dailysudoku.com

[robertferre]

I was doing some puzzles from the book Sudoku for Dummies. The categories are: easy, tricky, very hard, and diabolical. (Or something close.) I can do the hard and very hard ones on Daily Sudoku, given a bit of time (about an hour). But the "tricky" category in the Sudoku for Dummies completely stumped me. I gave up on three different puzzles after two hours each. I mention this as part of the discussion of ratings. I'm a newbie, and thought I was doing well until I found that I have not yet reached the level of "dummy." Has anyone else done puzzles from that book?

[Marty R.]

I had borrowed that book from the library. If I remember correctly, the hardest rating of the 9x9 puzzles was "diabolical", which is quite an overstatement, in my humble opinion. I don't recall "tricky", but he had some puzzles in there bigger than 9x9, which I did not attempt.

[Oregonian]

I'm doing puzzle 220 (rated "tough") in what I think is the first Dummies book. I've got 16 blank cells. I know what I need in every row, every column, and every 3x3 section. Trouble is, for every cell, there's 2 (in one case 3) possibilities. I've been able to solve a couple of the "diabolical" puzzles, but I'm stuck on this one.

I did check the answer, and I haven't made any mistakes to date.

Now I could just take a guess on one of the cells that has 2 possibilities, and pencil everything that follows in on the other cells, and see if it works. I've got a 50% chance of being right. If not, I can reverse the guess.

My question is, do you sometimes have to use this process, or am I missing something? Thanks

[Carl S]

I'm stuck in exactly the same spot. Did you ever find a way to solve the puzzle without guessing?

[David Bryant]