No bells, no frills, no whistles, no variants, just straight up challenging Sudoku as advertised. Paper is good quality and stands uGood for The Times
No bells, no frills, no whistles, no variants, just straight up challenging Sudoku as advertised. Paper is good quality and stands up to erasures and the binding seems sturdy. If I was being picky (and I suppose I am), I'd like a little larger format but, what the heck ... challenging puzzles are hard enough to find so this is hardly the hill I'm going to die on!
If you're a straight Sudoku enthusiast looking for a challenge, this could be the needle in the proverbial haystack!...more
Are you an advanced Sudoku aficionado constantly bemoaning the fact that you can demolish most of the entries in the sThis is no ordinary Sudoku book!
Are you an advanced Sudoku aficionado constantly bemoaning the fact that you can demolish most of the entries in the so-called fiendish or diabolical puzzle books on the market without breaking a sweat and barely needing to put pencil to paper? Then Cracking the Cryptic’s GREATEST HITS is definitely tailor-made for you.
These are not computer generated push over puzzles. Carefully curated and hand-crafted by some of the best puzzle-setters in the world and participants in Sudoku’s World Championships, the elegant Sudoku head-scratchers in GREATEST HITS define “fiendish”!! As an e-book in .pdf format, every puzzle is formatted to a single 8½"x11" format so it can be printed individually for solution, erasure, and solution over and over again. With only a single puzzle per page, you know that there’s plenty of room for pencil marks. Every page contains a scannable QR code and a link to a YouTube video page that will guide you through the solution. AND, joy of joys, the video of course can be listened to only as far as every individual aspiring solver needs to get a hint to head you in a productive solving direction.
As well as classic sudokus, this book contains lots and lots of challenging variants - killer sudokus and clever variants, thermometers, skyscraper, skyscraper sum, fortress puzzles, little killers and a variant I’m betting you’ve never seen before, sandwich Sudoku. If you enjoy a serious Sudoku challenge and you feel you’re up to it, GREATEST HITS will provide astonishing value for your purchase dollars. To suggest that you’ll get hundreds of hours of entertainment is definitely not an exaggeration.
One of the very best Sudoku books I've ever purchased
So many good things to say. The puzzles are fresh and range from challenging to ultra-fiendish; tOne of the very best Sudoku books I've ever purchased
So many good things to say. The puzzles are fresh and range from challenging to ultra-fiendish; they are thought-provoking in the sense that for each different variety you have to totally re-think the effects of standard solution techniques like XY-wings, XYZ-wings and so on (believe it or not, sometimes they don't even apply); the paper withstands multiple erasures; there's sufficient room to write in small number candidates; there's enough puzzles of each variety that you can actually begin to get the hang of a particular twist to the standard Sudoku rulebook; given that there are almost 500 puzzles in the book, for most solvers you'll have well over a year's worth of daily Sudoku solving entertainment for the price!
The only downside is that this book is thick, so with standard paperback binding, it doesn't lay open flat and the puzzles on the left side of the page are slightly more uncomfortable to work with. In addition, after almost 18 months of continuous daily opening and closing (give or take), the binding is starting to crack slightly.
If you're a dedicated Sudoku fan looking for a serious challenge and great value for money, then this one is for you. DEFINITELY recommended.
There's no question that standard Sudoku is an ingenious creation that can provide stimulating mental challenges and hours oAn entirely new challenge!
There's no question that standard Sudoku is an ingenious creation that can provide stimulating mental challenges and hours of enjoyable entertainment. But serious Sudoku solvers will invariably reach a point in their solving experience when the question "Can I solve this puzzle?" devolves into "How quickly can I solve this puzzle?" Once one has mastered the advanced solving techniques that allow a solver to bypass simple elimination by guessing, a small portion of the fun of Sudoku slips away.
MUTANT SUDOKU revives that entertainment value and the scintillating enjoyment of a brand new challenge by providing some of the most bizarre twists and variants on the original puzzle that I've ever seen. Every single variation demands that the thinking solver re-determine how one can apply those well known solving techniques - claiming, x-wings, xy-wings, xyz-wings, swordfish, jellyfish, finned fish and so on - to squeeze out the numbers that fit into these bizarrely re-shaped grids, rows, columns and houses.
