Great Expectations.

Is what I am attempting to show you going to enable you to solve any Sudoku Puzzle? Unlikely but, bear with me. Firstly, what do I consider to be an Expert puzzle?

The UK newspaper the Guardian, is published six day a week – Monday to Friday and Saturday’s edition contains an Expert Sudoku puzzle. This is more advanced than the Hard puzzles published during the week. These Expert puzzles are not the hardest puzzles you will ever meet or perhaps have already met. Harder puzzles could be ‘Chess Grand Master’ standard. Amazingly, as the concept of Sudoku is quite basic, you could be misled into believing that solving them is also simple given enough practise. This is not the case, so one brilliant aspect of Sudoku is that some of the devilish examples are enough to keep intellects of Chess Grand Masters engaged.

Given the above, what I would like to share with you is the ability to confidently solve Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert puzzles. I won’t suggest I’ll make it easy, because little would be gained from that, I do plan to make it possible and thereby provide intellectual stimulation and a sense of achievement.

Now, on the topic of achievement, it is highly plausible that lots of people, dare I say it of greater years, attempt to solve Sudoku puzzles to exercise their brains in later life – a perfectible reasonable activity. However, what happens when things don’t quite go to plan, instead of solving that ‘easy’ puzzle it leaves you frustrated, and worst still questioning your present mental ability. This has happened to me and… I recall having dinner with a gentleman in the middle of the Atlantic (albeit aboard P&O’s Azura),he shared his exasperation at not being able to solve the ‘Puzzle of the Day’. Clearly, to me anyway, this was troubling him and probable casting somewhat of a shadow of that day of his holiday. Unless you’re a Grand Master I would treat any Sudoku puzzle with a level of respect – an indication of the degree of hardness should be provided by the publisher!

Me, my experience – naively I thought that to be able to solve any Sudoku it was just a matter of practise. How hard can it be? Turns out – very hard, sometimes. Of course, it’s related to your intellect – suppose they were two types of people; geniuses and people who must work hard at emulating genius, I’d be in the latter category. The point I’d like to make here is that, while it is very noble to try and reinvent the wheel it is rather silly given the constraints of time. What I have attempted to do is achieve a balance between reinvention and merely regurgitating the ideas of others.

(The main source of the puzzles I will share is the Guardian puzzles. I have used a programme written in BBC Basic, yep BBC Basic for µsoft Windows! Written by a retired Professional BBC Engineer, namely R.T. Russel, assisted by M.G. Marten. In addition, I have taken comfort from Sudocue an example of a web site where someone has devoted a lot of time and effort sharing their thoughts and experiences. You will also encounter ‘Tricky’ puzzles published weekly in the Waitrose Weekend newspaper which is free from Waitrose branches or online.)

First draft 23^rd April 1958, RdB.