The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[civiliza]

Does anybody have any recommendations about trading off technique hardness against the number of times a technique is used when evaluating a puzzle's difficulty?

As an example (I don't know if either puzzle type is possible, but ignore that for a moment); take two puzzles that can be solved by Hidden Singles apart from: One needs a single XY Wing, the other needs n (let's say 12) consequative Pointing eliminations. Sudoku Explainer will always rate the XY Wing puzzle higher, but does anyone have a feeling for when the n Pointing Eliminations outweighs the single XY Wing Elimination?

Of course, this also applies to other pairs of techniques, is there a trade off table somewhere?

[JasonLion]

All such decisions are a matter of personal taste.

Looking around at the various difficulty rating strategies I've seen, the great majority emphasize the most difficult technique when making a difficulty rating. Despite that bit of mostly agreeing there is hardly any agreement about how to order techniques by difficulty.