The Snook likes to do crossword puzzles, and he’s long held the opinion that Sudoku is an inferior form of entertainment. Crosswords rely on knowledge and lateral thinking; Sudoku seems to just rely on logic and brute force. In fact, he’s long suspected that there’s a mechanical method or algorithm to solving Sudoku that doesn’t use any brain power at all. Turns out he was right!
Sara
July 12, 2006 — 10:44 pm
I like Sudokus because I suck at crossword puzzles. This guys method is how I’ve always solved the puzzles except I save myself time by eliminating the numbers already given in the puzzle (not writing in all nine). I didn’t know there was any other way.
Frances
July 13, 2006 — 12:08 am
Here here, I agree with you Sara. I like them because I suck at crosswords. Hated them in school when teachers gave us crosswords for “fun.”
patrick
July 13, 2006 — 12:55 am
Well, yeah, of course this works. Essentially they’re just doing by brute force what everyone does in their heads. What’s fun is when it gets so natural that you see the associations sort of line themselves up on the page, like the codebreaking scene in A Beautiful Mind.
Besides, this method doesn’t work for all puzzles. The really fun ones require looking three or four steps down the line— not guessing, but sort of like chess.
WeeB
July 14, 2006 — 1:15 am
As Kris knows since i was waffling on about Sudoku on my visit, i dabbled in a bit of it.
I managed to get some good free Sudoku programs and you can get solvers for them to where you just chuck in the values then the program/web page solves the puzzle for you.
If you search for Sudoku wiki, you can read loads of info about it there.