I’ve become totally, helplessly addicted to Sudoku, a Japanese logic puzzle which can be anything from ridiculously easy to fiendishly difficult. The concept is simple: take a nine-by-nine grid of squares and divide it into nine three-by-three squares using bold lines, chuck in a few numbers to start off with and off you go. Each row, each column and each three-by-three block must contain all the digits from one to nine. It sounds simple and it is, with the easy puzzles giving you plenty of information to start you off. The more challenging ones give you fewer numbers to start with and have them carefully arranged to cause maximum headaches.
I’ve been doing the Times’ daily puzzles, which start on Mondays with a nice simple problem and finish on Saturdays with a prize problem, and I’ve also been scouring the net for more in order to feed my growing habit. This thing could eat my life very quickly if I let it.
There is a free Sudoku generator and printer
here. Requires Adobe Reader to view and print.
Hi Nick, I happened to find your journal introduced on the Japanese TV news program this morning.
It’s amazing to know Sudoku is quite popular in UK! I suppose it is because British people love “logical way of thinking” as we Japanese people do.
Me? Of course I’m addicted to Sudoku! By the way, we Japanese call it “Number Place” or “Number Placement”. :->
Good luck!
Where can I find a SUDOKU “cracker”? If you know it please send my a mail: drejon@azet.sk Thanks!
please can anyone help me with the “samurai” sudoku that was in the Books section of the sat times on 20th august..I forgot to buy the paper with the solution in and resorted to a computer solver which said it was unsolvable! please help me..is it me or was it printed wrong?
Comment 64 – – try printing them using Excel, cell size of 33 pixels works just fine.
Comment 87 – – got quite excited thinking I’d found some new puzzles but they are just copies of the ones from The Times.
when was sudoku first printed and when 1st printed in u.k.?
The Guardian has started to include a daily Kakuro puzzle which is similar to Sudoku. Have a look at my site for more info :
http://www.kakuro.info
Free Samurai Sudoku for print:
http://sudoku.binaryworlds.com/
I am so addicted to Sudoku!!
I found 4 Sudoku eBooks on ebay and bought them all for not quite $3.
I got the buy 3 get 1 free deal!!! Can’t beat that!!
There’s 96 puzzles w/solutions in each Volume.
Each volume range from Easy to Very Hard.
User goes by the name bidcents. I highly recommend the ebooks for ANY addict.
Have fun.
Probably better if I just posted a link huh?
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZbidcents
Have fun.
New sudoku site
http://www.pedagonet.com/sudokuE
Sudoku eBooks http://www.sudoku-ebooks.com
Your might like to look at
http://www.123sudoku.com
which has some introductory information, puzzles, links,
as well as some discussion of mathematical issues.
I’ve been posting KILLER Sudoku (Samunamupure) puzzle on my website daily for a week now.
I’ve also posted one SAMURAI puzzle and there’s more to come!
If you are interested, visit http://www.djape.net.sudoku/wp
Cheers!
hello- im obsessed with su doku as well!
Hi, just set up a new website this week. It features three new puzzles every single day and weekly Killer, Samurai and Super Su Doku, visit us at http:///www.angelfire.com/games6/sudoku
Hi. Me and my brother have just released a free sudoku program (Sudoku Assistenten) that will let you (among other things)
Solve, rate diffculty, save, get hints (easy and advanced), learn and even MAKE your very own SUDOKU that then can be SHARED on the programs online forum! So if you every wanted to make your own Sudoku, this is the program for you! No computer generated puzzles here, you decide where the numbers go! Check it out at: http://www.sudoku.frihost.net let us know what you think of it! 🙂
regards,
Havard
Free Sudokus serves over a million Sudoku puzzles a month. Super sudokus. Printable versions too.
You can play Sudoku with Paris Hilton – really!
She’s in good company…
http://www.ImDoku.com
I am offering kakuro puzzle freeware game (for windows computers) with 35 puzzles. You can download it from http://www.syndicate.yoogi.com/cross-sums/
can u give me the answers to a sodoku
Ultimatesudoku.com – say no more 🙂
I have just published a new Sudoku book containing 360 Sudoku, GoDoku & TriDoku puzzles! Check-out my website!
