booya

Yes! A hard one!

Makes a change!

yaaay

Here is a little article I have been working on. Please let me know what you think. It is still a work in progress. http://www.crjones.us/sudoku-rankings.html

The end of the realm of the easy ones :)

Morning SPrite

Hi Debs :)

Have your children broken up from school for Easter yet?

No, they have changed Easter Holidays in Holland. They only are free on the easter days itself, and then begin May they have 2 whole weeks off.

Ours have two weeks off now and another week off or two (can't remember) at end of May...

They have May Day off too...

Totally different schedule of holidays, apparantly. Good we are not planning on going somewhere together, lol.

But Daughters starting her GCSE's so she'll be leaving school beg of May and just goign back for her exams..

lol

I'm off to Turkey on 24th ...

Great! Hope you have a marvelous time. What's GCSE?

Its General Certificate of Secondary Education... then depending on what grades they choose college or stay on at school or work if they want to..

Thanks :)
My kids are 8 and almost 10, so that would be called primary education, I think.

My youngest is 15... going on 38!

:)

Wooo

Done :) Pretty good one tonight

WTG sellout!

Gawd..that was quick!

Methinks the ladies chat too much, LOL.

Yeah well.... it's all fun...lol

I agree :D

Got to get my kids ready for school. Back later :)

Cya Sprite...tc

All finished.... :)

sheesh

wtg Debs

Thanks Cham....

8s are nasty

Just read Christophers page re Rankings.... I still don't get it... I must just be thick or sommat!

Anyway who cares about rankings...It's only a game.. a bit of a laff...

just read it now

You understand any of it?

nice system, Christopher!

Obviously you do....lol

it sounds better than what these guys set up here

i agree, debs. i enjoy playing the game - who cares what my rank is ;)

Glad someone does bt.... Just file me under idiot I don't care.....lol

naaah

you always finish way sooner

than me

you're no idiot

But then I've just had a nights sleep...

Oh I am... I was married once... so must be!

hahaha

Well twice actually so that makes me insane!

I'm a natural night owl.

I hope your head don't twist round!

only when I'm ticked off

lol

Well I'd better shut up and leave you all to your game... have fun ...

thx ;)

naaah

talk's good

Fun is good :D

It can be.....:p

Right I'm gonna go tangle or sommat... Take care, be happy, smile... and don't take all this too seriously..Lifes too short ((((hugs rom England)))

I wonder... I have been insanely happily married for almost 10 years now and don't want to stop... what does that make me? ;)

Ermmmm.........

Dillusional!.....lol

sprite - what's your secret?

see-ya' Debs

They live in seperate houses maybe!

It was nice being married... just hated the husband bit....

Communication. And humour. We quit the "you must understand without me saying" game long ago. And we laugh a lot.

ahh! good idea. i need to oust that game too ;) sage advice.

I used to laugh at my ex a lot...

haha debs

Bless him..... with a brick preferably......

ok..must go cuddle

will return in the morrow

Aww... your hubby?

aww k g'night :)

sorta..yeah

Lol Debs!
Another advice that is actually fun: read a book by the Peases. 'Why men don't listen and women can't read maps' is one of them. It's funny and you will recognise a lot of the mechanisms that make you fight... and after reading it you will accept that men... well... are just men. And women... errrr... are just women. We speak different languages, our brains work in a different way and we must learn to tell eachother what WE think is obvious as hell :)

ni-nights

Cuddles. Those work miracles too :)

I read Men are from Mars.. Women from Venus.... Just never figured out who the hell decided to shove us all on earth!

oh i wish there were cuddles where i'm going in a few mins. thanx for the book advice debs, i'm looking it up on amazon ;)

i mean, sprite, haha, not debs - ouie i need to get to bed

lol

Yeah, that's a popularised copycat thing of the work of the Peases. They did an extensive and scientific research on the differences between men and women. One of their one-liners: "Making love is what women do while they are being f*cked by a men"

So you looking for a man bt?

Or while women decide what colour to paint bedroom!

lol no, i've got one. NO MORE MEN PLEASE. lol that's a good quote, sprite

What is it about Men that bring out the worst in women!

Them having a pulse maybe!

sounds scientific alright

Only jokingggggggggggggg.......

Well kinda...lol

lol

Oh I love men really....

Just detest the ones I married.....

in the immortal words of *several women in my acquaintance together* "if *insert husband here* ever dies and i start considering marriage again, SHOOT ME IN THE HEAD"

lol

We have this running gag at home. I used to get mad at my husband when he couldn't find something AGAIN. Once I said: "You just don't know how to LOOK for things."
He said: "I am GREAT at looking for things. I just stink at finding them."
So now he calls me and says: "I have looked for my glasses. Could you please find them now?"

