The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[Guest]

Help!

So far, I have gotten:

*** *83 426
4** **7 938
8*3 4*6 ***

3** **5 **1
947 618 352
5** 3** ***

*** **9 7*3
**9 83* **4
*3* 76* ***


I have gone through the puzzle in detail. As well as the simple stuff, I know the following:

in row 3: the numbers 2 or 9 must exist in the first or second box
in the eighth box, the number 1 must exist in the sixth column
in the seventh box, the numbers 2 and 6 must exist in the first column
In box 7 and 9, the number 5 must exist in rows 8 or 9

However this doesn't get me any further.

help!

[Animator]

The key is row 4. Pay attention to the numbers 2, 6 and 8.

[Guest]

Ah, very tricky. Thanks for the hint. When I first read it I thought that maybe you had mistyped and meant a different row, or different numbers. But I persevered and now its all clear - just about.

This had been driving me crazy for many hours. Thanks for relieving me of my misery.

[Guest]

Couldnt agree less. Totally off the chart. You can PM if you want, I will try to explain better...

[Shazbot]

Couldnt agree less. Totally off the chart.

What are you disagreeing to? The original Guest's post, or Animator's response? Both are quite correct, though I had a really hard time following the logic in Guest's process. I've reworded it in more "familiar" terms - at least to those who use this forum a bit:

In row 3, there's a hidden pair of 2 and 9 in columns 2 and 5
In column 8, 1s are locked to box 8, so other instances of 1 in box 8 can be excluded
In column 1, 2s and 6s are locked to box 7, so other instances of 2 and 6 in box 7 can be excluded
In box 8, candidate 5s are locked to row 7, so 8s can be eliminated from row 7 in the other boxes

From there I got a naked pair in column 7, then the aforementioned naked triple in row 4. It completed pretty easily from there.

[Cec]

Couldnt agree less. Totally off the chart.

.

Hi Shazbot,
Couldn't agree more with your above response but curious to know how toe890 got into all this?
Cec