StrmCkr,
I think your major problem is a general lack of logical sense when exploring new techniques. It seems you always invent "new techniques" from arbitrary patterns extracted from the solution grid (which is totally meanlingless, as the whole point of the game is to
use the techniques to work out the solution, which you aren't supposed to know beforehand). What's worse is that you often only conveniently pick a move that only works for some
random puzzles (without explaining what special properties in these random puzzles enable you to apply those moves). What's even worse is that in some cases you even choose to use just a
part of your "techniques", totally ignoring the other parts of them don't work anymore.
It would be fine if everyone in this forum knows well about your tendencies and choose to spend the appropriate amount of attention on your "discoveries" (which IMHO shouldn't be much), otherwise people will waste a lot of time to delve into something which, frankly, doesn't have much value at all.
I'm sorry about the anger but as the originator of this thread I've been witnessing some very valuable and intelligent work/insights from others such as
RW,
eleven,
Glyn and of course a lot of good references to old threads about automorphism/symmetry from experts such as
Gurth &
Mauricio. But your (logically unsound) "theories" have recently been taking a lot of space in this thread, and viewers might be confused that they are of equal or greater value compared to other contents, which are all based on sound logic and careful work from the authors. It'd be fine if you open your new thread about these findings of your own, but mixing your general carefree, random speculations with the great, carefully-worked posts from others doesn't look fair to me.
To summarise, I think for a "technique" to be valid (and useful), it must have the following characteristics:
1. It must be able to be applied to
all puzzles within a certain class (e.g. with a certain symmetry/automorphism). "Only applicable in some cases" doesn't cut it.
2. It must be able to be applied to
all parts of a puzzle which share a similar property. E.g., if all three of b159, b267, b348 display a certain symmetry, the technique must be applicable to all three of them. Being only able to work in one or two of them doesn't cut it.
3. The whole technique must be able to be applied fully everytime (provided you have a well-defined description of the full effect). E.g. if you have labelled the cells with {ABC} in one application, you can't just label the C-cells in another application and totally ignore the effect on the A- & B-cells.
4. The technique must be able to be applied validly even if the grid is transformed via row/column permutations and rotations etc as well as symbol remapping (provided the technique itself is not numerically-based). Of course the cells applied must be adjusted accordingly but the general pattern of the cells applied should not be dependent on a certain morphism of the grid.
5. Most important of all, you should be able to back your technique with a logically sound proof, based on the established axioms, theorems and properties. You can't count on others to do it for you, because chances are, it's all ad-hoc (as
Mauricio said) and you're wasting valuable time of others. If you can prove it for yourself, then all hands to you for your great discovery. But I don't think it's very responsible if you just lay every random speculation out here and expect others to investigate/prove it for you (to put it vulgarly, "wiping your bottom"), without spending a serious amount of careful, logical work yourself.
