The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[bigbretty81]

Hoping somebody out there can help with the second puzzle in the attachment. It's been baffling me for a while now, the first one is really easy to do and took a few minutes. on the first it has to have the letters B I N G O and the second has to have the letters G O L D R U S H in it

[Smythe Dakota]

The letter O already appears in 7 of the 8 rows (and hence also, in 7 of the 8 columns), so the remaining O is easy.

Beyond that, I wonder if this is even a legitimate puzzle. There are only 2 each of G, L, S and only 1 each of D, R, U, H. This makes me think there are probably multiple solutions.

Bill Smythe

[eleven]

There are obviously many solutions, i found this after adding (guessing) about 10 given characters:

Code: Select all

SRGOHDUL
LUHDSRGO
ULOHGSDR
GDRSLUOH
DOLGUHRS
RHSUDOLG
HGDROLSU
OSULRGHD

In rows147/cols23 you can see a deadly pattern
RG
DR
GD
which gives another solution by exchanging their columns:

Code: Select all

SGROHDUL
LUHDSRGO
ULOHGSDR
GRDSLUOH
DOLGUHRS
RHSUDOLG
HDGROLSU
OSULRGHD

Maybe there is an additional rule ?

[Smythe Dakota]

Nah, just a bad puzzle. There are a lot of those out there. Take a look at kakuro.net, for example. Everything they publish, even the beginners' puzzles, have multiple solutions.

If you try to solve a puzzle with multiple solutions, without realizing it has multiple solutions, it will seem at first like an extremely hard puzzle, because logic will get you nowhere. You eventually have to guess, and more than one guess will turn out to be correct.

Those who publish puzzles, of any kind, with multiple solutions, ought to be -- well, never mind. Something or other at dawn.

Bill Smythe

[enxio27]

Those who publish puzzles, of any kind, with multiple solutions, ought to be -- well, never mind. Something or other at dawn.

Agreed!!!

And thanks to eleven for saving me the trouble of beating my head over this one any more than I did.