The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[emm]

Yes, Brad – that does make sense. That's what I do too. Some things I keep bashing myself in the head with and they still won't stick.

[moggymidge]

Hi Bradles,

Just a quick thought - you may have noticed I recently posted a similar post to this one 'New member needs help with colours' - I was having real trouble getting to grips with colours.

You've probably already realised this but for me it all became crystal clear when I realised that you didn't have to colour all the conjugate pairs you had identified in the grid - only colour them if they form a chain. You will probably be left with some left uncoloured - ignore these and see if you can eliminate any 'strays' using the 'coloured chain'. I believe there is a solving method using multi colours but I don't even want to think about that yet!!

Check out the reply from evert on the thread mentioned above - there's some coding for puzzles that use colours to solve them - they can be copied and pasted into Simple Sudoku - great practice!!

[yasmin]

Hi, I'm new here but have been doing Sudokus for a while.
I wonder if everyone here solves using some programme or do some do it manually on a sheet of paper. Anyone doing Sudokus on paper - how do you handle colouring etc? since you need to colour separately for different numbers or for different chains or different techniques, do you make multiple photocopies of the same Sudoku for this purpose?

[moggymidge]

Hi Yasmin,

I'm a good old fashioned pencil and paper girl myself

I only use a solver on any really tough puzzles that I can't crack at all and then not to work it out for me obviously, just because it's easier to remove candiates and see patterns etc.

My Mum enjoys sudoku too and she hasn't got a computer so I suggested to her that instead of using colours she uses symbols, say hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades and uses these to mark the corner of the relevant squares. Colouring is probably the trickiest of the advanced techniques to do without a computer but for things like swordfish etc. a simple circle around the candiate number(s) is easy to see (and rub out when not needed).

Long live the pencil

regards Moggy

[re'born]

Yasmin,

As silly as it sounds, I use white beans as markers. When I first learned coloring, I used a Sharpie to color some of the beans. This work well for me as I don't end up marking up the squares with tons of symbols. Moreover, the selected squares really stand out. I've also, on occasion, used the neon colored golf ball markers.

rep'nA

[ronk]

As silly as it sounds, I use white beans as markers.

Since coloring involves pairs of colors, don't you need both white beans and red beans?

Ron

[re'born]

Ron,

Re-read my post and you will see how I already answered your question (and now that Sharpies come in so many colors, I am not restricted by Simple Sudoku having only 4).

rep'nA

[yasmin]

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies... In the meantime I've tried making separate little charts for each digit (1-9) which I want to map out in colouring and it's cool as it saves my main chart as a full canditate-map. Sure it involves marking up at least 2 charts simultaneously but the main one stays "clean" and the ones for separate digits are very readable and I can colour them "for real". Any changes are marked on them so that as a Sudoku progresses, what started off as maybe just a little chain of conjugates ends up clarifying the entire pattern of that digit in this puzzle - for instance, if due to elimination by some other method, new conjugates are created.

I find it so practical I'm going to make a page of 9-10 little empty grids to print out as many times as I need (because drawing them by hand is the main drag about this method, re-charting each single digit map is quite fun).

The bean idea sounds like fun as well as long as they don't hide away the cell's contents...???

[re'born]

Yasmin,

I bought my wife a book of sudoku puzzles and while the squares are bigger than newspaper size, the beans are completely impractical for her. That is why I always print my puzzles out on the largest possible size squares. As long as one "agrees" to write the candidates at the top of the grid, Great Northern beans will not cover up markings. It definitely saves time over having multiple sheets (with which I tried and failed miserably).

rep'nA

[yasmin]

I'll try that... you're right that a very-large-scale grid is great to work with. thanks!