But the real pièce de résistance that sets this collection of variations apart from other collections of the same genre is that there are up to a dozen or more examples of each variation. This allows solvers to advance from simple gut-busting puzzle-breaking, head-scratching determination to a certain level of more sophisticated solving within each variation. That is to say, you begin to catch the flavour of the variation and are allowed the opportunity to become somewhat of an expert within that tiny niche of Sudoku altered reality.
Have fun. Highly recommended for advanced solvers looking for new and exciting challenges.
Samurai Sudoku puzzles consist of five overlapping Sudoku grids.
The standard Sudoku rules apply to each 9 x 9 grid. Place digits from 1 to 9 in each eSamurai Sudoku puzzles consist of five overlapping Sudoku grids.
The standard Sudoku rules apply to each 9 x 9 grid. Place digits from 1 to 9 in each empty cell. Every row, every column, and every 3 x 3 box should contain one of each digit. But CUCKOO SUDOKU takes the idea of Samurai Sudoku above and beyond, one step more complex and, of course, more interesting and challenging. Each of the five overlapping 9x9 grids is itself a Sudoku variant. That is to say, each Samurai Sudoku consists of five DIFFERENT overlapping Sudoku variants selected from a list of seven possibilities – diagonal; greater than/less than; jigsaw grid; odd/even; consecutive; non-consecutive; and window Sudoku. This means (are you ready for it?) that each 3x3 square in the overlapping corners is governed by three sets of rules – regular Sudoku PLUS the two overlapping variant rules.
Pretty interesting, wouldn’t you say? That said, it should be obvious that additional constraints actually make the puzzles in some cases easier rather than more difficult. So, as one would expect, in order to restore the difficulty level, there are far, far fewer initial numbers given in each puzzle. One puzzle, in fact, has only a single starter number (but it is solvable purely through the logical application of the constraint rules of the variants in force).
Be advised that a shift in thinking and some different approaches are called for. Regular Sudoku thinking on its own just won’t cut it BUT once you’ve caught on to a few basic tricks, I think most Sudoku fans would agree that the book, in its entirety, ranges from medium through difficult. There are no puzzles that I would class as either easy or fiendish. But they are ALL entertaining, diverting and an enjoyable change from straight-up Sudoku. The paper is excellent quality and will stand up to multiple erasures. Each puzzle gets its own page so there is plenty of room to write in “small number” candidates. And, last but not least, a coil binding allows the book to open flat for easy reading and writing.
A hint to more advanced Sudoku solvers: Be VERY careful of the application of the “unique solution” rule to an individual grid in the 5-grid Samurai set up. I’ll leave it to you to figure out why it sometimes doesn’t apply!
A two page introduction, frankly, is of absolutely no value in helping puzzlers solve anything in this book. The reason for thatExactly as advertised!
A two page introduction, frankly, is of absolutely no value in helping puzzlers solve anything in this book. The reason for that is extraordinarily simple. The title is exactly correct. The book is all puzzles, straight sudoku, no variations and they're all difficult. They uniformly require one and, frequently, multiple applications of advanced techniques such as:
Crosshatching Single candidate squares Single square candidates Virtual crosshatching Naked pairs, triples and quads Row, column and box claims Remote pair chains Non-unique rectangles Bivalue Universal Grave X-wings, Swordfish and Jellyfish XY-wings XYZ-wings Conjugate Pair Chains Multi-colouring XY-chains
There is no instruction in the book at all that would help you with techniques at this level.
Paper quality is excellent and will take multiple erasures. The ring binding is wonderful and allow puzzles on both sides of the page to be solved on a perfectly flat surface. Good job, Mr Longo, and thank you.
Sometimes, even as a dedicated Sudoku fan, I get bored with the basic puzzle format. Even when confroA pleasing collection of standard Sudoku variants
Sometimes, even as a dedicated Sudoku fan, I get bored with the basic puzzle format. Even when confronted with the most devious, diabolically challenging Sudoku puzzle in the basic 9x9 format, I sometimes stop to think that the solution is only a matter of patiently applying the basic solving principles that are now old hat - x-wings, xy-wings, swordfish, uniqueness, claiming, hidden pairs and triplets, pair chains and so on. It sometimes becomes discouraging to think that the challenge now rests only with the patient application of well understood ideas.
