The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[thomas]

Hi, ive been looking at the post by Mike Barker from jan/06 with a list of techniques/ links. Is this roughly the order they should be learnt in? For example to understand a swordfish obviously you need to know an x-wing etc, i got as far as colouring/ the turbot fish & unique rectangles. What would the best teechnique to learn next? Some sort of standard list would help me and im sure others who are quite new to these kind of techniques, anyone agree/ have ant thoughts on this, thanks for any help! Thomas

[tarek]

You can use the xyz wing (& wxyz wing, etc) as an introduction to the almost lockes sets xz rule

tarek

[Mike Barker]

Although I've tried to make the collection somewhat hierarchical on two levels, it is not strictly so. The first level is the bold titles. When I was first learning I progressed from naked and hidden sets, to X-wing, XY-wing, coloring, UR's, nice loops, and then to some of the advanced techniques. Under each bold title the methods are again somewhat hierarchical. After learning the basics, for example X-wing, I then gradually picked up the more involved techniques, for example turbot fish and then X-cycles. There is not a lot of dependency between the techniques - you can understand X-cycles without ever understanding an X-wing, but understanding the simpler techniques sometimes makes the more complicated ones easier and you will probably use the simpler ones more often for many published puzzles.

One approach is to delve into a topic that interests you - generally this happens when I get stuck and a solver tells me to use some technique and I want to understand what it really means. Mostly enjoy the puzzles and don't get too caught up in the techniques!

[thomas]

Although I've tried to make the collection somewhat hierarchical on two levels, it is not strictly so. The first level is the bold titles. When I was first learning I progressed from naked and hidden sets, to X-wing, XY-wing, coloring, UR's, nice loops, and then to some of the advanced techniques. Under each bold title the methods are again somewhat hierarchical. After learning the basics, for example X-wing, I then gradually picked up the more involved techniques, for example turbot fish and then X-cycles. There is not a lot of dependency between the techniques - you can understand X-cycles without ever understanding an X-wing, but understanding the simpler techniques sometimes makes the more complicated ones easier and you will probably use the simpler ones more often for many published puzzles.

One approach is to delve into a topic that interests you - generally this happens when I get stuck and a solver tells me to use some technique and I want to understand what it really means. Mostly enjoy the puzzles and don't get too caught up in the techniques!

Thanks for the advice, published puzzles, like the 'very hard' one in the sunday times, -the hardest newspaper puzzle i think- have become quite easy, ive just discovered the "daily nightmare" sudo cue puzzle on the website which is out of my league but im working on it!! I feel free with it to experiment and take what i know further, i bet you can do it easily enough though!!

[thomas]

You can use the xyz wing (& wxyz wing, etc) as an introduction to the almost lockes sets xz rule

tarek

Sounds good to me, i think theres a lot of stuff which looks complicated on screen but when you have a puzzle in frount of you things are easier to see in practice! Thanks