How do you tackle a sudoku puzzle?
How do you tackle a sudoku puzzle?
When you first crack open a new sudoku puzzle, do you look at the rows or columns first? Or do you work in blocks? What's your strategy?
I start with 1s, look in the row blocks to see if I can fill any, then the column blocks. Then move on the 2s, 3s... If a block or row or column is mostly filled in I see if I can get any of the rest to close it out.
Exact same here
I start with 1's and then 2's and then 3's, etc. Eventually, you'll find them all. Just a good way for me to start.
I start with blocks and whatever number I see more of in the board, then lines and columns.
Then give up when I inevitably get it wrong
What I usually do is going through the puzzle doing snydernotation first (marking when a number can only be in 2 places in a box)
Most easy puzzles can be done with only that, then when it stops being fruitful I fully mark the puzzle up and start looking for things in roughly this order:
- triples
- x-wings
- simple-fishes (skyscraper, 2-wing kites)
- xy-wings
- xyz-wings
- swordfishes
- chaining techniques
That's at least my basic rough order of going through solving a puzzle.
That's... a lot. I'm assuming those are techniques for efficiently solving sudoku puzzles? I never thought about it, but it makes sense that there would be defined methodologies for tackling this kind of puzzle.
For each number, I mark all cells where I know I can't put it.
If one block, column or row has only one possible cell where a number can be, I put it there and then update all cells where I now know I can't put it anymore.
This algorithm probably isn't the fastest, but it's easy to do manually.
If you want some tips or are just curious, this channel has a lot of content about sudoku and variants: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC-UOdK8-mIjxBQm_ot1T-Q
Not so much looking for tips as I am just seeing what everyone else does. I love sudoku puzzles. I don't think I'm necessarily good at them, but I do enjoy them on the reg, lol.
Thanks for the link, though! I'll keep it in mind.
Start with a random number, look to see where the rest are in the grid, and look at the columns and rows to see if there are any easy ones to fill in, then move on to the next number.
Then there are a few other algorithms I have to use if the sudoku problem is more challenging. Looking at individual lines to see if there are missing numbers. Try to figure out where numbers absolutely cannot go to narrow things down.