The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[BullHorn]

Hi, I'm new. Something has been crossing my mind lately, specifically how Sudoku can feel like 2 totally different games based on how/where they're played.

As I started learning to solve the basic puzzles in the newspaper and applying Box/Snyder notation, I quickly started getting stuck on concepts like X-wing and Hidden Rectangles. I was training a part of my brain to quickly find pairs with Snyder, but then struggling to solve anything more complex.
Once I downloaded the Enjoy Sudoku app on my phone and HoDoKu on PC, the gameplay changed completely. The app now fully fills up the board with all candidates and highlights cells in such a way that the old puzzles that were hard before are now extremely easy thanks to the assistance the software provides, so now I'm doing much harder puzzles.

But it's not that I got better at Sudoku, I'm just getting a ton of assistance from the software. If I try to go back to the newspaper Sudoku, I'm stuck the same way as I was before. I find that getting better at enjoysudoku/HoDoKo doesn't translate to pen&paper.
What do you guys think? Any recommendations?

Cheers.

[ghfick]

You might like to read a thread I started back in 2016:

I am primarily a pen and paper solver

My pen-and-paper solving is my main Sudoku fun. As well, I do like to study the very hardest of puzzles using software like HoDoKu and YZF_Sudoku. For me, there is a boundary between the two activities. I can find XY-Chains with just pen-and-paper but the more general AICs remain largely impossible for me with pen-and-paper. I have tried to make advances but I am usually humbled.

Gordon

[BullHorn]

Very cool, I’m not alone!

Most of that thread is way over my head, I’m very much a beginner… But I like the idea of sticking to pen and paper.

I have a tablet with a stylus and I could export puzzles from HoDoKu to PDF and play them on the tablet. I’d have to come up with a methodology to improve, I’m not sure how to learn. Is there a recommended step-by-step way to learn Sudoku for p&p?

[jco]

Hi,

Relevant to this topic is RW's thread.

[SteveG48]

Yes, there is a big difference between solving with computer help and with pen and paper. I enjoy both.

Remember that you can manually insert exactly the same pencil marks that programs like Hodoku put in automatically. It's more work, but well worth it. When I do pen and paper, I typically do one pass through taking the easy assignments. Then I go through and do full pencil marks. After that, with practice, you can use most of the advanced moves that you would use if you were playing on the computer.

[BullHorn]

Both linked threads were fascinating! I think for the time being I’ll stick to practicing on the tablet with the stylus and use pencil marks to the best of my manual ability. I’m not ready for PM-less gameplay yet but I’ll keep it in mind as something to try sometimes.

Never thought I could get so into Sudoku… the key was forgetting about trying to speed-run the puzzles and instead raising the difficulty to the point where I get stuck thinking about the next unlock. It’s far more satisfying to find a solution that unlocks everything like a domino effect.

[Yogi]

For my two cents worth, I think many of us do Sudoku at two levels. I nearly always have a printed one to hand for use as a boredom-breaker when I’m stuck with nothing to do. I import the puzzles into a solver on my computer and print out today’s one or two from that. Any that I can’t solve in that form I can later try to finish on the computer if I want to by having the program calculate and show the candidates. I don’t write in candidates when I’m doing it in Pen & Paper, but I do make notes outside the puzzle. For Computer, you can substitute Device. After that it's just a matter of sourcing puzzles which are not too easy and not too hard.