The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[lunababy_moonchild]

........than multiple solutions to the same puzzle ?

Luna

[emm]

Good question! Why do we have to have monogamous puzzles?

[tso]

........than multiple solutions to the same puzzle ?

Luna

It's just convention. There no reason you can't make a puzzle that has 2 or more solutions. See http://forum.enjoysudoku.com/viewtopic.php?t=1490



There is no reason why you can't pose a puzzle in this form:

"Given that the digits 1-9 may not be repeated in the rows, columns or boxes, what digit must be in the center cell?"

... in which the Sudoku presented could have 1000's of solutions ... all of which have the same center cell.



There's no reason you couldn't present a puzzle in which there is a different solution for each of several different stipulations, say, the center cell is each of the 9 digits in turn. (This essentially turns the puzzle into nine separate puzzles, each with a unique answer.)

Crossword puzzles, lacking any additional stipulation, have a unique solution, but I've seen puzzles contructed that have two solutions -- probably much harder to construct than solve.


There's a genre of puzzle called "optimizers" in which the object is to find the *best* solution -- highest total, longest line, whatever -- and that ultimate solution may not be known and there may or may not be mutliple solutions that have the same value. These are popular in internet puzzle competitions.
http://www.otuzoyun.com/pqrst/
http://diogen.h1.ru/english/ipst.html

... and are the only puzzles allowed in the Internet Puzzle Design Tournament:

http://www.otuzoyun.com/puzzledesign/

[dukuso]

the newspapers where the puzzle appears usually also
have to print the solution(s) in the same issue or in a subsequent
issue. With multiple solutions this is more complicated