I have a soduku puzzle generator which allows you to put upto 4 possible numbers per square and has 3 levels of difficulty in which the hardest is impossible available for ?1.70 and also a kakuro puzzle generator for the same price. Files will be sent as email attachments. Contact me at barsim@v21net.co.uk if interested and want to buy or need more info.
The best sudoku player on the net – by miles!
I’ve found, searching google for “su doku generator”, this url witch provides generation of pdf file for 1-50 “simple” (9×9, not 16×16) su doku puzzles (difficulty rating scaled in 4 : from easy to very hard, or random at choice), including solution or not.
Because everyone here talks about Sudoku books: I recently downloaded “su doku pro” which is game software but can also be used to make your own Sudoku books at the push of a button and you can publish them too.
I DO NOT WANT ALL OF THAT I WANT ANSWERS TO MY OWN SUDUKO GAME
Hello
My name is Hagai Izenberg and I’m the owner of a web site for Kakuro games:
http://www.kakurolive.com
Kakuro (also called Cross-Sum) is a numeric crossword puzzle. It is
considered more challenging than Sudoku, but just as addictive to its
fans and it is taking over the world as quickly as Sudoku did.
We have developed software for generating puzzles for any size and
any shape, our puzzles are build using a unique Algorithm we
developed that support these important qualifications:
– All the puzzles have only one solution
– All the puzzles can be solved logically without need of guessing.
Many newspapers around the world are rushing to publish Kakuro
puzzles for their readers, you can read about it here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1569223,00.html
We would like to cooperate with your newspaper to promote the Kakuro
game using our puzzles and website, our business model is very
flexible and I am sure we can find a way to cooperate with your newspaper.
For example : we can provide you Kakuro puzzles daily or weekly on a
regular basis for free, each puzzle published must be accompanied by
my copyright notice (“? Puzzles by KakuroLive.com”) and by the words
?play more Kakuro game at http://www.kakurolive.com?.
Please contact me if you are interested in cooperating with our web
site and publish Kakuro games in your paper.
My contact information:
Hagai Izenberg
kakurolive@gmail.com
Thanks
Hagai Izenberg
i also love it so much.
I think this is one of the top sudoku sites on the net.
Happy New Year
Hi everyone,
I have written a FREE Windows program intended to replace paper and pencil to simplify the task of solving Sudoku puzzles. It does NOT solve them for you… what fun would that be?
The program is also free from reminder screens, registration prompts, advertisements, and other such annoyances. It is very easy to use, and supports pencilmarks, cell locking/unlocking. It also validates your guesses
against numbers in the same square, row, and column.
The name of the program is Sudoku Sidekick, and you can find it here:
http://www.peak.org/~greglief/sudoku/
Best wishes,
Greg
Hello,
I just found this wordpress blog beacuse I was looking for a javascript sudoku program which I found here, and it is quite nice.
Still, one I really love is one I found here:
http://www.lemo.dk/sudoku/
There you can download a program which was made with C.
It creates new sudokus, solves them, and gives them out as PDF file with solution and step by step explanation.
There you can also fetch sudokus from a list or create up to a 100 sudokus at a time as PDF file with solutions included at the end.
I whink thats one of the best sites I have seen until now.
Nick: how about putting some colour into the blog?
Here I have my wordpress testblog: http://www.umm-pur.com/wordpress
Well, its just for testing 🙂 Colourful enough 🙂
I think that sudoku would be more fun if it involved hunting harmless animals. Like cats and/or small dogs.
I created a website a few months ago that people here might enjoy:
http://www.logicgamesonline.com/sudoku/
It randomly generates sudoku puzzles so you get a different one each time you load it. The puzzles are graded for difficulty, and any rated below “Near Impossible” are solvable without guessing. There are pencil marks and background colors to help you if you get stuck, and a timer so you can see how long it takes.
There is also a sudoku tutorial to help you get started at http://www.logicgamesonline.com/sudoku/tutorial
Enjoy.
Sorry – the tutorial link should be http://www.logicgamesonline.com/sudoku/tutorial.html
I have just published a book “25×25 Sudoku with letters” on Lulu.com. I would be very grateful if readers could have a look at it and tell me what they think, good or bad (preferably good). You can view an example of a puzzle on the preview for free and print it off. Thank you.
