Sudoku

Sudoku seems very popular these days, so I took the chance to try out a puzzle in the Examiner a couple days ago. The difficulty rating was one star out of five and it surprised me how difficult the puzzle was.

As I got stumped on the last few squares I glanced back at the instructions and realized that there was a third aspect. I’d neglected to realize that each 3×3 box contained each digit as well as each row and each column. With this information, the last squares were filled easily.

Today’s puzzle was rated three stars out of five. Since I started out understanding the parameters, this puzzle got finished much more easily than Tuesday’s.

I can see why the game is so popular. It’s not very challenging, yet it does engage the mind and it passes time. I’m waiting for the next couple of days to see if the more difficult levels provide any real challenge, but I’m skeptical. It seems to be a simple process of elimination. The hardest it seems it could be made is to make fewer starting points.

OK, so I went to websudoku.com and tried it out on the “evil” level. It’s still a 9×9 puzzle, but I was able to solve it with a little perseverance. I don’t know how the 16×16 version works–hexadecimal numbers perhaps?