My ex doesn't like it cos I wont speak to him.. Told him I'm quite happy to do so through a medium!

lol@Sprite

Must be some men on here keeping very quiet.....

They are solving a sudoku. So they don't chat. It's just us women who do everything at the same time and wonder why on earth men don't do the same :)

They can't multi-task...

Well unless it's watching football and drinking a beer!

sprite thats whats called a"man look"

Nope. And we can't tunnelvision.

anything and girl watching... we're very good at that :)

I wish I ex had had tunnel vision when I tried to ram him from the side in my car!

LOL! So true. Comes naturally, right? ;)

ahh well. g'night all :)

Night bt :)

nope... skill carefully developed during high school. but it stays with you for life

Definition of a batchelor... some bloke waiing to make a womans life hell!

Nite BT.... enjoy your cuddles....lol

Good work, nitrox :)
Actually, my love and I are making eachother's life more fun... it can be done, you know :D

I'm pleased for you Sprite... It's nice to know you and your hubby are happy...

Am really gonna go now...lol Cya all tomorrow ((hugs))

I just count my blessings ;)
My former boyfriend drank, so I also know about frustrating relationships... and wanting to kill him... twice if possible ;)

Done! :) Bye all.

I'm so sorry I arrived late for this chat!

and now I am hading to bed.

heading to bed. too much port tonight, m'afraid :)

not a bad thing!

only when typos matter!!

and that's only in babble not here ;)

I've quit babble since this site opened - quicker, most days, and my brain is more sudoku-oriented anyway

ah well then don't worry about tpyos!

*grin

this wasn't that hard, considering its rated "hard"

good morning guys!

I do this first and if I've time i go to Babble

hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Hi Mallika sen

hi

good orning

I'm new at this. Can someone share a strategy once you've done all the "obvious"?

good morning

Try http://shrinkster.com/dmq

morning caderoux

morning

Okay, on the top line the second digit could be a 3,5, or 8; the 3rd digit can be a 3 or 8; and the last digit can be a 5 or 8; how can I deduct which goes where or do I simply need more info?

last digit can also be a 3 ...

no it can't, because there's a 3 in the 6th row

mark em all up wuth shift-click green

kadee ??? are we looking at the same square here... I thought you meant c2 r3 ... the 6th row doesn't affet it... yet!

i don't think someone can really teach you how to play in these chat messages, kadee. I looked at shrinkster.com/dmq from caderoux's link and it was really helpful.

thanks

thanks for the tip on the shift click green!

we can help explain those techniques but hard to know your exposure, so I gave the link - this puzzle not reuiring any advanced techniques *yet)

I'm having trouble with the intermediate techniques LOL

;-)

I wish there were four puzzles a day, one for every difficulty level...

done is about an hour

maybe if it did auto marking, I could get through 4 here in a day

I did the medium yesterday... not sure if I've finished a hard yet!

Ah but that's why it's a challenge :)

I wouldn't stand a chance of 4 a day

I am an addict what can I say

Haha

I find the mechanics tedious

I'm basically down to one a day - here - I justify the extra time here by not doing any others

Caderoux, if you use checkmarks do you find it easier to use definite possibilities, definitely nots or both?

possibilities only - today I ended up yping into simple sudoku after marking up because there was too much green - then a naked pair showed up and the whole thing collapsed

What I do is try to get as many as possible before marking up

Then I mark up

:-O I downloaded simple sudoku but I can't figure how to do your own puzzle......

Then I look for locked candidates and pairs

When eveything is guaranteed to be marked up, and I get a single - I shift click to remove hat digit from the other cells in row column and box.

I have been most successful recently by inserting definites then using one number at a time and marking it up and looking for patterns etc.... doesn't help much with doubles though

yup

I often try one option for a double then it goes wrong further down the line and I forget what i was trying :\ !!!

as more green singles appear, they cause more and more green singles to appear. once it is all green singles, I convert to black

hi and bye :) nice puzzle! running over to babble now!

never do that

Hi and bye Atlante

but you could use red to do that without losing all your markup

'mornin all

yeah, that's true

morning lamancha

easy hard or nightmare hard today?

easy hard

as far as typing into simple sudoku - click cell, press number, repeat ten go to file...start

caderoux, how do you put this grid into SS... if i click new it just puts one of it's own choice in!

thanks, you preempted my question ;0

new is a whole new randomly generated puzzle.

ah!! <blush>

done

night

night

damned! this sucks

this looked easy at first glance...

morning

Hi folks .. my first msg, been here for a few weeks tho!

hi Adr41n

Should be working, but they've broken the network at work so it's more of a notwork!

bad news for the business, good news for you

Nothing else to do but try this...

have fun adrA1n

just finished have a great day

you too

thanks ldyvxn, but it's a monday, the chances are slim

trioptimum: at first sight it looked very easy...

well, it's like this, i've put in all possibilities and still can't do it. wot to do now?

