The key to moving forward and also to directly solving the puzzle was determining that the last box in row 3 had to be an 8. Once that box was filled with the 8, the rest fell in place easily.
I have learned something. I need to either learn to think deeper than I usually do, or I need to print the tough ones off and use pencil and paper to determine the "possibilities" for each box and proceed from there. However, even then I still need to learn to look at these puzzles a little differently and look ahead more than I had to do with the EASY puzzles.
Thanks Ron!
I am also a sudoku addict, but the paper, pencil, and good erasor type. I try to do pretty hard ones and do enter all the "candidates" in the boxes. A few yrs. ago my husband bought me a Mensa sudoku bk., level 4. After finding those were impossible, I tried level 3, then went to level 2. Have not looked at that bk. lately but it was my goal to get those all done before I die. My son recently gave me Frank Longo's Black Belt sudoku, 2nd degree. (Not sure how many degrees there are.) These are mostly doable but I am stuck on several. Maybe someday I will try to understand the most advanced techniques--something about "swordfish" is one. But as my son would probably say, quoting Steve Martin, "Nahhhhh."
ReplyDeleteThank you Mary Ellen, and good luck in your quest!
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