morning all

howdy

good morning

hi Sprite : )

Evening!!

hi all : )

morning

Or morning....LOL

Good whatever ;)

schroeder, im with ya, its 1 AM in my time zone

A hard that starts this easy, that bodes ill!

oh my, it's only 10pm here

7 am in Holland.

Hello from the US Midwest, just after midnight.

This must be wrong. I have completed the 3 middle boxes already, except for 2 numbers.

it is a little too easy for a hard

same, ur fine sprite

it is a little too easy for a hard

grr - chat often seems to send twice now

ah, ok, I thought it had to be wrong somewhere, to be so easy for a hard one.

finished that faster than a lot of the mediums

np orb, I love your input ;)

I'm practicing for a future career in spam :)

done

You're not succeeding, your input still contains info!

LOL orb!!

sorry. would you like some v14gr4?

lol!

and I've taken the liberty of discontinuing your paypal account because of fraud. If you can verify by giving me your password, I'll reinstate it.

no 1 for a long time....

pretty fast here...
orb, I agree, you have talent!

spam talent? or just worthless sudoku talent?

done

I need to make some $$$

I think both

all too easy for a 'hard', but off to babble while im at it

cya guys, orb, good luck in the spam career choice, lol

Another biggie in babble land

Off to bed. If Dr God is monitoring this - two suggestions: 1) to solve the "checkpoint" problem, why not add a slider to move forward/backwards in the history. That would provide a real value add over checkpoint for $$$ members

Night orb

Good night orb,

I'm still at it for a while. 8-)

Also, since the puzzles are so short, maybe it should be possible to watch other people and even give advice. It would be a great reason to stick around more than 10 minutes and would let us learn from eachothers techniques

Of course, I'm sure I should just use the feedback section instead of spamming here. But, I'm lazy. (and training for my future career in spam)

This was the easiest hard I ever did here.

Have a nice day/night/whatever

I broke down and used the red-green marking ... and am done. This was not quite easy, but seemed more like a medium than a hard. I agree Sprite. And likewise, good night.

thanks for the encouragement, sprite! good night! :)

not all that hard tonight - though I do use a subscript (I only use one, not sure why people would use two, one seems to tell me everything I need to know most of the time - I use it to mark what is possible in a given square, tending to solve for the same number everywhere - i.e. marking where it is in a given square or which squares it could be a given number)

morning/evening everyone

2 - checked

next number - checked

mhm - that was fairly easy

dane

done even

Good morning!

Heh, easier than yesterday's!

It's difficult to concider that as a hard one...

If only some of the easy ones were that "hard"

oh no, not a hard one. never finished one before!

must've been rated wrongly as i've finished!

good morning everyone!

who rates these things?

I believe they're rated automatically based on the techniques required to solve them

easiest 3 points evvaaa :)

good morning bobster

waddap KIWI!!!

Shouldn't you be WORKING????

Work is for chumps

Um no it is Friday, the end of the week the last day.

i agree "thedave" ... work IS for chumps

Its hot and Memorial Day weekend SHAWTY!!!!!

I KNOW THAT'S RIGHT!

wow...22min! :)

I guess the 1's are the place to start today, eh?

I'd like to know how some sped thru this one, I've hit the wall here

hey speedy - who's your avatar?

ditto here

me too, best to start anew

It's a character from an anime called 'Bleach'

There's 1 obvious x-wing that will give you the breakthrough you need.

got it now, but also started again once i hit the wall.. you just cannot reconstruct where you went wrong

I need to add these wing strategies into my solving arsenal...I've read them but I haven't grasped them well enough to spot them outright....:\

x-wing is pretty easy once you do it a couple of times, and it's the only "advanced" technique you need to solve 90% of the harder puzzles.

There was a great website linked once that listed all those Adv. Strategies...got it bookmarked on my home compy but not here...

what's the x-wing - sounds totally awesome!

