done

Done

Easiest Expert ever...

one 50:50 guess and hey presto - done

WHOA... did I just finish an Expert without any greens?? What is the world coming to... cats sleepin' with dogs...

human sacrifice... mass hysteria :)

and wtg readhead

teehee - thanx sprite

Enod.

gtw

easy for an expert

typical medum in my experience

now back to bed

go

33 filled and i think greens will not help - it looks like a forcing chain, but ill autofill anyway - just in case...

crap - missed one digit, but yup - time for a "guess"/force.

done - when my first try worked, i checked the alternate - and it did fail - so only the single solution. as everyones said, very easy for an expert.

Yeah, I did the first 34 squares easily enough (seemed much too easy for an expert). No need to guess after that, though, or even do a forcing thingy - I put in greens, then there's an obvious xy-chain with the two remaining squares in the left-hand column and the two remaining squares in the central row. Looking at those together, a 3 can be eliminated in the bottom square, and after that it's all very easy.

proud of myself. few greens. no guessing, done!

Errr... surely that should have been an easy and not an expert?

tot he 34 stage fairly quickly but will I need greens...fingers crossed I won't ;o)

got to the

me too...

hmmm stuck

made an educated guess and was lucky....very simple up to that point.

1 guess and done.

this is going too fast

the expert puzzles are the easiest ones! weird...

go

done wow! easy!

damn it, I have 17 left - haven't used greens so far and now I'm stuck

woot!

AAAaaaaaaaaaackkkkkkkkkkkKK! an expert... must get bigger mug of coffee...

awesome, an expert

Just like chebuctonian I have 17 left without greens and now I'm stuck!

if you have the same seventeen left that i did, then no matter which one you put in the middle left, the bottom middle will end up the same way, but one will work and one will not.

guessing is cheating.

visualizing!!!

the Elaborate Game of What-If

Currently need 27...no greens yet

hah! unique rectangle, my favorite

??

Haven't heard of that one before

umm.. ok, if you have four corners of a rectangle, and three of them contain the same pair

the fourth corner must contain neither element of the pair

otherwise the solution to the puzzle would not be unique.

ahhh ... sort of an extension of naked pair then?

i should say, three corners have only two possibilities

PS: nice cat

i guess... a variation on it.

although with naked pairs, the idea is that those elements are unavailable for other spaces

in a unique rectangle, the only thing that makes it work is the assumption that there is only one solution to this puzzle

which has never failed me in the past

PS - thanks. she thinks so too. Yours is also quite handsome

true... I am not very good with higher level tools yet

His name is Hodge, named after Dr. Johnson's cat.

mine is princess phoenix arizona.

Ah... the name fits her perfectly. Our last cat was an orange tabby.

big green eyes on yours!

They have gone more amber now, he was only 2 months when I took that pic. If he sat on the laptop now, you wouldn't see the laptop. He's about 10 months now and 11 pounds, very long and tall.

wow, big for so young!

finished with this one. have many archives to do, though

He is a rescue-shelter cat. I am starting to think the was a Maine Coon in his family tree somewhere not too long ago! You cant see it, but his most adorable feature is the tip of his tail. It is the only white on him, about half an inch at the very tip.

Take care & thanks for the rectangle tip.

hi krys10

he has some very distinctive markings, for sure

hi peep!

i'm just logging onto IM

i have a week's worth of archives to catch up on here

ok

have discovered a new online game obsession

Difficulty score 29. It took some greens with 17 left and then I saw a forcing chain that finished it off.

hello everybody

that was easy without any traces of green

I must be using the same methodology as the Dr below, as I got down to the last 17 without greens, and all but one of those left was pairs, so tracing out the remainder was pretty quick. For an "expert", this was an easy 5 points.

mislabelled?

Yes and no. It is very easy, but it requires an advanced solution technique that causes Dr. G to classify this one as an expert.

Go. I hope it doesn't take too much time. I think I've thought of a technique I've never used before.

