The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[toastman]

Greetings from a new player here in Sydney, Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald (and half the other papers in the country) have just begun daily Sudoku Puzzles. I'm not exactly sure which versions are being published here. The announcement earlier in the week welcomed readers of the Daily Telegraph in Sydney (for want of a better term, a "tabloid" published by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation). I'm getting my fix from the Sydney Morning Herald (for want of a better term, a "broadsheet", owned by the fairfax corporation). The Saturday edition had a great feature article and interview with Wayne Gould.

For some reason, the SMH classifies it's puzzles "Gentle", "Moderate", "Tough" and "Diabolical". The weekend edition promises "Diabolical" puzzles.

Anyway, I did 3 fairly easy puzzles I found in the paper and online, no problems, lots of fun, but I've been stuck on this one for 2 days now without progress. I'd very much appreciate if someone could please give me a little clue. Either a cell/row/column/box I should be concentrating on, or a "technique".

My first 3 puzzles I did without pencil marks at all. After about a day on this one, I gave up and half covered half the grid with them. No help at all. I've hot heaps of "X-Wing" situations that do me no good, and I'm pretty much stuck.

Anyway, the original clues if you want to do it:

Code: Select all

**6 *** 5**
*53 4*2 91*
12* *** *64

*** 754 ***
*** *8* ***
*** 293 ***

27* *** *83
*38 5*7 29*
**4 *** 7**


Here's where I'm up to. The last "move" I made was putting the "5" in box 2.

Anyway, I'd really appreciate a little "clue". My gut feeling is that r3c7 is the key. Then again, I always seem to come across elegance and symmetry where I look for it, so maybe there's an obvious answer to r3c4 which I'm missing. The empty boxes 4 and 6 are intimidating, but if you look at them, for many of the cells I only have 2 or 3 candidates. Unfortunately, I haven't found an X-Wing that's of any use.

Code: Select all

**6 *** 5**
*53 462 91*
12* **5 *64

*** 754 ***
*** *8* ***
*** 293 ***

275 *1* 483
638 547 291
914 328 756


Thanks in advance, and happy playing
--
TOAST !!!

[pizza]

This puzzle looks familiar lol. Already a hint in this thread:

http://forum.enjoysudoku.com/viewtopic.php?t=275

[Animator]

Thank you Guest/pizza...

I knew this puzzles was posted earlier today, and I know that I gave a hint on it... but I simply couldn't find the thread :)

[Pappocom]

Please note that Pappocom does not supply puzzles to the Sydney Morning Herald, nor to the Melbourne Age. That is so, despite the fact that the SMH reporter interviewed me.

From the names of the grades you give, it seems likely those papers are sourcing their puzzles from the Daily Telegraph in the UK. In that case, be aware that those puzzles are different to most other Sudoku puzzles. You can read about the differences in the "Non-Pappocom" forum.

It's potentially confusing ... the Daily Telegraph (UK) puzzles are not Pappocom puzzles, but the Daily Telegraph (Sydney) puzzles are!

- Wayne

[toastman]

GOT IT ! Thanks for your clue Animator.

I just did a "full set" of pencil marks for row 5 (on a new sheet of paper) and it all came clear. Don't know if I'd have ever got it without doing this though. Can you guys do this sort of thing in your heads ?

Anyway, my missus reads the Daily Telegraph (Sydney Version) at work, so I'll be doing Pappocom puzzles as well. Thankyou again to all those who replied.