So sometimes a book like SUPER SUDOKU VARIANTS is just what the doctor ordered. Here we have a collection of some of the well understood but enjoyable variations that most advanced solvers will have seen quite regularly:
Mega Sudoku (based on 12x12 grids) Irregular Sudoku Odd and Even Sudoku Diagonal Sudoku Killer Sudoku Multi Sudoku (based on multiple interlocking grids) Mega Multi Sudoku Combo Multi Sudoku (combining interlocking grids where one, for example, is a diagonal Sudoku and the second applies odd/even rules)
The puzzles are by no means consistently fiendish. In fact, some are downright simple. And, although I've yet to complete the entire book of puzzles, I have yet to encounter one that I would class as truly diabolical. The pleasure of this collection rests solely in the fact that they are variations.
With all Sudoku books, I also rate the book based on its physical characteristics. The paper quality must stand multiple erasures (it does) and the binding must withstand being opened and pressed out flat and hard (it does).
Enjoyable and recommended. In two days, I hop on a plane to Europe and this baby's coming with me to help while away the boring hours over that big ocean.
What an absolutely marvelous idea for Sudoku addicts like myself! Andrew Heron and Andrew Stuart, theChallenging puzzles and well-crafted instructions
What an absolutely marvelous idea for Sudoku addicts like myself! Andrew Heron and Andrew Stuart, the joint authors of this marvelous little puzzle compilation, explain the simple idea behind Extreme Sudokuy for Dummies:
" ... If you find yourself breezing through most Sudoku puzzles without even breaking a sweat, then this is the book for you."
The puzzles in this marvelous little collection start at difficult and move to downright fiendish (and trust me here, fellow puzzle solvers, "fiendish" in this book means EXACTLY what it says!). The teaching section of the book takes you through the simplest gridlock busting techniques to the most complex. Most of the advanced techniques (at least, those that I'm aware of) are briefly and reasonably clearly explained in the opening pages but it takes solving the actual puzzles to switch on that "aha" light bulb, to come to understand how the technique is applied in a full puzzle and to see how it fits into the context of a developing solution.
Heron and Stuart cover an enormous range of puzzle solving techniques including:
Crosshatching Single candidate squares Single square candidates Virtual crosshatching Naked pairs, triples and quads Row, column and box claims Remote pair chains Non-unique rectangles Bivalue Universal Grave X-wings, Swordfish and Jellyfish XY-wings XYZ-wings Conjugate Pair Chains Multi-colouring XY-chains
This is NOT a puzzle book for beginners but if you're already a competent solver looking for challenges and a way to stretch your puzzle solving abilities with more esoteric techniques, then look no further than this delightful book. Highly recommended. Even if you're already an accomplished solver familiar with these techniques, you'll find the puzzles more than sufficiently challenging to justify the cost of the book.
A handful of jigsaw and killer sudoku variations will round out your pleasure and stimulate the old synapses with a little variety.
The ratings in this little gem suggest that the puzzles range from "difficult" through "very difficult" culmiWell, they are difficult puzzles but ...
The ratings in this little gem suggest that the puzzles range from "difficult" through "very difficult" culminating with a collection of fiendish puzzles. True enough, but ...
The trouble with this set of puzzles is that Nishio's solutions focus too often on a series of the simplest of the advanced skills - box, row and column claims; and hidden doubles, triples and quadruples. Even in the "fiendish" puzzles, the solutions only rarely venture into the use of such tools as conjugate pair chains, x-wings, swordfish, or xy-chains. And, in those few instances that these tools are required to squeeze out the solution, the entire back of the puzzle is typically broken by a single application of the more advanced technique.
I confess that I haven't completed every solution in the book yet but I haven't found a single instance of a puzzle that required two really advanced techniques to reach a solution.
That said, I'm happy to recommend this particular book to advanced Sudoku freaks who enjoy a challenge. Of particular interest is the small set of Sudoku variations included at the end of the book. In the context of this review, it would simply take too long to describe the rules of the variants that Nishio has created but, (trust me here) these are far more devious and challenging than the regular puzzles.
Well done, Mr Nishio. I've still got more enjoyment to go in this book and I'd happily pick up any other puzzles books with your byline.
A path to Sudoku enlightenment for advanced learners!
What an absolutely marvelous idea for Sudoku addicts like myself! Paul Stephens, the author of thA path to Sudoku enlightenment for advanced learners!