What's the name of this advanced technique?

And "Go"

I don't know the name. But I think it is something like a shark or fish of some kind. And I'm not sure it is entirely logical. So I wanted to encounter it in a game.

Swordfish?

Could be. I've never studied these things.

Okay. I've finished all the easy cross hatches. I've only got 17 cells left to fill. Looks like a good opportunity for something more advanced.

Well, it was easy. Lots and lots of cross hatches. Then looking ahead at a trail that didn't seem to have any conflicts, so I guessed it and it was finished.

Piece of pie ..

had the same experience as hunter - would be interested in anybody explaining how to deduce from the 17 cell point, rather than guess

by far the easiest Exp yet.

Ok I am now at the 17 left mark as noted earlier

that had to be mislabeled

Wow. Done.

That was cool :)

hya ever1 ma name is lucy

got ta go for ma tea cya

The trick to making progress from the 17 cell point is a technique called XY chains at http://www.scanraid.com/sudoku.htm. I just refer to it as a forcing chain, but that could describe several other similar techniques.

go

done

wooooooohooooooo - no greens - i must be brilliant !!!!!

okay - so after looking back in the chat - i see we are all brilliant, LOL !!!

nothing but eliminating pairs, but hey, if it's says 'expert', well then, so it must be :))

Done! Easy! No guessing.

easy 5 points

hi all

hello moe

hmm... i'm at the "17 left" point too

i was too... i believe "forcing chains" means guessing, so that's what i did :)

hows your day off leslieann?

shouldn't you be working?

I AM!

oh, very hard too, i see

I'm building a server right now

Having read everyone saying "17 is a sticking point", I've been waiting for myself to get there - and now I'm at 16. Odd. :D Wonder how quickly the rest will come in -- not stuck, just amused while counting empties.

Done! That was much faster than I expected, having struggled bad with expert ones here in the past. :)

congrats brian

Thanks :)

got it. i hate forcing chains!

isn't it really like guessing? "if this goes here, then this would go here..."

Yay! Done!

Yes, it's guessing.

And it is solvable without guessing.

fucks

yay. easy. one guess.. (and I guessed right)

I've seen a lot tougher Expert puzzles

i agree

I keep waiting for the trap...doesn't seem to be one.

well it starts very easily ...

Yep...hit that sticking point at 17...

21

21

done

easy!!!

Bummer, no more archives. Waht to do, what to do, what to do.......

*sigh* everyone is forcing chains to solve the last bit of this one.

Of course it's easy when you cheat.

bad kid lol

cheat?

Learn how to do sudoku and you'll never need to guess.

yah u go to a site and it wil tell u the answer

just what i was going to ask, andy

That takes all the fun out!

not that ive used it...

don't see the point in that... the challenge is the fun, no?

lol

fastest one I've ever done!

What is "forcing chains"?

slight distinction, but _I_ call forcing chain where i know that the answer in one square is A or B. i choose A, then follow the logic of that decision until it either works (solves the whole puzzle) or causes a conflict somewhere-down-the-line.

Ah....... guessing then.

a guess is where you have no-idea and just choose something and hope - without following the process to a conclusion. it "feels" different...

Oh man. You need a shovel.

yup. :) feel free to call it guessing...

The variety of forcing chain that applies to this puzzle is described at http://www.scanraid.com/sudoku.htm as an XY-chain.

You should follow the Toa of Yogi......... "When you come to the fork in the road, take it".

Who needs "check points" when you can print your screen?

why would you want to waste paper?

not to mention ink or paper?

I have always wondered why the "print screen" button has never, on any machine, actually called the connected printer to print what was on the screen.

it used to back in the old DOS days

and on some unix like systems

Those were before my time.

Well, I use a unix variant now, but print screen does not print the screen.

i'm talking about back when it was CLI only

of course.

Actually I'm not hooked up to a printer, so I couldn't test that if I wanted to.

hah