The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[cheesemeister]

Firstly I've just read a bunch of stuff about being selective about entering candidates and realise that that has an affect on this.
That said;

This puzzle (from yahoo, hard, today) has just had half a dozen locked candidates involved and while I can understand the ones that have gone before after they were shown to me, I wouldn't have seen them myself, much less understood.
and the one that's just come up has me baffled even after the hint...

--8 --- ---
-52 -8- 47-
-9- 2-6 -83

--6 -3- 2--
--- 8-5 ---
--1 -4- 9--

-6- 158 79-
879 --- 351
--- --- 8--

I'm using the program simple sudoku and its kicked out a hint to eliminate based on locked candidates 2, highlighting r7c5, r9c5, r9c6 and I can't figure out why, how or make any form of progress, even after I've read the helpfile a few times.
P.S. How do you get screendumps of the programs you use to appear in posts? That would have made this post much easier.
cheers muchly
Cheese[/img]

[angusj]

P.S. How do you get screendumps of the programs you use to appear in posts?

Firstly, make sure you've got Simple Sudoku ver 4.1c.
Then it's as easy as clicking the "File | Save Image As" menu option to create a png image file.
Also, if you need somewhere to host your new image - http://www.imageshack.us/

Note to whom it may concern: if you want help solving a puzzle in the forums, it's important to copy the puzzle as text (as done above) so others can load easily it into their preferred solver. Images take longer to load and are probably best left for displaying the solution to a complicated step only.

[emm]

simple sudoku kicked out a hint to eliminate based on locked candidates 2, highlighting r7c5, r9c5, r9c6 and I can't figure out why

This is hard to understand especially as you already have the right clue for r7c5. The locked candidates are the 3s which in box 8 must be in r9 which allows you to eliminate them from all other cells in r9.

The obvious immediate steps are the hidden singles in r1c4 and r1c6. Does this help?

[Shinhan]

Actually, there is no need for those locked candidates at all (although, as em said, locked candidates are not for 2, they are for 3). Just mark those two hidden singles in r1c4 and r1c6, and this puzzle is solved. r9c3 is a hidden single too.

[cheesemeister]

I knew about the singles already, I was trying to figure out how locked candidates work, had found a puzzle that as I said had a few involved and thought maybe there are more opportunities to use the technique than I've seen so far, and so went looking with the aid of the hint function, Thanks for the explanation I've got that one now.

Just to check on this, there's a very similiar locked candidates with 4s in the top row? eliminating candidate 4s from r1 c1+2?

On the image thing, am I right in thinking that you have to upload the image in question to a website and then put a link to it in the post not the image itself? So that when someone reads the post the forum loads the image from wherever it's stored rather than from the forum's own server?
thanky muchly
cheese

[Nick67]

Just to check on this, there's a very similiar locked candidates with 4s in the top row? eliminating candidate 4s from r1 c1+2?

Exactly right. The candidate 4's in block 2 are confined to row 1. So
4 can be eliminated from row 1 in blocks 1 and 3.

On the image thing, am I right in thinking that you have to upload the image in question to a website and then put a link to it in the post not the image itself? So that when someone reads the post the forum loads the image from wherever it's stored rather than from the forum's own server?

Right again!