Save it and make a guess.

nooo

but guesses never work!

you never need to guess

guessing shouldnt be necessary...

Well if you keep startin' from the checkpoint, sooner or later you'll make a good guess.

No, it shouldn't. But if she can't work it out from possibilities then it's an option.

you may as well use a program to do it then

if you're just going to brute-force it

look at the probabilities, based on the numbers of probabilities, there's only a certain amount of boxes available, you can rule out numbers like that

http://www.sudokuoftheday.com/pages/technique
s-6.php

i'm off again - missed one

in other words, you can't have 4 "potentials" for 3 boxes

still managed to go wrong some where. off to do some jobs but will be back later!

YAY done!!!!

my quickest ever!!

congratulations

ah, i've gone wrong

hmm, hard

wd Ginger

hmm, the start isnt too hard

start comes easy then things get a little tougher.

ok, it is slowing down a bit

A couple more 8s would be nice

btw.: what means "CT" (after the hour). I know for example that "GMT" stands for "Greenwich Mean Time" and "CET" for "central European Time" but what means "CT"?

Central Time in the USA.

oh i got it.

central time I believe

"central time" . oha. thanks. where is that? new york?

4 squares left and I've got an error... grr.

Chicago probably

Chicago probably

remember to think like an american "central" means central USA (like there is somewhere else?)

Heh. Although make that the eastern part of central; the western part of central is covered by Mountain Time.

Mind you I always though it was amusing that North Western Uni was in Chicago - well, it was "Western" at the time ;-)

Did someone say earlier that they had 4 squares and got a problem? Me too.

ya... sucks

column 1,7 1,9 5,3 4,9

Err, I don't understand that notation. =P

col 1 row 7

1 row 9

Ahh, I see... yeah, those.

you had the same probs?

Oh, wait. 1,7 and 1,9 were probs, but not the other two. Can't remember now. *gone back to checkpoint*

I started over...

checkpoint bleh

Ah, got it. Done - easy, apart from that blunder.

oh thanks for the information about chicago time :-) ANFSCD: i think the puzzle today was a lot easier that the one yesterday.

same for me.. easier from yesterday

done

that was pretty straight forward

Hi all

hi

that was actually surprisingly easy

it's not striking me that way. :)

Got all the 1s in 10 seconds

the 1s went fast for me too

I only ever put in possible numbers when there are only 2 options in the cell

same here

otherwise i get confused

I don't normally put in possibilities because it gets too crowded!

Straight and simple is the way to go, for me..

it also becomes obvious that 2 numbers can only be in 2 places and therfore no other numbers can go there

time to do some cleaning up before bed

Lovely, I do a "Hard-3" puzzle and my "Cream of the crop" number goes down.

Have a great night

Illogical stat for a puzzle based on logic. Oh well.

Lol.

also my "Village Elders" number went from 22 to 24 after doing a 3-hard. Do I misunderstand how it's working?

I dunno how it all works. It's too confusing for me!

maybe they're added after midnight? cuz yesterday my ranking was off, and today it added a 2, which was the size of yesterday's medium.

or maybe you have to pay the $$$ to get the rankings to work right :-)

Could be. Doesn't explain why your Cream of the Crop went down after completing a 3-Hard though.

oh well. at least the sudoku is fun

Lol. Indeed. You tried today's Babble yet?

doobie doobie doo

Lol.

Sweet, got all the 1s

It's starts so easily. Although I think the fact that I keep getting distracted is making this a lot worse than it should be.

Holy smokes

Not right now

this one seems very hard

I can see a lot of green on my screen

stuck

Done!

done, it actually wasn't bad once I had all the greens out

done :-)

done

done...

hisnthartman

hidfgdfgdfdfgg

Done. I don't think this should have been rated hard.

hi

hello

jdog, if you're still there: the rankings are updated when the puzzle flips, not instantly, so the three points you earned today will be registered in the rankings when the new puzzle is posted.

truth

done

finished yeah

Some more thoughts about the ranking. If you get a chance, give it a look and tell me what you think. It's still a work in progress. http://www.crjones.us/sudoku-rankings.html

Hi All. I am a newbie.

Welcome!

hi UD :)

gee... my first online sudoku and I get a hard one...

this one was much easier than hard, but that's ok because it adds 3 to my ranking. yay!

Hello there.

tomahawk, hey

hi tomahawk and spazzy guess who!!!

hey frogprincess

how ya doin

spazzy's spazzin out

spazzin why?

sorry, otherpeople on this site....

thus the name spazzy, duh!!!

riight...

of course

i thought this was supposed to be sudoku you guys!

oh yeah

oh yeah

it is

yeah, so get to work hawk!

it is

ok im totally confused... im outta here

see you guys a

see you guys later

yeah totally lost

Evening all : )

Hey babe! (((xx))) : )

{{{xx}}} : ) Hi babe

How're you feeling?

