Start

Done. ng, ng.

For a second there I actually believed something Tuco wrote - sigh...

Easy but just a bit slow. 14.

Done. ran smoothly for me.

Curious to know what "auto greens" are. Anyone?

done

I have no idea, Angiplumptit.

Angieplumptit I decided to google auto greens and see what came up. If you copy and paste this link into the address bar you will find the auto greens I think you are talking about. https://tinyurl.com/y8hlbndq

Back to the puzzle. I am attempting Wednesday, February 7, 2007 archive puzzle.

Go

Done

I have the auto greens javascript on my profile. In Chrome you can paste it in, but you have to go back to the beginning to type in javascript: right before "for" to get it to work.

start

ding

angieplumptit, "auto greens" is a time-saving script which inserts "greens" into all the blank cells in a new or partially completed puzzle. "Greens" are small green numbers which show the possible values for each cell based solely on the absence of each number from the row, column and block in which the cell is located. Some players like to use auto greens, while others don't.

Thanks TallMike for clearing that up. I ran it once and kept waiting for a salad...but it never showed up.

angieplumptit, learning about "greens" (both manual and auto) has been extremely helpful to my sudoku solving skills. I'd recommend starting with the "manual" approach, where YOU put greens (possible values) into cells by holding down the shift key and then clicking on the appropriate numbers that are possible for the cell in question. Once you have done the process for all open cells (a process I found frustrating and time-consuming). Then read about the techniques for analyzing the greens to identify correct cell values, and practice a bit. Once you are comfortable eliminating greens, in a new puzzle follow @norinva's instructions to insert greens automatically into a puzzle (it's fast ... and not nearly as tedious as entering greens manually). Personally, I (possibly) have become overly dependent on using the auto-greens javascript multiple times in solving a puzzle.

My current sudoku solving approach:
(1) enter what I call "triples" for the values 1-9 (this process is apparently called "cross-hatching"); repeat this process at least once
(2) look for "missing numbers" in a row, column, or block that contains at least 5 entries already and fill in a value when possible; also enter greens for cells manually to help determine the missing values
(3) run auto-greens javascript to fill all open cells (also adds any greens you may have missed manually)
(4) use drwho's techniques to eliminate false greens (see http://sudoku.pauls-pc-repair.com/index.php?p\nage=Techniques) to enter any correct values
(5) repeat steps (3) and (4) until puzzle is solved or a guess is required
(6) if a guess is required, choose a cell containg two greens, and mark the guess in RED (hold down the ALT key) and save the puzzle, and repeat steps (3) and (4). If you find a contradiction, go back to the saved puzzle, choose the other value, and repeat steps (3) and (4).
This approach has evolved from using just the first two steps (what I used when I first started Iron Sudoku, and which works well only for "easy" puzzles). Since I learned about using greens (manually and via the javascript) I feel my puzzle solving skilled have improved tremendously, and for that I thank EVERYONE who helped point me to the information !

and I have appreciated both Tuco's and KnightTime's humor in this "how we solve Sudoku puzzles" thread ... I laughed out loud reading each one of your posts (a rare event) LOL

and after re-reading my "solving approach", I realized that I did all the "greens" in step (2) IN MY HEAD because I didn't know how to mark them in the puzzle itself until much later (chuckle) ...

Difficulty 16.