Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Innovative Addictive Puzzler, 30 Mar 2005
I first found Su Doku while browsing through the Times one day and thought that it looked a bit different from the usual crosswords and chess puzzles that I am not really interested in. Simply put, you must place the digits 1 through 9 into a 9 by 9 grid that is split into 9 3 by 3 boxes. However, each digit must only appear once in every column, row and seperate box and you are only given a handful to start with. Using logic you must deduce where each digit goes.
This book starts with a short introduction by the author about the rules of su doku and a couple of simple methods however his main advice is to develop your own techniques to solve the harder Su Dokus.
To begin with there are 4 'Easy' grids to lead you gently into the puzzle before 26 'Mild' where you start using more complicated techniques. 45 'Difficult' follow which are personally my favourites as they are tricky enough to keep your brain on its toes but are not taxing enough to mean you are stumped. Finally there is 25 'Fiendish' grids which are exactly that, fiendish. All are solvable using the numbers provided it just isn't that obvious how! I am really pleased to solve a 'Fiendish' and have maybe done about 10 so far. This is such a broad spectrum of difficulty that however long you have you can choose a puzzle to suit you. Finally an answer section is provided as a quick means of checking the whole grid without going over each row, column and box to check for repeated numbers.
Personally I do my grids by copying them out onto paper as the beauty of Su Doku is you can come back to a puzzle and start as if you have never seen it before because you don't remember the positions of the 81 digits so grids can be done again and again. I must recommend pencil especially for the harder ones and I have found myself many a time rubbing out a whole grid realising I have two 5's in a box.
Overall I have found Su Doku to be very stress relieving and quite a lot of fun. A great way to wind down at a night and a puzzle you can do anywhere.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Su Doku the way it should be, 12 Aug 2006
If you now consider yourself a veteran Su Doku solver, this is the only level you should be considering (apart from Killer). Unless you want an easy life, anything less will not suffice. 'Difficult' Su Doku requires you to stop and pause occasionally, but 'fiendish' is where the grids become genuinely satisfying challenges which can take over an hour to complete, and with 200 grids to solve, you'll not be rushing through to the end of this one. This is an excellent value collection from the popular The Times series that will last you ages. Su Doku at its best.
Hours of fun and frustration await you. You will almost certainly need a pencil for this book and it is, of course, not the place for beginners to start...
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I can't put this down, 2 Jul 2005
I'm not a great crossword enthusiast, so I was a little hesitant to give this a try as it resembles a crossword, but I needed a way of passing the hours of boredom on the train every day, so when I saw multitudes of people on the train doing su doku puzzles, I thought I would give it a go.There's a simple-looking grid of 9 rows x 9 vertical columns, split into 9 boxes with 9 squares. Using logic (no maths skill required) you have to arrange the numbers in to them. Perhaps it sounds boring, but it isn't; it is thoroughly addictive. There are a few other books, including one published by The Daily Telegraph (which I bought last week), but so far, I prefer this collection of puzzles. Even my wife, who hates any sign of numbers, is addicted and for an introduction, the simple puzzles in this book are great and lead you nicely on to the more difficult ones you find in the book too. The editor of this book has been credited with bringing su doku to Britain, and seems to be the authority on su doku, so this seems like a good place to start with it. Try it if you dare, but it will change your life completely. You will be obsessed!
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