I didn't need an x-wing, was able to work the middle 3 rows, and had one perfect square, was done in 10-15 mins

http://www.scanraid.com/AdvanStrategies.htm#X

not needed for this one though

Muchas gracias

just finished.. almost got there w/o possibilities!

I've got a lot of pairs and trios here...can't spot anything unique though, I'm probably just blinded by all the green #s I have on here

seedy - sorry i got distracted - i thought it was from bleach ;) he looks like a character i like from fruits basket

that'll be handy someday ;)

good job, strauzzie :) +~+~+~+ FIREWORKS +~+~+~+

Ahh, so you like ill-tempered cats, good for you btwrt

lol only in anime, not in real life

i'm coming back to this later - bye.

Oh hello there top row with only 2/9 spaces solved

i made a crappy assumption and had to start over

what other anime shows do you like, seedy? i'm an outcast in my family, nobody else watches the stuff but me ;)

I saw all of Eureka seveN, nothing short of excellence there

The dub is meh, but the show is awesome

ooh, i haven't seen that one yet, i'll have to get that one. i've been watching full metal panic

i prefer to watch them with english subtitles - the japanese voice actors are usually so much better

Highly recommended, that show

i feel like i get a better feel for the emotions of the scene, even if i don't understand the language

One of three shows I felt compared to purchase DVDs for

compared? I meant to say compelled

FMP - yeah, i'm really enjoying it :)

so far i've mainly rented shows - the dvds tend to be so expensive :) what shows do you have on dvd?

I mean E7 down there, but FMP was good too

ahh, gotcha

Well the only the first DVD of E7 has been released in the US, but if you know where to look you can watch it all. God bless the internets

yeah, the internet rocks ;) what's the basic premise of E7?

Categorically its a mecha-anime, but it breaks the stereotype and does so much more than that genre typically provides

It's really hard to describe, I'd say just trust my judgement and watch an episode or two and you'll be hooked from there

oh i believe you. i hook easily, anyway.

;)

I still don't fully understand the x-wing solution

I'm trying to do this puzzle without using greens, and I hit a wall

I just started, so I got nothing. 2's and 7's fell into place pretty easily, and now I'm working on 3's.

I've got all possibilities on screen and I'm still staring at the wall

big green wall :)

Absolutely

like being in Fenway

i miss fenway :(

I've never been there. Been to Camden once

I see plenty of places where X-Wing applies but the numbers it would eliminate have already been taken care of by my other solving strategies..

I'm probably just missing an obvious insertion as usual

I've been able to get away without fully understanding or using X-Wings all this time... once I got row/block and colum/block intersections down, I was able to solve most of the puzzle here.

I also learned a trick called "unique rectangles" which I've used a few times

I see that on ScanRaid, I'll take a look at it late

lateR

see ya

seedy - i'm downloading eps 1 - 26 via torrent ;) yay! i can watch it in like two weeks ...

No no, correcting my previous typo, I'm not going anywhere for awhile yet :)

oh! i see now. too early, pre-coffee

If you prioritize the files in the batch torrent you can get the first few before the rest and not have to wait for the whole thing to finish you know?

finally got some 1's in there!

I could use some of them, got a crapton included in pairs here...

the middle three rows were easiest for me to wrok first. I've got the middle three rows almost done.

All but a pair remaining in that section for me as well

row 5, last block?

Bingo

:)

seedy, do you have the script to fill in green numbers automatically?

