The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[csearles]

Hello everyone,

I have a question regarding a puzzle I just solved, it's a puzzle of extreme level difficulty. The top left 9×9 square had only the 1 and the 3 in it. The left center and left bottom 9×9 were empty. The center center square did not have the 5 2 1 in it, the central bottom square had only the 6 in the 26-sum-field and the right bottom square had only the 9 in it. The central top square was missing the 5 and the 1 in the 30-sum-cage.

Through contradiction calculation in my head I quickly noticed that the left bottom square 11-sum-field could not contain the 4 and the 7, which left me with the conclusion that the 8 had to be in the bottom row in the left bottom square (either 8 3 for the 11-sum or the 8 6 for the 14-sum) which led me to the conclusion that only the 8 4 could be in the right bottom square 12-sum field.

Choosing whether the left bottom square 11-sum-field should contain the 9 2 or the 8 3 I started calculating the whole sudoku in my head by using contradiction and failed respectively. I wrongly contraticed the 8 3 as a choice so I had only the 9 2 left, which ironically was wrong, so I had to rubber everything and start from the point I left off.

My question: is there a more elegant and less gnarly way to solve this puzzle? I am not that familiar with advanced sudoku techniques and find normal sudoku pretty boring after a while, so I started killer sudoku due to the information given that there are much more creative ways to solve the puzzles instead of the very limited standard sudoku techniques. However, to me it seems like this puzzle specifically was designed to have it solved with some advanced technique from classical sudoku.

Here's the link to that:
www.sudokuwiki.org/killersudoku.htm?bd=112111211222331212113211332243212211242232211113231122243212333245112331225111221,130012300000151700000000170000000004120010310000090000170400000017001600000000001300000000090015000003001700201200002617200000000004000000000014000000000000110000

Thank you in advance for your help!

Best regards,

Chris

[thelardoffear]

This should have been posted under "Sudoku Variants"

Also you are more likely to get a response on the Killer Sudoku forum at:

http://www.rcbroughton.co.uk/sudoku/forum/index.php