit more; for instance www.sudoku.com is advertised in The Times newspaper (and probably elsewhere) everyday and has almost 2,000 members; your site has 4 members and isn't really advertised except in one post on this site.

I might post more tomorrow, but for now well done.

G

[hazza]

Yes it's good but it needs to be advertised a bit more; for instance www.sudoku.com is advertised in The Times newspaper (and probably elsewhere) everyday and has almost 2,000 members; your site has 4 members and isn't really advertised except in one post on this site.

I might post more tomorrow, but for now well done.

G

Thanks george. I thought here would be a good place to start as this is where a lot of the sudoku community is.

[SudokuRocksMySocks]

Ive been reading some of the posts and can i ask what is xyz-wing and xy-chain is??

Hi Socks, Welcome. xyz-wing and xy-chain are extensions of the "xy-wing", and that's the simplest type of forcing chain.

I think the best introduction to xy-wing can be found here and here. These are in a cousin to this forum, the Programmer's Forum.

The "Search" button in the forums (see top of page) will find articles containing a given keyword. After reading about xy-wings, search for "xyz-wing" or "xy-chain". Other useful background can be found searching for "implication chain" and "forcing chain". Good luck!

Gee lots of info to take in lol, thanx all the same, I'll give it a go. This sudoko business is no easy ride

[lunababy_moonchild]

Socks

I'd just like to point out that x-wings is not required until Hard (and above) level on the Pappocom puzzles and that would be all you'd need in the way of advanced solving techniques, unless you want to program a solver or just happen to be interested in having a go.

Sudoku is a game, a past time, entertainment. While it's meant to provide a challenge - and how you choose to get that is, of course, up to you - it's not meant to burst your brain. In other words: don't worry about getting proficient with every technique that's available, just concentrate on enjoying the game.

Luna

[Karyobin]

That's three times you've made that deeply authoritative statement Luna, and you've never once qualified it with a "in my opinion...".

Games/passtimes/enjoyments are three quite different things.

[Pappocom]

That's a bit harsh, I think, Karyobin. It was pretty clearly an opinion piece. And we are in the Junior forum - I think Luna was just giving some kindly advice.

- Wayne

[Karyobin]

For my harsh tone, I apologise.

[Pi]

I didn;t realise there was a junior section, i would be delighted if i could find some people my age that have more than a handfull of brain cells, this may be it

[hazza]

What do you lot think of killer? to be honest, i prefer the original sudoku.

[lunababy_moonchild]

What is a killer sudoku?

Luna

[hazza]

What is a killer sudoku?

Luna

A killer sudoku has basically the same objective as a classic one (1-9 in all rows, columns and boxes).

But- you start off with no numbers. Instead, you have little numbers in the top left of each cell, and dotted lines linking that cell to another.

For example, if there was a 10 in the top left of cell (X) and dotted lines linking that to one other cell (Y), that means the sum of X and Y is 10. Therefore it could be either a 1,9 or 2,8 or 3,7 or 4,6 or 9,1 or 8,2 or 7,3 or 6,4. (Note it cannot be 5,5 because then you would have two fives in a line.

I hope this helps.
(Killer sudoku is in The Times 2 newspaper everyday)

[lunababy_moonchild]

Oh, thanks very much for that, what a brain bender!

Luna