I don't believe so...is it a Firefox App?

someone here wrote it, I think... I don't think you need Firefox. You paste this:

javascript:for (i=1; i<=9; i++) {for (j=1; j<=9; j++) {if (grid[i][j].value == '') {ClearTinySquares(i,j);}}}for (i=1; i<=9; i++) {for (j=1; j<=9; j++) {if (grid[i][j].value != '') {var tmp_value = grid[i][j].value;for (k=1; k<=9; k++) {for (l=1; l<=9; l++) {if (grid[k][l].value == '') {if ((Math.ceil(i/3) == Math.ceil(k/3) && Math.ceil(j/3) == Math.ceil(l/3)) || i == k || j == l) {grid[k][l]['mini'][tmp_value] = -1;}}}}}}}for (i=1; i<=9; i++) { for (j=1; j<=9; j++) { if (grid[i][j].value == '') { for (k=1; k<=9; k++) { if (grid[i][j]['mini'][k] != -1) grid[i][j]['mini'][k] = 1; }}}}for (i=1; i<=9; i++) {for (j=1; j<=9; j++) {if (grid[i][j].value == '') {for (k=1; k<=9; k++) {if (grid[i][j]['mini'][k] != 1) grid[i][j]['mini'][k] = 0;}}}}PopulatePuzzle(grid);void(0);

into your browser window. Can be used initially or later on in the puzzle.

speeds things up tremendously

Heh, pasted an hit Enter and changed nothing.. xD

guess you're already in good shape then!

Appreciate it though, that's going into a notepad file and getting mailed straight to my home ;)

it's in my profile, if you ever need it again

Duly Noted

where do you paste that code into?

into your browser window, where you usually would type a URL address.

or a website address

are you giving up on the no-green-numbers attempt?

I think so

w00t, i'm done :)

congrats!

that one wasn't bad. i definitely didn't need to use any 'advanced' techniques ...

wow, that code is sweetness

no X-wings?

say seedy, if you used the green script and nothing changes, I think you're missng some naked pairs

I've got a few pairs on here, my top third is particularly lacking some black though

And the center columns

I found yet another unique rectangle, very pleased with that little trick

ooh neat! haven't found it yet, but that's becoming my special party trick

oh of course duh there it is :)

all 2's and 6's easy to spot.. is that hard ?

7's are easy too. it gets a little more sticky in the middle

its such a cool trick, I just love it :-)

did you learn it from me? or elsewhere? it was all the vogue starting with one of the expert puzzles last week.'

what trick

Can somebody tell me if the red numbers I have form an x-wing?

http://www.timmyponline.com/random/s
udoku.jpg

it's called "unique rectangles". it's based on the idea that only one solution to a sudoku puzzle exists...

I learned it back at that expert, I think it was moozey? Not sure who it was now.

if you have three corners of a rectangle that have the possibilities A & B in them, then the fourth corner cannot have A or B, because that would make a two-solution puzzle.

I think I showed it to moozey. I started a trend! how cool!

In that case - THANKS! :-)

you mean any rectangle that is created by joining the 3 fields + 4th empty ?

:)

Nikola assures me it was not needed for today's, but I don't care :-)

that's what I thought. So the odd number in my "unique rectangle" has to go in that square, otherwise it compromises the idea of 'one unique solution', correct?

has to be a true rectangle - horizontal/vertical edges

you can remove A & B from the fourth corner

Oh hello there breakthrough!

yeah of course, but it's created by any 4 fields on the board - and 3 of them have A&B possible

thanks Krys

yes, that's right. if a rectangle had corners, say, 2, 5, 2, 5 (with the 2's opposite), it could be 5, 2, 5, 2 without disturbing any other part of the puzzle.

that's how i get it.. ?

bz - yes

thanks

I'm not explaining it well today:
http://www.brainbashers.com/sudokuuniq
uerectangles.asp

peter, thanks for reminding me!

You're very welcome

bed time for me. Night all

good day everybody

Thanks for the help guys....

1s were easiest to find at the end

hey i can't understand the forced moves technique as described on brainbashers.. :( it's marked as easy .. but i can't see why there are no other possibilities for <2> /...

aha i get it.. because no other number can go there..

