dailysudoku.com

[CT Yankee]

Hi. I was wondering if anyone could point me to some other online sources that have sudoku that are about as hard as the Very Hard puzzles here, or maybe even a bit harder. It’s difficult to compare from site to site when different sites have not only different skill levels but different names for their skill levels. I mean, how hard is Evil, and is that more or less easy than Fiendish? Finding stuff at just the right difficulty level is proving to be, well, difficult.

Don't get me wrong, I love this site - it's a superb resource and there’s some great stuff in the archives, which I’ve been working through - it's just that from browsing this forum I gather that the dailysudoku.com puzzles labeled Very Hard have only recently been upgraded to the kind of high difficulty level I now find I like best (i.e. requiring x-wing and similar advanced techniques). Basically I'm asking for recommendations, either of particular very hard sudoku puzzles you think I might enjoy, or of other places where I might find such puzzles. My favorites so far from this site have been the May 29 and July 8 puzzles. June 27 was also really good.

I’m completely self-taught at this. I learned sudoku from the puzzles in the local newspaper, using just pencil and eraser. It’s been a real eye-opener discovering that all the techniques I painstakingly worked out for myself have in fact all long since been cataloged, thoroughly documented, and given fancy names - although I suppose I should have expected that, given the puzzle’s popularity. Anyway I really like this site, the detailed explanations given in some of the forum posts are absolute models of clarity for this type of thing, better and more comprehensive even than a recent Scientific American article I read on the subject. It’s just that I find myself still, well, craving more... You understand that, don’t you?

Thanx,
CT Yankee

BTW, is the the word “sudoku” also plural, or do you need to say “sudokus” when referring to more than one puzzle? I think just “sudoku” sounds much better, more Japanese - but then, the puzzle didn't really originate in Japan, did it?

[keith]

CT,

Try the following:

In the "Other Puzzles" forum on this site you will find a series of David Bodycombe's Saturday Puzzles, for example:

http://www.dailysudoku.co.uk/sudoku/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1201

I like Michael Mepham's "Diabolical" puzzles, which are published on Friday and Sunday:

http://www.sudoku.org.uk/daily.asp

I also do the Fiendish puzzles at

http://www.fiendishsudoku.com/sudoku.html

I like the patterns and symmetries of the puzzles. It seems to me they are mostly very difficult puzzles that actually could be solved with only "basic" techniques like hidden sets, block-line interactions, etc. However, I find I often use XY-wings, Unique Rectangles, etc.

Take a look at the forums on sudoku.com:

http://www.sudoku.com/

particulary General/Puzzle and Advanced Solving Techniques.

Take some time with "General/Puzzle" and look at threads like "Effortless Extremes". If you understand what each thread is about, you will find many enjoyable puzzles.

Also, if nothing is too difficult for you to consider, you will find discussions of the hardest known sudokus.

There are a couple of other sites I am not yet familiar with. In particular, BrainBashers

http://www.brainbashers.com/sudoku.asp

gives the techniques required for each of their difficulty rankings.

If you want really difficult puzzles requiring multiple chains to solve, look at Ruud's SudoCue site, or the Australian Sudoku site. (Search on Google.)

I hope this helps.

Keith

[Marty R.]

[David Bryant]

Hi, Hank! Or are you some other Connecticut Yankee?

If you're interested in really difficult puzzles, you might try looking at the "super tough" variety on Jim Bumgardner's web site.

Have fun! dcb

[ravel]

[CT Yankee]

Thanks for the replies and for all your recommendations. I will definitely be checking out some of those sites.

[David Bryant]

[thomas32]

The fact that one of the most important questions has been raised is fantastic. For the purpose of stopping evil, I suggest that from an atheistic perspective, the problem of evil can be solved based on Occam's razor: by assuming that no God exists, it is possible to reconcile evil and suffering with the assumption that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God exists. To raise awareness among people, I created an animation video about alight motion. This video is posted on a different forum. This is also something I recommend you do.

[thomas32]