The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[Pat]

Sunday Times "Superior" puzzles tend to have as a requirement (a triple OR an X-wing).........

The puzzles above fail to do that....

I remeber 1 Pappocom Superior that failed that (but I think it was a mistake).......

When I scrutinised puzzle posted in The SUPERIOR thread, the aim was to choose puzzles with reliable & constant reproducable techniques within the (Superior techniques), the puzzles above also fail that......

If the standards have changed, "Superior" fans should be told.

as far as i know, Sunday Times "Superior" puzzles from Pappocom have (only) twice failed tarek's standard:

#31
#33

and now, the Sunday Times puzzles come from SuDokuSolver.com — and we don't know their standard

[Pat]

The Sunday Times will be trying out some different rating in the next few weeks.
If people complain, then it will be solid "Very Hard" from here on, always requiring X-wings to solve.

As you may have noticed, the "Superior" label has been dropped.

Very Hard puzzles from Pappocom
do not necessarily require X-wing,
often solved by trio.


as of #62 (2006.Oct.8), the "Superior" label had not been dropped;
it now has indeed been dropped as of #63 (2006.Oct.15) —

- - - - - - -Sudoku 63- - - -[ 26 clues ]
- - - - - - -Difficult

Code: Select all

 . . . | 7 3 . | . . 2
 . . 2 | 9 . . | . . 3
 7 . . | . 1 . | . . 5
-------+-------+------
 . . 4 | . 9 . | . . .
 . . 5 | 8 . 2 | 7 . .
 . . . | . 7 . | 8 . .
-------+-------+------
 4 . . | . 2 . | . . 8
 3 . . | . . 8 | 1 . .
 5 . . | . 4 7 | . . .

this puzzle, like #61 and #62, has a Pappocom rating of Hard.

[Pat]

A number of papers have requested Very Hard ("Superior") puzzles,
but I supply only The Sunday Times, by design.

- Wayne

Michael Harvey, features editor of The Times:

The Times will be introducing a new super fiendish category from next month.

[Super Sudoku]

Super Fiendish will be either equal to or harder than the very hard in the Sunday Times.

[andrewd]

Out of interest, I entered the Sunday Times puzzle 64 into Ruud's Sudocue (V2.1). It was rated as Easy, with a Solver Score of 514.

Puzzle 21, from this forum's Superior Plus thread was rated as Tough, with a score of 1072.

Puzzle 1, from Ruud's Almost Daily Nightmare collection was rated as Hard with a score of 1563.

I look forward to the Sunday Times new Super Fiendish puzzle.


Andrew

[Pappocom]

The Sunday Times no longer carry Pappocom puzzles. For some reason known only to themselves, they declined free Very Hard puzzles from Pappocom and made other arrangements.

- Wayne