What an absolutely marvelous idea for Sudoku addicts like myself! Paul Stephens, the author of this marvelous little puzzle compilation, explained the idea beautifully in his foreword:
" ... it can sometimes be hard to find the right puzzle for your skill level, or to give you practice in a particular solving technique. I've aimed to address that problem with this book. It contains 150 puzzles, hand-picked for the techniques needed to solve them. Each puzzle has a description giving you a guide to the major techniques required, along with tips on where to look within the puzzle and what to expect next."
The puzzles are graded from moderate to fiendish (and trust me here, fellow puzzle solvers, "fiendish" in this book means EXACTLY what it says!) and take you through the simplest gridlock busting techniques to the most complex. Each technique (with a few variations) is briefly explained in the opening pages but it takes solving the actual puzzles to switch on that "aha" light bulb, to come to understand how the technique is applied in a full puzzle and to see how it fits into the context of a developing solution.
Stephens covers an enormous range of puzzle solving techniques including:
Crosshatching Single candidate squares Single square candidates Virtual crosshatching Naked pairs, triples and quads Row, column and box claims Remote pair chains Non-unique rectangles Bivalue Universal Grave X-wings, Swordfish and Jellyfish XY-wings XYZ-wings Conjugate Pair Chains Multi-colouring XY-chains Forcing chains and loops Nishio Nice Loops
Even the easiest puzzles in the book (which were, in fact, somewhat lower than the solving ability I had already achieved) were made more challenging and more pleasurable in the doing because Stephens put in three solving time estimates - one for "genius", one for "expert" and one for "improving solvers". I got the greatest kick out of trying high speed solving to see if I could achieve the "genius" time estimate. In the earliest puzzles, I could come very close to the "genius" time and invariably beat the "expert" time. But it didn't take long for Stephens to feed me a dose of humility. By the time I got to the middle of the book, I was feeling more than adequately challenged and felt that I was improving my skills with every puzzle that I looked at.
This is NOT for beginners nor could it by any stretch be considered a SUDOKU FOR DUMMIES but if you're already a competent solver looking for challenges and a way to stretch your puzzle solving abilities with more esoteric techniques, then look no further than this delightful book. Highly recommended.
Not quite hard enough ... but great entertainment!
When you get right down to where the rubber hits the road, there are a very limited number of thingNot quite hard enough ... but great entertainment!
When you get right down to where the rubber hits the road, there are a very limited number of things that one can say about a book of sudoku puzzles.
That said, Michael Mepham's JUMBO SUDOKU CHALLENGE is a pleasantly diversified set of tantalizing Sudoku challenges. The paper quality is wonderful and stands up to multiple erasures. The oversize format allows for lots of temporary mini-number entries. The variety puzzles such as Killer Sudoku and Samurai Sudoku are plentiful and equally challenging. There are also enough of them that one can actually hone your skills and begin to develop solving strategies that are deeper and more subtle than blunt force. The book's thickness means that right-handed people will encounter some difficulties completing the puzzles on the left hand side of the page and vice versa. But, frankly, that's a minor cavil because adding something like a spiral binding to make the book lie flat would also increase the cost of the book substantially.
I just wish that "hard" consistently meant "hard" and "fiendish" always meant "fiendish". In this case, "hard" seems to mean "mostly hard but some medium" and "fiendish" means "mostly fiendish, but sometimes merely hard". Whatsamatter for you guys? I know you can build fiendishly difficult puzzles! Too bad, that! So I guess what might have been a five-star review is going to have to be limited to four.
By a geek, about geeks and, ultimately, for geeks!
OK, OK, I admit it! I've been called a geek by the best of them. Even my family has indulged in a cBy a geek, about geeks and, ultimately, for geeks!
OK, OK, I admit it! I've been called a geek by the best of them. Even my family has indulged in a covert chuckle a time or two over my off-the-wall hobbies which include (aside from reviewing books for Goodreads, of course) Sudoku and crosswords. I've even been known to take a crack at constructing a cryptic crossword from time to time. So you may well imagine my pleasure at coming across GRIDLOCK, an insider's look at what author Matt Gaffney describes as "the quirky subculture of America's crossword puzzles."
Sadly, the idea was considerably better than the execution. I think the problem rests with the fact that there just simply isn't enough interesting material to pad out an entire book on the topic. Gaffney touches on the difficulties of making a living in the field, the growth of the use of computers in the industry, the evolution of theme-oriented puzzles and the quality of the puzzles in a national publication such as The Sunday New York Times versus the weakness and repetitiveness of puzzles in some of the off-the-shelf magazines. He talks at some length about the attributes that both solvers and creators alike look for in a well-constructed grid. He talks about some of the personalities in the field and even goes so far as to give us a peek inside some of the conferences that puzzle creators attend.
