kepo-ing Zz85

This is another article due for posting for a long time, but I always never want to click the “Publish” button.

This 2nd post on Sudoku of mine will attempt to show you more ways to waste time on it, or nicer said, give the grey cells a little more workout. Some of these puzzles I would be touching on, each have a capacity for give you something to think about a few hours, 1 or 2 days, or maybe more. One of it can keep you occupied for your guard duty, another for all the waiting and travelling time, and one to keep you headaches. In some of my completed puzzles, the byproducts is lots of numbers scribbled all around the paper, which reminds me of John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind” scribbling codes all over the place.

Web Sudoku
This sites gives you countless of classic 9×9 sudoku. Chose one of the 4 level of difficulties, you can play online and time yourself, or just chose to print to keep some copies to work on in your free time. This site is a fravorite amoung my campmates.

Killer Sudoku
A guy was sitting on my right in the train, holding a book and a pencil. I glanced at it, and I thought, another Sudoku lover? I wanted to break a conversation with him, then noticed that the puzzles was not really what I seen before. I silently observed a little more, peeked at the title which was something like “Killer Sudoku published by Times”, then got down the next stop. I did a search, I soon I was introduced to a new dimension to killer sudoku.

The completed killer sudoku puzzle complies with the classic soduku rules. The difference is in its clues, instead of prefilled numbers, the clues are sums of the numbers covering specified boxes in the sudoku. What I like about variation is that you get to use mathematics (each box or row sums to 45, try adding 1 to 9). When you figured enough boxes, you would like to use the classic sudoku logic and methods to complete the puzzle.

Visit killersudokuonline for dozes of puzzle each week. Puzzles come in flavours of easy, medium, hard, mind-bending. Also of interest found on that webbie would be the “Great Than” sudoku. In each small 3×3 grid, you only know which is bigger in number of 2 boxes side by side.

My favorite site for sudoku would be DJ Ape .Net - The Home of Perfect Sudoku. You get daily sudoku and killer sudoku. You would be able to learn of different solving techniques and other brainteasers time to time. You might be able to find these other variants of sudoku too.

Butterfly sudoku
5 Sudokus intersect at the corners, or more accurately, 4 sudokus intersecting the corners of a center sudoku, forming a big sudoku which shapes like a butterfly. If you see a X across the diagonals, each diagonal contains 1 -9 uniquilty. This is a important clue to solving some the puzzles.

Samurai sudoku
Upsizing the 9×9, you get 12×12, but its actually 4 overlapping 9×9 sudoku puzzles.

These are more variations, esp if you mix variations together, eg. Butterfly-Samurai-X, Harakiri-X (2 Butterflys linked)

Kakuro
Now this is another puzzle, not a sudoku in my views, but I think shares the same creator and simlar rules of sudoku. It looks and works more like a crossword puzzle, you get clues (sum of numbers) for horizontal and vertical (right and down) “words” (number sequences which each digit can appear once only).

I first came across this on a book title in Kinokuniya, and later I spotted it appearing in The New Paper daily. Its quite fun, a little like a killer sudoku, and it can take you hours playing, but for me I prefer killer sodukus (maybe i just love the squarish grids and the familarity).
Well, if you are interested, the net is always full of Kakuro

I was hoping I could release my Sudoku Solver Midlet version 2 with this post, together with instructions, but I’m afraid that would be the next time.

[update:March 26 Sunday] I was working on my Harakiri X Sudoku on the mrt train. A gal (about my age I think) approached me asking where I got it from (she must be bored with the classic puzzles too). Sensing another Sudoku fan, I gave her the links mention above and introduced some variations too. Well now that I think, maybe I should have gave her the link to my blog too.