Hatrack River Forum: Sudoku

This is topic Sudoku in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :

My latest obsession.

Is anyone familiar with this? There's one in the paper here every day instead of a crossword puzzle. And I'm totally hooked. I don't know if you can actually solve any on the link, but it says you can download a free trial. Or you could start subscribing to Ha'aretz newspaper. [Razz]

Anyway, it just seemed like a Hatrack kind of puzzle, and I was wondering if anyone besides me is addicted.

*goes off to finish the one from this morning's paper*

Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :

I used to do this puzzle, but it had a different name. It had to have been in Dell Variety puzzle books, because I don't buy those anymore. I'm pretty much hooked on Penny Press right now.

But I used to love those. My husband thought I was nuts.

Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :

Ahh. I found reference to it.

Number Place.

http://www.jimloy.com/puzz/place.htm

I knew I used to do those. There weren't that many puzzles I liked doing in Dell, so I stopped buying them and just bought more Penny Press.

I think you get used to a particular brand of puzzles. I mean, I'm pretty good at the crosswords in the Penny Press puzzle books, but then when I try to do a crossword puzzle out of a Dell book, I feel like a moron. (Well, not necessarily Dell, but some other crossword puzzle book.) I think it's because (for Penny Press at least) they get comfortable with certain words and there is a limited vocabulary that they use and I know all those words.

Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :

What is Penny Press? It sounds intriguing. [Smile]

Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :

Wow... thanks, Kayla! I don't have a printer here, so I'll have to wait to do them all. Probably a good thing, since I'm in the middle of writing a term paper. [Wink]

Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :

I only heard about this a few weeks ago. But I realized I'd done this kind of puzzle before: a few years ago one of the puzzles in the MIT Mystery Hunt involved three 16x16 sudoku grids. I ended up writing a program to solve them.

Incidentally, I'm working on a website that will provide interactive cross sums and sudoku puzzles. I'll post a link when I'm done with it, which will probably be in a month or so.

Posted by xnera (Member # 187) on :

I've been a big Sudoku fan for a long time. Puzzle Japan has a nice selection of free ones, and also has instructions on how to solve them. And Dell Magazines offers entire volumes of Sudoku puzzles. My copies are on their way. [Big Grin]

There were two really dastardly Sudoku puzzles on this year's Google U.S. Puzzle Championship, which is the qualifying test for the World Puzzle Championship. I didn't solve either in the time allotted. I finally did solve the second one, but I'm still working on the digital Sudoku puzzle.

Mike, that MIT puzzle sounds really fun. Is it still available online? I'd go hunting through the links for it, but I don't really have time right now. I was just thinking a hexadecimal Sudoku would be fun, so the 16x16 sounds like what I was looking for. [Smile]

Posted by amira tharani (Member # 182) on :

I jumped on the Sudoku bandwagon rather late, but I read the papers online and couldn't be bothered to keep printing them out, so I bought a book of them. It cost me £4.99 and I have spent many hours doing them, so that's great value for money (given that I go through an £7-10 novel in a few hours). I do them on the tube now, which does elicit some odd looks, but it keeps me busy so hey.

Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :

Found it: http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/02/round8/09/Puzzle.html . I still have the program I used to solve it, too, but it's really hacky and written in c. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.

There are lots and lots of good puzzles from the MIT Mystery Hunt. One of my favorites from this year's is this one.

[Edit: the thing which is cool about these puzzles is that you have to think outside of the box in order to know what to do to find the answer. Sometimes it's easy to know where to start, like if you have a cryptic crossword you obviously fill in the answers into the grid, but once you've done that there's nowhere obvious to go from there. Sometimes, like in the ginormous puzzle, you have to figure out what to do every step of the way.]

Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :

It just appeared in the Washington Post here recently. I think I'll have to try it.

--j_k

Posted by xnera (Member # 187) on :

Awesome, Mike. I'll try those on the train tonight. [Big Grin]

Is the MIT Mystery Hunt something you have to be onsite at MIT to participate in? I recall a friend of mine talking about it (the same friend who told me about the World Puzzle Championship, actually), but I can't remember if he said if it was online or onsite. Online puzzle tournaments == good.

amira, I saw a woman doing Sudoku puzzles on the train. The one she was doing was very, very easy; two rows and one column were almost completely filled it. I actually started solving it (it was in very large print) and had placed some numbers long before she did. [Razz]

Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :

We used to do these puzzles in math class in elementary school.

Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :

xnera, it's mostly onsite. There are a bunch of teams, some large, some not. I've been on team Mayhem, one of the larger ones, for the last several years. Some teams have non-local members, though. The last couple of years there has been a small group joining us from San Francisco, and it looks like I'll be puzzling with them next time around. You might be able to find someone at MIT who's on a team that needs more remote solvers (I don't think I qualify, since I'm going to be remote myself).

Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :

*Sigh* I'm happy at the college I'm at, but it's things like the Puzzle Hunt that make me very, very jealous of MIT students.

Posted by xnera (Member # 187) on :

*ba-BUMP*

It came up in another thread. [Big Grin]

Bit annoyed at all the papers calling it a Japanese game. Japan might have given it its popular name, butit originated here!

Sites where you can play Sudoku:

http://www.puzzle.jp/en/
http://www.suntimes.com/sudoku/
http://www.sudoku.com/ (mostly selling software. Bleargh)
http://www.sudoku.org.uk/
http://wpc.puzzles.com/

I tried the websudoku. Results:

quote:

http://www.websudoku.com/

Congratulations! You solved the Sudoku in 11 minutes, 28 seconds!

Easy Puzzle 4,083,586,834

Might've been faster if I had printed it right away. Not so good at solving on screen.

[ August 29, 2005, 11:25 PM: Message edited by: xnera ]

Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :

*feels special that someone bumped her thread*

*goes off to try websudoku*

Posted by xnera (Member # 187) on :

Hmm. Looks like eleven minutes is my average solving time. [Smile]

quote:
Congratulations! You solved the Sudoku in 11 minutes, 43 seconds!

Medium Puzzle 2,327,782,324

Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :

I did it in nineteen, but I was also online solving my friends' crises at the same time.

Posted by Enigmatic (Member # 7785) on :

I'm really liking this game. Might do better printing it out, so I can make notes at the edges.

quote:
Congratulations! You solved the Sudoku in 10 minutes, 25 seconds!
Easy Puzzle 5,078,962,365

Off to try harder settings.

--Enigmatic

Posted by xnera (Member # 187) on :

Seventeen minutes into a hard puzzle, and I'm nearing the end, but then I discover I double placed a number. [Wall Bash]

That means it's time to go to bed. I'll try again tomorrow.