New Solving Guide Feedback

dpbobelisk · Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 9:43 am Post subject: New Solving Guide Feedback

Ruud. I welcome and approve of the efforts you are making to update and improve the graphics for your solving guide. Generally, your new images are a big improvement.

So that your head doesn’t swell too much by getting showered with too many bouquets, let me throw the following bricks at you too!

1) You decry bifurcative methods as being trial and error but then go on to explain multi-colouring techniques without pointing out they are bifurcative and are therefore not amongst your preferred methods!

2) I assert that bifurcative methods do not equate to brute force trial and error if they are both selective and analytical. I therefore accept multi-colouring techniques on these grounds. I would therefore scrap all the fancy names that have been given to different link combinations to squeeze them in as pattern recognition techniques to overcome this insanity.

3) According to you we don't need to prove uniqueness if it is given – unless we find a magic cell, when you change your mind!

4) Your "connected pair" graphics are poor in comparison to your earlier ones. The candidates are not shown in the relevant cells. Also, I think the direction of the links is relatively unimportant compared with the parity of the digits at either end of the links. If you can't colour your link terminals differently, then perhaps could you use squares and circles to show the parities, otherwise you are failing to illustrate a key point as well as you could.

(I found that Sudo Cue does not allow me to preserve my candidate colours when switching tools, so it is not as powerful here as it could be.)

5) In your very first connected pair colouring example, you miss what, for me, is a key issue in providing the power of equivalence marking, that is, to identify equivalent digits in the same band of boxes. You say that the blue cells and the yellow cells are different clusters – they are not! The connecting digit is 4 and in r1c6, it is equivalent not only to r3c8 as shown, but also to r2c1, which is shown in a different cluster colour. By progressive marking, you will then find all your unsolved cells become a single cluster.

Otherwise, well done, keep it up, and I look forward to the next instalment.

Ruud · Site Admin

Thanks for the flowers, David, and even more thanks for the bricks.
This is the kind of feedback I was hoping for.

The errors will be corrected, and I will try to take a more neutral position in the controversy issues. My main goal was to make clear that these controversies exist, not to choose sides.

The conflict in your point 3 is something that had crossed my mind. I will give it some thoughts.

cheers,
Ruud
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The Ostrich · Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 10:41 pm Post subject:

That new solving guide is a peach. The completeness and theoretical underpinning is first-rate, plus the graphics are great. My only thought is that it would be nicer if you included notes for the graphics in the locked candidates section, just to illustrate the point better.

I also think that it would be easier if the different coloured links in the colouring section were all the same colour, because there is no semantic difference between them, and it illustrates the point more easily (I find it hard to follow the pattern with lots of different primary colours burying it).

BTW: I'd appreciate any feedback from anyone on my new Sudoku and Killer solving guides, which are here:

http://www.sudokutiger.com/Hint_Sudoku.htm
http://www.sudokutiger.com/Hint_Killer.htm