But ,the bottom line is this ... even though I probably qualify for at least honourary membership in the geek's club, reading about them never really ultimately proved to be particularly compelling. Passably interesting, yes, but thrilling page-turning - sorry, no!
Recommended (if you're REALLY into crossword puzzles).
Associated Press put it very well - "Hunched over newspapers on crowded subway trains, sneaking secret peeks in tA somewhat surprising disappointment!
Associated Press put it very well - "Hunched over newspapers on crowded subway trains, sneaking secret peeks in the office, a puzzle-crazy nation is trying to slot numbers into small checkerboard grids." No doubt about it! Sudoku is a mainstream craze and when people like me get fanatical about their puzzles, they undoubtedly get better and better at it. We're all looking for more and more difficult puzzles to challenge ourselves. Sudoku aficionados call their favourite puzzles "fiendish".
Wouldn't you think that a book entitled PUZZLES FROM THE WORLD SUDOKU CHAMPIONSHIP compiled by one of the best known Sudoku puzzle editors in the world would qualify as a compendium of exquisitely difficult fiendish puzzles? I know I did.
Well ... think again! This is not it! The regular Sudoku puzzles barely reach medium difficulty and, in most cases, I was able to solve the puzzles without even adding any intermediate notations. Now to the book's credit, the Sudoku variants are clever and, in many cases, quite challenging. In one particular case (called Ball Sudoku), I have as yet been completely unable to find the solution or, for that matter, even a method of beginning to find a solution outside of brute force elimination (and we all know that is not considered a particularly elegant method of solving a puzzle).
So what do we have here? In summary, 2 stars for the regular Sudoku component of the book and 4 stars for the variations. We'll call it 3 stars on average and provide the warning that if you don't care for Sudoku variants, then you'd better avoid the book entirely.
What a pleasure! Wayne Gould has put together an immensely satisfying collection of puzzles that range from difficult to fiBingo ... we have a winner!
What a pleasure! Wayne Gould has put together an immensely satisfying collection of puzzles that range from difficult to fiendish using all of the available tricks - naked and hidden doubles, triples and quadruples, x-wings, swordfish, sometimes required singly and sometimes in combination to crack a single code!
When I reviewed his previous best seller EXTREME SU DOKU 1, I criticized the book physically because the paper quality was only a small leap up from coarse newsprint and simply didn't tolerate erasure. Et voilà, SU DOKU EXTRA HOT is on good quality low gloss paper that will tolerate multiple erasures just fine, thank you very much (Yes ... sadly, I still have to rub out my work from time to time)!
The binding is also strong enough to allow the book to be held wide open to allow easy access to the puzzle on the left hand side of the page.
Two thumbs up and highly recommended for all you Sudoku addicts like me.
Tired of looking for a sudoku challenge that's worthy of the skills you've developed? Or are you looking for a Finally ... "extreme" means "extreme"!
Tired of looking for a sudoku challenge that's worthy of the skills you've developed? Or are you looking for a way to step up your skills to a level that allows you to challenge fiendish puzzles through the application of pure logic? No guessing allowed?
Look no further. Wayne Gould's EXTREME SU DOKU will fit the bill!
A well written introduction will give the less accomplished puzzler all the information they need to look for exposed and hidden doubles, triples and quadruples, x-wings and the more difficult variation, swordfish. (Did you know that triples and quadruples were known as Gakkens and Nadakos?)
Read the introduction carefully and then dig into the puzzles. There is nothing for the faint of heart here. No gimmes or puzzles that whimper, roll over and effectively solve themselves. From the very first puzzle of the book, you'll find that at most two or three squares are what will present themselves as solvable by the usual first run through elimination techniques. After that, patience, logic and a careful application of more advanced techniques are needed to solve puzzles that frequently hinge on finding the single elusive square that will allow an entire puzzle to be unlocked.
Have fun ... but be warned! The paper is relatively poor quality and does not take erasure well. So think twice, write once and erase once only. You probably won't get another chance before the paper is ruined. A weak point in what would have otherwise been a five star recommendation.
Loading...
