Sudoku Players' Forum (clone)

Just a personal opinion: the Samurai Su Dokus - oh, they can be done all right, but I think they're pretty tedious and time-wasting, and lack the elegance of Wayne's puzzles. The Japanese are welcome to them. I'm sticking with the original versions. Other drawbacks are that they are difficult to copy onto one's own working grid and any amount of reworking or erasing soon rubs through the flimsy newsprint. Not for me.

Pleased to hear it, Bernard. I'm glad we're not in competition for the i pod in today's competition.

The above was me, by the way. Forgot to log on.

Ah! but I did mail it! - sorry, but I won't bother in future. I've got plenty too much to do to waste time on elaborate war play. Just look at the state of my garden, or the accumulations in my sink, for a start.

Haven't managed to do it yet Will buy the Times tomorrow to see where I'm going wrong. Having like numbers on the same lines is putting me right off. Usually do one sudoku a day to keep the brain cells in order, in doing so the crossword has fallen by the wayside.

Bernard Stay wrote:Just a personal opinion: the Samurai Su Dokus - oh, they can be done all right, but I think they're pretty tedious and time-wasting, and lack the elegance of Wayne's puzzles. The Japanese are welcome to them. I'm sticking with the original versions. Other drawbacks are that they are difficult to copy onto one's own working grid and any amount of reworking or erasing soon rubs through the flimsy newsprint. Not for me.

I agree Bernard, its not worth the hassle. Excellent idea to add something different to the game though, which is something I always respect.

I did it on Saturday afternoon/evening. I think it took about 1 1/2 hours ish. Forget to email the answer though.

I had to use pencil marks and solved the bottom right grid first, but needed to look at the whole puzzle. I agree it was like 5 connected difficult ones.

jonallen1966 wrote:I've put a scan of it on my website if you'd like to see it
www.allenmannaro.com/Samurai_Sudoku.jpg

Thanks for posting this. Didn't manage to get Saturday's Times, and heard about the Samurai from a few friends. However, from your scan, they appear to be show partially shaded squares, with what looks like pencilmarks in them. E.g. Top right su doku, column 5, row 2. Looks shaded with a small 8 in it (which can't be, because there is already an 8 in that row). There appear to be 4 of these shaded squares in total. Could someone clarify what they are?

Would like to transcribe this puzzle into MS Excel, and print it off to have a go.

Thanks.

Kevin.

Tabber, the four shaded cells contain the four key digits that you send in when entering the competition, to save you typing out the whole grid. For example, A8, B3, C7, D2.

Ah, thanks possum. Sounds like I can ignore those for the purposes of just trying the puzzle.

If anyone wants this Samurai Su Doku in Excel format, let me know, and i'll send it to you (unstarted of course). I think you can probably just click on my name to email me.

So far, I am enjoying it. The overlapping sections are very interesting. Rather than using typically a row and a couple of columns to exclude candidates as you would with 1 puzzle, you may be using 1 row and column from one Su Doku, and another row or column from the neighbouring one.

WOW. just completed my first Samurai sudoku and it was intense. Took me over 4 hours, with lots of breaks due to brain fatigue!! It was fun so thanks for posting it. I am in the USA and we don't have sudoku's in many newspapers here, nevermind the challenging samurai ones. Anyway, after I realized you need clues from the overlapping grids to solve the corner boxes of the center grid, it was pretty much just chug and plug. Where can I get more Samurai sudokus?

shedoku wrote:Where can I get more Samurai sudokus?

Fancy trying this rather large one?

wow, now that is what I call a monumental one.
I wish I had the time to attempt something like that.

shedoku wrote:Where can I get more Samurai sudokus?

Here are a few from The Times that have been mentioned on this forum.

28 May
4 June
11 June
18 June
25 June
2 July
9 July
16 July
23 July
30 July