There aren't many games I play on the computer, except for solitare.
This week, I spent a fair bit of time playing sudoku. It feels like something I've played before, but I can't quite remember.
My neice introduced to the game during our recent vacation. She was playing them out of the newspaper. It was great at the cottage, but we quickly finished one each day.
It's much nicer to have an unending supply over the internet. The site I've been playing, websudoku, comes in four levels.
The easy level is good for beginners. I can usually finish them in under 10 minutes. The medium level is what I've been playing most of the week. They average just over 20 minutes, with my best time at 13 minutes. Next week, I may move on to hard, but I think it will be a while before I tackle the evil level.
The game can be played at almost any age, as long as the person can write numbers from 1-9. Each column, row and cell, has to have all the numbers and only have each number once. The puzzle is in trying to make the all fit.
Each Sudoku puzzle only has one solution. Now, if only it was easy to find the solution, I'd have lots more free time.
Comments (2)
umm ....never i couldnt complete the higher levels....
Posted by mark | October 25, 2006 10:02 PM
Posted on October 25, 2006 22:02
It took me a while to get the hang of them.
One tip is to use information from one square to solve another square. Let me try to explain that.
Let say I was working on the three squares on the left hand side of the cube. The bottom square is all filled in except for two spots in the third column. The only numbers left for that square are six and eight.
I may not be able to tell which spot to put the six, but I know that both the six and eight for that column are in the bottom square.
When I look up the column, I see that the three spots in the middle square are all finished. Now I know where 6 of the 9 numbers go. All that's left is 3 numbers to put in the top square.
Even if you don't know which spot those three numbers go into, you do know that all three go in the third column.
Now you just have to figure out what numbers are left to fill in for the top column.
Here's an example.
8 . .
. 1 .
3 6 .
6 . 3
. 8 4
. . 1
1 5 7
2 9 .
4 3 .
Six and eight must go in the bottom square. That leaves two, five and nine to fill out that column.
Even if you have no idea which spot to put them in, those numbers fill three spots on the right hand side of the top cube.
All that's left for the top cube is four and five. Four has to go at the top of the second column and five has to go into the spot in first column (top square).
It's hard to explain, but easier to do once you understand the process.
Good luck.
Posted by Christine Nicholls | October 26, 2006 6:08 AM
Posted on October 26, 2006 06:08