sudoku

[bushy_braids]

how many of you all are familiar with this japanese inspired craze?? it's the new logistical puzzle that's sweeping the country and now being featured in your newspapers & magazines...
the way to solve the puzzle is to enter the numbers 1-9 in each cell of the a 9x9 grid made up of 3x3 subgrids starting with some numbers already placed in the grid. each row, column and subgrid must not repeat any number... check out the website if you have no idea what i'm talkin' bout... www.sudoku.com
at first i wasn't really into it, i figured "ahhh i'm horrible with numbers, that's no fun!" but i really got into it after a while... i was determined to figure out how the puzzle worked and now i'm hooked!
check out their website to download... there's even books filled w/these puzzles available at the bookstores.

anyone wanna share any tips, tricks, solutions? i suggest ya'll try it at least once, they're fun!

[kgirl7]

Yeah it's addictive! Ok here are some of my strategies, Lets say you're looking at the top 3 boxes, and two of those boxes have a 5 in it, well you know the third one needs a 5 because every region (ie 3x3 box) has to have each number. Since only there can be only one 5 per line you've got the region of the third 5 narrowed down to a box and you've got the line it's gotta be on narrowed down. Once you can get that 5 in there you can pretty much get the 5's in most if not all the other boxes in other regions.
Another strategy i use is to start with the regions in the corner, and use the grid method. which is explained in this wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_doku.

I use those two ways to find the numbers that absolutely HAVE to be in a certain box. When I find all the numbers that I know for sure are in the write place, then i go around and write all the possible choices for each box. That don't always work though, sometimes you gotta just take the plunge and choose a number, that's why i use pencils.

If you want a lot of practice The Guardian website (of the newspaper that started this whole Su Doku craze) has a list of all their puzzles that you can print. And it must be really big over there in England cuz they even have a hotline where you can call for help with the puzzle. I'm like damn, that's hardcore.