+= 3

you know, they never have any easy's anymore. grrr

it was just 2 days ago

but still

:)

i am trying to do this one without using greens

i don't even try anymore

:(

nah... but, considering everything, this one isn't that bad today

it's easy. i just completed anothe line

i hope not to make a mistake :)

i think i just did

finished this one without any greening :))

nice job

thanks and good bye

c-ya

I finally figured out the wall and I'm ashamed that held me up for so long

i'm doin march 11

I've got a lot of catching up to do with this month's archives...

i have a TON of catlching up to do...

Probably less than me, just can't find the time/energy to do these suckers

hehe i doubt it...68 grids not finished... :(

Okay fine you win :)

is that a good thing? :P

aha new icon :)

ugh it looks bad...

AIM Icons tend to work wel, not much size difference + same aspect ratio

i kant spel goot

still searching...

ok this one is better! :)

or should i say... thes won is betr!

scribble!!!! you are PRO - congrats!

thx mamabear! my mom upgraded me cuz i got straight As this year.

well then CONGRATS again!!!!! Good for you!!!

i've had straight As for 8 years... :)

HOLY COW!!! That's awesome!!!!!

hehe thanks! :)

that one wasn't so bad

wow scribble, you rock!

i tried to have straight A's, but i flubbed and got two B's in high school ... :(

i think i would go crazy if i got a B after keeping it up for so long... :(

well, As are a great achievement, but there *are* things other than grades

yeah i was annoyed. i think one of the b's was unjustified ... and the other one i was a moron and got confused as to which problems i was supposed to be doing ...

still, btwrt, thats really good! :)

ur right skizzy.

i love this site, you meet such intellectual types here ;)

we're so smart... :)

my academic career was up and down -- after nearly failing out of college, i got my act back together, worked hard, and stil got my dream job. so don't stress :)

lol :D

yay skizzy! :)

well, i've made it up to the top of the Regulars list, but i still have a ways to go

i'm not stressin' ;) i went to college and again didn't acheive my 4.0 (but close) ... and i'm doing my dream job, as well :)

ugh i'm still a newbie... :(

mmm, score-grubbing

yay btwrt! :)

what field do you guys work in?

I'm a neurosurgeon - I am between surgeries right now.

that is awesome!!

Not really. I just always wanted to say that.

oh lol

It sounds more exciting than what I do, scribble!!!!!

how's that torrent coming along btwrt?

This grid seemed so easy - was breezing through and now I hit a wall.

what do you do, mamabear?

Sounds like me 5 hours ago ;)

lol now i'm afraid...

publication advertising

How did you find your way through it, SeedyV?

i am stuck-o

dang - even 3rd-level thinking doesnt help

gees this is a toughie

the problem is it's hard to give hints in sudoku

who needs hints, we want hard living numbers and places ;-) j/k

so even though i finished this one in 15 minutes, i have no idea how to tell you what to do

mama- I'm not sure if you're at the same wall I found myself at...is the center rows for the most part filled, with the top rows and center columns lacking the most?

'is the center rows', good grammar, me

same wall here

oh well, i'm off to lunch. good luck everyone!

Lots of trios and pairs but seemingly nothing to determine how to start the domino effect?

c-ya skizzy!

exactly seedy

More specifically 1-4-5?

welcome to my house

The lower right box holds the key

Yes seedy! same combos in all boxes left pretty much - 1/5, 3/7, 4/5/7, with a few 8's and 9's thrown in

I believe you should have the lower left down to two and the lower right down to three, no?

(going off memory here)

yes

Exactly, Seedy!

middle 3 rows - 4/5 combo left in right cube - rest is done

I should have said "remaining" in right cube.... would be easier to understand. I'm thinking I'm going to have to guess my way out.

There's something there on the bottom that totally opened the puzzle for me

i think we all see the same field

If there is, Seedy, I'm missin it

me too - i did a lot of "it a then b then c, oh lets check a again, mhm still holds"

Well I don't want to spoil the others that might be viewing this...

It's there on the bottom, I don't want to say anything more if at all possible...

that's OK, Seedy - I'll probably just throw in a guess and take it from there.

