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November 16, 2007
He Says He Loves Me, But...
Adam sent me this last week:
It is quite possibly the most diabolical iteration of Sudoku ever perpetrated upon mankind. I am already addicted to Sudoku, but this has caused me to stop reading periodicals at the breakfast table and take it with me throughout the house to work on at every opportunity. It's called "Shogun Sudoku" and consists of 11 interlocking sudoku matrices that must be worked simultaneously. As you can see, the thing has been through the wringer. Multiple erasures have cause the paper to nearly wear through in spots, and then the other night it was dropped in the bathtub while I was getting the Bug's evening bath ready. She keeps reminding me that I need to fix the tear with tape.
Luckily, this morning I found a solution online. I've erased everything and restarted so many times now that I feel ok with checking my work against the solution when I hit a snag. I don't feel like it's cheating because I don't copy answers from the solution, I just erase the squares that are incorrect and then keep going.
I might just finish this one day, but then I'll have to swear off sudoku for a while.
Posted by mwashburn at November 16, 2007 08:53 AMPosted to just for fun
Comments
You said: "Luckily, this morning I found a solution online. I've erased everything and restarted so many times now that I feel ok with checking my work against the solution when I hit a snag. I don't feel like it's cheating because I don't copy answers from the solution..."
Yeah, just because I get cheat codes from the internet for my playstation and use them, I still gotta kill the bad guy. I just use an unlimited supply of the strongest weapon to do it. Also, I'm a vegetarian, but I eat fish.
Posted by: Jesse at November 19, 2007 12:03 PM
No, you see... it's the difference between checking your math homework with the answers, erasing the answers you've got wrong and working through the problem again on your own; and erasing your answers and copying down what the book says.
Sudoku is more like a math problem than a crossword puzzle. Once you've seen a crossword solution, that's it, the word is in your head, there's no "work it out on your own." With sudoku you have to work back through all the logic to re-work the puzzle.
Posted by: flygrrl at November 19, 2007 12:08 PM
I like SUDOKU, but somehow manage not to do them too often so as to get addicted. But this one looks like it's made of AWESOME! Although I think the fact they're interlocking would make them easier, no? Because solving one block all on its own would be hard, but you can now verify the corner squares with the next block to make sure your answer doesn't conflict.
Posted by: exarch at November 20, 2007 08:24 AM
Although I think the fact they're interlocking would make them easier, no?
You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. In some cases it helps, but it can get really confusing, and several of the center grids have almost no numbers at all in them. You really have to think ahead more moves to eliminate possibilities than you do in a normal sudoku grid.
Posted by: flygrrl at November 20, 2007 08:56 AM