Better : ) Still a bit dodgy at times but they are getting less, thanks

How's this one looking??

there are going to be tears before this is over... : /

Hmm...8's a bit thin on the ground...

'guess' what i'm going to do } )

you have no patience at all, do you?? : D

I do, I do...I just don't like starting at subscripts looking for enlightenment! Instinct serves as well as logic sometimes : )

even if it defeats the object?

Especially if it defeats the object : D

lol! ; )

you know, I get the feeling that I'm missing something really obvious on this one : /

Hmmm...too many multiple choices and no obvious answer. The 'shouldn't have to look beyond your next move' argument is skating on thin ice at this point... : /

ah... done finally

wtg levi : )

YAY!!! Done.

Woot! : D

See, a good guess works every time ; )

...how'd you know??

I'm fitted with International Woot Recognition System : )

hee hee...know me that well already babe? ; )

have to go babe, K wants to watch a movie : )

OK, i'm off to watch the footy in a mo too : ) Have fun xx

you too : ) xx

Not yet...

...get away. It's Tron isn'tit?? ; )

Joke Hursh...lol. Maybe, but I can't see that move : D

tron is that guy that got sucked in a videogame

Blad, that's the one. The sort of film that could really benefit from a CGI makeover : )

Hursh, I just like to poke the odds with a cattle prod } D

figured it out

woohoo!!!

*bzzzt!* *smell of burning maths* *lopes into sunset with smug grin & marlboro*

did somebody say Uwe Boll?

no tron

well, i got all the 1s

wow i finally did it!

good job :)

I'm going to have a hard time with this one I think

i am already having a hard time with it

that's because you're too busy being distracted by me over AIM :-)

that one was really hard for me

Meh...

what the hell

having trouble?

No

what's wrong?

I was just saying what the hell (because there's someone on here named wth)

Oh

k :-)

I called you a dork, but it cut me off

done :)

phew

done

finished, whoohoo!!

yay finally

Anyone here have this guy's book and have an opinion?
http://www.howtosolveeverysudokupuzz
le.com/expr1.php

His site reads like an infomercial. I'm sure it has some good information in it but I'm not sure if it includes anything you couldn't already find on the internet.

i've considered buying it in the past. what's he charging now, $17

i figure if he's a sham, then if nothing else, you could always just plaster it all over the web.

true

done :)

christopher, I've looked at your ranking discussion page. I would like you to explane, please, why 0.8 and 0.2 multiplication in your preposed algorithms?

exuse my typos, English is not my first language

Pretty much just using the hints from searching with google. Like: http://www.sudoku.org.uk/readertips.htm

Well, that was a nice easy one to start with! Do they get more difficult sometimes?

interesting, the funky shaped puzzles! Printed out a "gentle" level puzzle to try later tonight...

The puzzle is flashing in Firefox

It looks like it is flashing the chat window over the puzzle every 5 seconds.

hi gray..u got to upgrade ur firefox

hiya again scribble

and everyone

hi rachael :)

hiya mama

It should probably be backwards compatible...

omg i actually finished it! :)

do you ever have trouble caching your checks, dr_g? (groan)

hehe

i'm just catching up on the ones i missed

Just curious gray...are you using a laptop?

Just curious gray...are you using a laptop?

I had the same prob, until I plugged in my laptop - then it was fine

yay done

Done! only had to make a few checkpoints ane only two rollbacks

having a hard time with this one...i've already cleared my green numbres then started working on it again

never mind. done

:)

good job chica!

Keep at it, british16chica

done

Nailed That Puppy!

Rank me, baby!

good one fresca, limer

TX, LeslieAnn

i'm done too! no guessing!

This one's driving me nuts.

yul ... you still here?

I used the .80 and .20 to give more emphasis to the puzzles completed in the last 30 days while still giving some weight for long term commitment. For example, if a player is having problems with Expert level puzzles, but then start getting them the rank will start going up.

Ok, I just thought there is a special reason for 8/2 ratio which I've missed.

AT LAAASST!

it was a little playing with it to get the right ratio. I started at 50/50 but that was giving wierd results. I was tempted to go 75/25 but it was a little to heavy on the entire record.

I am big fan of simple design.

the formula may still need some tweaking but I think it is headed in the right direction. I just wanted to put it out there to start some dicussion and get people thinking of some possibilities.

Scampers, Welcome to IronSudoku!

blah

heh

I hope that fairer formula will be found :)

me too ... it is disappointing everytime you comoplete a puzzle and your rank goes down.

it's time for me to go to sleep. buy

cya

Morning all

morning

been reading all the analysis of the stats?

Hiya Cad.. How's you?

not bad

I have....... don't understand a single word but I read it...lol

was all this raised over in babble before?