You might want to play the game online at http://sudoku.blubbie.com/
It also has puzzles to print.
greetz,
blubbie
I’ve just launched a new samurai sudoku website:
Samurai Sudoku
http://www.samurai-sudoku.com
It’s the first free samurai sudoku solver on the web. A new samurai puzzle is posted each day. The solver can give hints and step-by-step solutions. There are several options for printing.
Thanks,
RobertN
Its the best game in the world/I THINK/
Hi,
check out the free Sudoku game at LunchBreakGames:
http://www.lunchbreakgames.com/php/game_entry.php?s_game=Sudoku&s_level=2
It allows to play 4×4, 9×9 and 16×16 Sudokus, featrues several difficulty levels, an advanced user interface and the possibility to save your highscore on our Web-Site.
Let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Tobias
“Computer Aided Sudoku” free excel game helper solver to be searched on Google or download http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sudoku.laviron
“Sudoku Assist? par Ordinater” jeu gratuit excel ? t?l?charger.
You may wish to play Sudoku here.
solyak1 http://www.solyak.com ; Thanks!
Personally, I really like this one.
Almost everything is configurable so you can set it up however you like.
It produces good puzzles with 1, 2, 3 or 5 grids…
I like the multiple grid puzzles, because I was getting bored with the standard old 9 by 9.
Perhaps the URL would be useful!
http://www.SudokuPuzzles.com
Did ya know, Sudoku is not from Japan? According to the story at Wikipedia about the history of Sudoku:
History
The puzzle was designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor, and first published in 1979.[14] Although likely inspired by the Latin square invention of Leonhard Euler, Garns added a third dimension (the regional restriction) to the mathematical construct and (unlike Euler) presented the creation as a puzzle, providing a partially-completed grid and requiring the solver to fill in the rest. The puzzle was first published in New York by the specialist puzzle publisher Dell Magazines in its magazine Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games, under the title Number Place (which we can only assume Garns named it).
The puzzle was introduced in Japan by Nikoli in the paper Monthly Nikolist in April 1984 as Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru (????????), which can be translated as “the numbers must be single” or “the numbers must occur only once” (?? literally means “single; celibate; unmarried”). The puzzle was named by Kaji Maki (?? ??), the president of Nikoli. At a later date, the name was abbreviated to Sudoku (??, pronounced SUE-dough-coo; s? = number, doku = single); it is a common practice in Japanese to take only the first kanji of compound words to form a shorter version. In 1986, Nikoli introduced two innovations which guaranteed the popularity of the puzzle: the number of givens was restricted to no more than 32 and puzzles became “symmetrical” (meaning the givens were distributed in rotationally symmetric cells). It is now published in mainstream Japanese periodicals, such as the Asahi Shimbun. Within Japan, Nikoli still holds the trademark for the name Sudoku; other publications in Japan use alternative names.
In 1989, Loadstar/Softdisk Publishing published DigitHunt on the Commodore 64, which was apparently the first home computer version of Sudoku. At least one publisher still uses that title.
Yoshimitsu Kanai published his computerized puzzle generator under the name Single Number for the Apple Macintosh [15] in 1995 in Japanese and English, for the Palm (PDA) [16] in 1996, and for the Mac OS-X [17] in 2005.
Bringing the process full-circle, Dell Magazines, which publishes the original Number Place puzzle, now also publishes two Sudoku magazines: Original Sudoku and Extreme Sudoku. Additionally, Kappa reprints Nikoli Sudoku in GAMES Magazine under the name Squared Away; the New York Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle now also publish the puzzle. It is also often included in puzzle anthologies, such as The Giant 1001 Puzzle Book (under the title Nine Numbers).
Within the context of puzzle history, parallels are often cited to Rubik’s Cube, another logic puzzle popular in the 1980s. Sudoku has been called the “Rubik’s cube of the 21st century”.
oku is not Japanese, according to a story of the history in Wikipedia.
How can it be proven that a Samurai Sudoku puzzle has only one unique solution?? I have found at least two solutions to the puzzle dated 4/2/2006 published in the Sunday Washington Post.
Who is the creator of Sudoku? Because he is one genius chinese guy.
I meant Japanese.