May 29, 2005

• I am fucking addicted. I'm in the middle of a super sudoku right now: a hexadecimal sudoku. Like, ow.
• and northern exposed says sudoku.
• I really suck at this :(
• At first I thought these puzzles were constrained such that you could just iterate through them a few times, using only local information and find the answer. Then I found that sometimes you need more global information to solve them - i.e. not only what was going on in *one* particular square, but paying attention to the other squares within its influence. So after solving one of these by hand, and then writing a bit of matlab code to solve one using the simplest possible algorithm, I gave up on them. Sort of satisfying, but not quite. I put forward nonograms as a slightly more satisfying version - in the end you get a picture from the coloured in squares.
• Ke?
• "matlab code" huh??? to do a puzzle???? yikes
• I second lamearse's nonograms.
• Very fun. Thanks, PJJ.
• So after solving one of these by hand, and then writing a bit of matlab code to solve one using the simplest possible algorithm, I gave up on them. Sort of satisfying, but not quite. This is why we can't have nice things.
• MonkeyFilter: Sort of satisfying, but not quite.
• oops, wait a minute...was that "matlab" or "methlab"???
• Lots more nonograms @ griddlers.net.
• THese make me insanely angry.
• Actually... I know jack squat about Matlab, but it seems like a sensible way to tackle these puzzles. I guess there are still crosswords for us non-engineers.
• I showed these to #2 when a mefite on my LJ friends' list posted about them there. He shrugged and said, "I could write a script for that." Sometimes I wonder why we're married. :)
• tracicle, if you check the Mefi FPP on sudoku, that's what half of them said. Mebbe you should spring 5 bucks for #2? ;)
• They're all budding script writers over on MeFi, but I'm fucked if any of them will ever actually make a good film. Police Academy 6? Give me a fucking break!
• 8.
• tracicle, I challenge your #2 to write one which will solve the more difficult puzzles. I wrote another solver in C++ to use as much of the "first level" of logic as possible. It will solve any of the beginner/moderate ones in about a tenth of a second. However, with the more difficult puzzles you need to start a search tree and start pruning it as you reach dead ends. (e.g. the diabolical ones in here). My next solution will involve genetic algorithms.
• press release: "Pneumonia Almost Stopped my Lungs but Su-Doku Puzzles Kept my Brain Buzzing" Rayzee was recently the victim of an "enforced rest" thanks to Pneumonia. He found lying in a hospital bed with nothing to do except crosswords can be tedious. Then his wife Lynn took him two Su-Doku puzzles from the Times Newspaper...his life changed! (PRWEB) May 28, 2005 -- He became so engrossed in these extra-ordinary puzzles that the time just flew by. He planned to make these puzzles available to the Internet community just as soon as he got home. Guess what? His Doctor forbade him to return to work for four weeks. "It was bliss! I couldn't believe I had the time I needed to develop my idea" said Rayzee. So, an "enforced rest" enabled him to build a web-site devoted entirely to Su-Doku. He felt a Monthly Su-Doku Puzzle Magazine would be 'just what the Doctor ordered', and he was right. The interest in these fiendish puzzles, particularly in the UK, is overwhelming. Almost all the national daily newspapers carry a Su-Doku Puzzle nowadays. It appears that most people who try one become hooked, even children think they are great...not least because they are good at them and frequently beat their parents to the finish. Su-Doku Monthly provides 120 puzzles ranging in difficulty from 'Easy' through 'Medium', 'Hard' all the way to brain-numbing 'Expert'. There are enough puzzles to keep a whole family busy for a month. Who needs television when you can play Su-Doku? Rayzee is the Founder of Rayzee International and has had an Internet presence since 1996. He is currently well on the way to a full recovery from Pneumonia and he is looking forward to making alot of new friends with Su_Doku.
• lamearse, I'll ask him. But right now he's building us a TiVo box as well as building his Gameboy robot, both of which are possibly more fun for him. :)
• there was a sudoku competition offered by the oxford university computing lab this year.
• lamearse, it appears that nonograms could be np-complete
• roryk - it appears that they *are* np-complete. which makes solving by logic alone impossible for the difficult ones (although the easy/moderate ones are easily solved using logic). The harder problems require some hypothesise/test iterations in order to prune the possibilities in order to get to a solution. Instead of programming a game-tree-search algorithm, i spent a couple of hours writing a genetic algorithm type solver. It currently often gets stuck in a locally optimal zone, but I think I can fix that. And again, I've spent more time on this post than is sane.