The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[Robert Eskin]

I have a general question. I am familiar with most of the basic methods. I do the puzzles in the Boston Globe, and am able to do the easy and moderate ones (ie. Monday-Wednesday and generally Thursday) with relative ease, but have found that on Friday and Saturday it appears that you run out of forced moves. In regard to yesterday's puzzle (August 20th) I ended up getting it by using trial and error, sort of like a mouse in a maze.

? = is that part of "the game" in regard to harder puzzles, or does that mean I missed something?

[Doyle]

If the Boston Globe is publishing Sudokus from Pappocom, you don't need T/E to solve any of them, right up to and including the Sunday "Hards". There are some fairly basic non-T/E deductive tactics that can handle any of them. You can persist and discover these for yourself, or you can take a shortcut and study some of the excellent tutorials that are on the web. A good one, by simes of this board, is http://www.simes.clara.co.uk/programs/sudokutechniques.htm. Read that up to and including "Hidden Subset", you don't need "X-Wings" or beyond, although X-Wings are easy enough, and useful.