dailysudoku.com

[Victor]

2nd time round, I enjoyed M3504165 (61). (For lovers of W-wings etc.)

[Marty R.]

This one was interesting, not too difficult. But I just can't make any sense out of these ratings. Just yesterday I did one rated (20) and had enough difficulty that I had to finish it with trial and error. Here's one rated (61) that wasn't a problem. And this wasn't an isolated case. Go figure. Maybe yesterday there was something there that I didn't notice.

P.S. I used a couple of XY-Wings, couple of W-Wings and finished it with Medusa.

[storm_norm]

[Steve R]

Marty,

Do you think W-wings are to blame for the confusing ratings, at least in part?

Such things are meat and drink to players here but a program which hadn’t been paying attention would continue to treat them as five-link nice loops or AICs and rate the puzzle accordingly.

Steve

[storm_norm]

xy-wing {1,2,5} takes out 1 in r5c7
xy-wing {1,2,7} takes out 7 in r3c2 and r5c3

then,

[storm_norm]

Steve R.

I agree.

any algorithm you write to solve a sudoku puzzle is going to always see certain criteria in the order that you write to code. it isn't the programs fault that it rated that puzzle what it did.

and the same goes for humans. just because I think a puzzle is easy doesn't mean you will. just because I see the W-wing, doesn't mean you will.

but even if you do write in the code to look for a W-wing, will that make the rating of the puzzle any less??

again, I will restate what i have in previous posts. I argue that it isn't the initial state of a puzzle that determines the difficulty. instead, its the subjective view of the observer at each step of the solving path.

[Marty R.]