Okay, I'm able to see where I was at

You can confine the placement of a number on a row to just one box and go from there...

The puzzle will solve itself from there I believe

that's the break I'm looking for Seedy, I just for the life of me don't see one!

*braces for the eurekas*

the only eureka I have at the moment is a vaccume cleaner

Okay, 1-5 1-5 on the left, and 1-4-5, 1-4-5, 1-4-5 on the right, no?

Or something to that effect

ok on the left, on the right is 1/4/5, 4/5, 1/4/5

Exactly

Top row of the bottom set

1/5, 1/4/5 and 4/5

There's something about the number possibilities that you need to catch

in that one row?

Yes

hi all

hi chebuctonian!

hello

without looking at any other row, seedy?

how are things today?

frustrating

hmm... mamabear, have you read the strategy guides?

Like I said before, you should be able to confine the placement of a number on a single row and therefore eliminate all other instances of that number within the box

yes, chebuctonian - some of them anyway. I understand the confining thing - I just am not seeing it here.

May the fours be with you?

LOL

March 11 done

hey everyone

woot! found a unique rectangle, proof I wasn't wasting my time reading http://www.scanraid.com/AdvanStrategies.htm

well, proof I was wasting my time intelligently :)

Unique rectangles would help as well :)

I kept trying it but ending up screwing up in the end, but unbeknownest to me was not due to the Rectangle strategy but my own retardation

Done! Don't ask me how though.

unique rectangle?

I hate doing the unique rectangle strategy, because if the puzzle really did have two valid solutions, applying the strategy might not lead to either of them. If you refuse to employ it, is there usually another rule that would also work, or are you reduced to guessing?

Hard to say, but any valid sudoku puzzle can only have one solution, but yeah its a big assumption to make

Done! :)

I'm not the person to speak to when it comes to these crazy off-the-wall techniques

I solved it, but am not happy - because I don't know why.

Guessed?

someone here at work who does these puzzles (not on here) came by me and said "put a 4 there" so I did and it worked. He solves them differently. So, yes, guessed.

Was it in the upper right box?

no the bottom right cube

Well, what I was trying to lead you to was this:

listening....

The four in the 7th row could only be placed in the bottom right box, in the 7th and 8th columns, correct?

Thus reducing the possibilities of the bottom-right corner box to only 1 and 5

yes

Pardon my terminology, the bottom-right unit or place or whatever

bottom right cube - how's that?

I can't remember who it was but thanks for the unique rectangle tip

what is this "unique rectangle" of which you speak?

Assuming you had all the numbers placed as I had that should have revealed only one place a four could fit on the 9th column

Gave me the one I needed for the rest to fall into place.

And the rest just falls into place after that

Snap, Seedy

Bye for now.

And yes, Unique Rectangle helps this puzzle a lot as well, but as I stated previously, I couldn't seem to make the rest fit, but in the end the Unique Rectangle solution I was using was still correct, but for whatever reason (rushing, most likely), I couldn't complete the puzzle due to some careless error on my end

Can't say for sure, SeedyV - but I thought I had quadruple checked all the rows and columns and cubes to find single possibilities. I guess I missed it.

will have to check out that rectangle thing.... thanks for your patience and help, SeedyV!

That's cool :)

not a problem!

hi

bYE

help!!!!

what help do you need?

hey hursh! is the sun smiling upon your face today?

nope it's very rainy here

ahh

that was no "hard"

go

go helen go

:)

i did it in under 10 mins, no marking. so there is a goal for you :)

wow, no marking?

yep i have been practicing on evils on websudoku, it's more fun without marking i think, like going listless in babble

i never used to mark until i started here - marking makes a person cognitively lazy - case in point

i never played until this site opened

so i did marking and that got me used to the idea of how it all worked, and now i have graduated

congrats hursh! :)

lol thanks scribble

i just started doing them in dec - step-son included sudoku book in get-well basket after my hip replacement

congrats to you on school being over :)

hip replacement? how old are you helen?

