Sudoku Players' Forum (clone)

Having read through the solvers' thread, I wonder what time is required to solve problems. I have seen pointers from "instantaneous" to "several days". I have personally never solved a single sudoku problem, but my small Delphi.Net app has yet to produce an answer in under a second running in debug mode (I didn't even bother to time it, but it's fairly near immediate, even to "very hard" problems".

My solution algorithm is much different than what is discussed in the solvers' thread. It is more like Dijkstraas' algorithm, i.e. T&E or backtracking as it is also known. I have discovered a few ways to speed up verification of 'legal' numbers, but I have not yet resorted to heavy optimization. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, but as I have yet to wait more than 1 sec for an answer I haven't bothered.

So, what I look for now is a set of {initial sudoku numbers, solution time} combos, so we can kick off a competition. Unless I am severly humiliated <g> I seriously consider blogging about my solution in due time.

Oh, Times #4. (Very hard) - Simple. Less than 0.1sec.

Looking forward to your worst case scenario

--j1