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weaselweader's review
5.0
A 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.
Paul Weiss
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.
Paul Weiss
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