Newspaper Sudoku Difficulty

lrbaldwin · Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2006 5:34 pm Post subject: Newspaper Sudoku Difficulty

We don't get a newspaper that publishes Sudoku puzzles. I have been learning mostly with Simple Sudoku and can usually get the "Extreme" puzzles without any help now. In the past couple of days, I've picked up a couple of puzzles from the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Virginia), and aside from the mundane task of hand penciling candidates, the few that I've done are insanely simple. I haven't seen anything more than naked and hidden singles and naked pairs. Since I was looking for more difficult techniques, I would often overlook a hidden single as such and find it through naked triples....duh!

So my question is what is the general difficulty for most newspaper puzzles? I assume they would avoid things like XY wings and coloring because they become such a mess when doing them by hand. What techniques should one master for newspaper puzzles?

Thanks,
Linda

Ruud · Site Admin

Hi Linda,

most newspaper puzzles can be solved with singles only.
those rated "moderate/hard" may require locked candidates and naked pairs.

only a few publishers dare to expose their public to harder puzzles. The Times' Superior goes upto naked and hidden triples and X-Wings.
A "diabolical" in the Daily Telegraph could contain swordfish, remote pairs and XY-Wings.

longer running series often gradually increase the difficulty as the players get more experienced and start demanding tougher challenges.

Ruud
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lrbaldwin

Thanks Ruud, that's what I suspected. I downloaded some children's 6X6 puzzles for my grandson who's 8. I think the puzzles in our local paper aren't any harder than those except that they'r 9X9.

I've made a large grid and scanned it so I can print blanks and enter puzzles on it for working by hand. The ones in the paper are so small!

Hidden triples would be pretty tough to do by hand! I still have trouble *finding* XY wings though I understand them. That would be pretty rough to do by hand too. I really like Simple Sudoku's ability to filter naked doubles.

It seems to me that hand working and computer working these puzzles are totally different animals. Doing them by computer eliminates the boring part of mindless pencilng in of the candidates. I know that my friends who do the newspaper puzzles haven't mastered any of the more advanced techniques, but I also realize that they could probably beat me timewise on the hand solving.

Very interesting.

Thanks,
Linda

ajb · Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 3:58 pm Post subject:

the Metro free newspaper in the UK has been known to need quads. The Friday one usually needs some advanced technique, I think it's a similar level to Times Superior.

Pat · Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 12:47 pm Post subject: re: London "Metro"