The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[tso]

Oh yes, I entirely agree. I just thought that the way tso's post was written implied that it could solve most/all Fiendishes using just that one technique. Maybe I'm reading too much intt things. Anyway, it's a great program whatever.

All I meant was that I went to TimesOnline just as you did, loaded all three puzzles that were there at the time directly into the Susser. I wasn't speaking about any puzzles in general, just those three specificly.

I would never refer to "fiendish" puzzles in general -- it has no meaning in a vaccuum as everybody has their own rating system.

Nikoli's rating system -- happy face, sad face, crying face and once in a great while, exasperated face.

[enzedi]

My wife and I have been doing sudokus for about a week now. It's a lot of fun to help her solve the puzzle after running mine through this program. I like the one step at a time mode (cmd+d). I've been learning some of the methods from the program and rely on it less and less. Great job! Oh, and don't tell my wife I've been cheating. She thinks I'm a genius.

[MadOverlord]

Great job! Oh, and don't tell my wife I've been cheating. She thinks I'm a genius.

The traditional reply is that my silence can be bought for a reasonable fee.

[MadOverlord]

Just a headsup that version 2.0.0 of the Susser is now available for Mac/Windows/Linux.

Improvements include explicit support for X-Wings->Squirmbags, XY-Wings, XYZ-Wings and hilighting modes for all of them, new hints system to get you looking in the right direction, better puzzle management, and much more. The manual now has graphic illustrations of all the solving methods.

http://www.madoverlord.com/projects/sudoku.t for download links

Here's an example of one of the hilight displays:

[Moschopulus]

Does your program give a difficulty rating to a puzzle that I input, without solving it ?

[MadOverlord]

Does your program give a difficulty rating to a puzzle that I input, without solving it ?

Not at present, because "difficulty ratings" are somewhat arbitrary and non-trivial to compute. How do you, for example, rate a puzzle that requires finding a swordfish to one that requires finding a short forcing chain?

I could simply rank the solving methods in order of difficulty and rate the puzzle based on the most difficult method required, but even that is somewhat arbitrary. If I were to do so, I'd probably group them into only a few categories. For example:

Trivial: requires only forces
Simple: plus pins.
Moderate: plus simple locked sets, possibility reduction.
Intermediate: plus intersections, remote locked pairs and comprehensive locked sets.
Expert: plus X-Wings -> XYZ-Wings.
Master: plus Simple Forcing Chains, Fishy Cycles, Nishio.
Sensei: plus Trebor's Tables, Bowman Bingo.

By this ranking, a Times "Fiendish" is probably only an Intermediate puzzle!

If this is of interest and there is some consensus, I shall consider adding the feature to the program.