Posts Tagged ‘ sudoku ’

Puzzles and Brain Power

February 22, 2006
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MyDNA, a health blog, posted an article called “Brainteasers or time-wasters” about the recent sudoku craze and puzzles in general.

The article is a little more one sided than the title would lead you to believe. Mostly, the article discusses the many neurological advantages of puzzle solving.

I’m a little disappointed, actually. I was hoping for an article I could disagree with.

Sudoku: “Good training for investors.”

February 15, 2006
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The Toledo Blade, like just about every other newspaper in the country, has started publishing a daily sudoku. In conjunction with this launch, one of their columnists, Homer Brickey, writes an article suggesting that doing sudokus can help you in the stock market. From the article

…it’s the discipline of the puzzle, the need for clear, straightforward methodology, and a respect for logical thinking and focus that will serve investors well as they contemplate buying stocks.

Of course, what Brickey says could apply to an puzzle (not just sudokus) and any occupation that requires analytical thinking. Still, he may be on to something.

So, puzzle aficionados, drop your pencils and make millions on the stock market.

Valentine’s Sudoku

February 14, 2006
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I came across the Valentine’s Day themed sudokus through Ian’s Messy Desk.  When I first saw the title of the post, I wondered what exactly a Valentine’s Day sudoku was.  Apparently, its a regular old sudoku with the squares colored and numbers filled in to make a love-themed picture.  It might have been nicer if the colors somehow figured into the solving of the sudoku, but still they’re fun sudokus for the day.  You could print them up and put them on Valentine’s cards for puzzle-lovers.

Sudoku variant: Mystery Godoku

February 13, 2006
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On the blog for Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, I came across yet another sudoku variant. HSMB’s “godoku” uses letters instead of numbers (a standard variant that I mentioned yesterday) and the letters can be rearranged to form the answer to a clue (in this case a mystery novel) that will fill one row or column.

The clues on this site are all mystery themed, but the theme can be whatever you want. And you don’t need to get the clue to solve the sudoku. They have a new puzzle up now, as well as archives of past puzzles.

Sudoku variations

February 12, 2006
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I started solving sudokus regularly last summer and, little did I know then, I was jumping on a growing trend. Recently, I’ve been scouring the web for sudoku variations, two of which I had encountered in the US Puzzle Championship test. The best article I can find on the topic is one from the Mathematics Association of America which pretty much covers the range of sudoku variations I’ve seen. The article doesn’t have many sample puzzles below, so I’ll comment on the variations below and link to some puzzles you can try.

There are a few obvious ways to change a sudoku puzzle:

  1. Change the grid. Either change the size (e.g. the super sudoku found through this blog) or change the shape of the internal blocks (e.g. the jigsaw sudoku).
  2. Provide more information about which number goes in which square (e.g. the even-odd sudoku found on the World Sudoku Championship test or the greater-than sudoku). The advantage of these kinds of sudokus is that fewer numbers need to be filled in at the start, if any at all.
  3. Put something other than numbers in the individual squares. This can be a straight substitution of other symbols for the digits, like the hamster sudoku. The more ingenious variations mentioned in the MAA article include using digital clock numbers or dice pip numbers. The advantage in these cases is that entire numbers need not be taken away. You can take away inidvidual dice pips or sections of digital clock numbers. It’s another way to provide more limitted information.

The MAA article ends by suggesting some other possible variations that have not yet been devised, including a chess sudoku that would be very interesting.