happy memorial day to people in america. ^_^

happy memorial day to people in america. ^_^

sorry for the double posting ^^

actually that was the best thing about it - everyone kept saying - you're so young, you're so young to have a hip replacement, lol - i got hit by a car when i was 15 & exactly 30 years later the arthritis set in, i waited a while, tooooo long in retrospect, i'm 48

wow, still, i thought you were like my age or maybe like 35ish

hursh - what age did you have me pegged at?

lol cross posting

lol - that's good to hear - i am often told i act immaturely, lol, or 'go my own way' - like angelina jolie, someone just told me that yesterday - how old are you- you're in your mid-20's right?

late, more like. i'll be 29 in july.

hurshy just sidelining hk with chat to incresae hk's play-time, evil, evil hurshy :)

oops, hurshy shhh now

so, i'm nearly 20 years older than you, will be 49 in sept

weird.

i believe i will start demanding more respect now, LOL

hmmm...i don't see how i could respect you more than i already do

now that can be taken one of two ways - i'll just take it the positive way :)

yes that is how i meant it

the feeling is mutual (everyone else on the site is gagging now,lol)

Actually, I'm enjoying your posts, HK and hurshy

:)

my mom is 29, hursh

omg

right, i think we talked about that when we first met scribble, and how you were like the gilmore girls

and here we had her feeling young again, scrib !!

oh yeah....i remember now.... :)

hurshy is young!

scrib - if you & your mom have a relationship like the gilmore girls, then you are well blessed

How old are u, Scribble?

12, gonna be 13 in a month

see, i wouldn't mind having a 12 year old daughter. i just don't want to have to have a baby to get there.

scrib - it's all relative

yeah - i hear that

hehe good point hursh!

little kids bore me very much.

little kids smell bad.

and they are annoying.

As bright as you are, hurshy, you'd have a lot to offer a kid

little kids make bad jokes

good evening everyone :) how's it goin

she already does!!!

finally

is today's puzzle really difficult? I just started, not too bad so far

where'd ya'll go?

but as selfish as i am, what i wonder is what the kid has to offer me... :) i went to babble and to another sudoku site, i'm jumping around

I'm more than half way through the puzzle and so far it's been a breeze

ahh welcome back lol thought everyone ran away hehe i haven't played babble in forever, i'm better with this

yeah it's really easy

weird how some get labled harder than others when they're actually pretty easy

i'm working on evils on websudoku without marking. i'm a little stuck at the mo but i'm sure i'll pull through! confidence, that's the key to sudoku success

ugh those ones drove me crazy, i did solve some but my time sucked horrible

hooribly

argh can't type, forget it

well talk i think that probably some people just printed them out, hit pause, solved them on paper, and then put the numbers in, thus making the average time seem much better than it perhaps is

i hope thats the case, or i'm just not as good as i thought i was lol

well if you look at the graph you see that there are people who solved them in like 30 seconds...which makes no sense.

oh wow i didn't pay that close attention

It would have to take longer than 30 seconds to fill in the numbers!

not necessarily, you can type them there so it goes faster.

Ah.

i think i'm having a brain fart. all of a sudden, i'm stuck lol

but if you read the site they do not count ones which were paused or entered by specific number, since the user could have done it before or printed it and solved it

oh well whatever, i can do them in the top percentiles now anyway if i mark, and i'm working on getting faster without marking

I'm stuck, too, Talk

let me know if you want help

Don't know how to ask for help...

thanx hurshy... i'm starting to fall asleep so thats probably doing me in

playwoman --- did u get any further?

woo hoo that was atough one

i'm completely stuck. marked everything, dunno where to o next without guessing hmmmm

done

congrats trev....

woot, 9 minutes

i like it

It's quite an easy one if you apply the technique that came up from the expert a few days ago...

care to share?

done

I missed that technique idea... could someone please re-post... thanks