ah, numbers. Good luck with that.

Yeah, I had to guess. It's a bastard, that one. Partly why I like paper ones better, no chance to guess.

here's the next step:

≡ Click to see image ≡

because the 1 and the 4 have to occupy the two spaces with green Xs, leaving only one possible place for the 5.

I can't even figure out why the 8 in the lower left box. Is that a guess?

(I only do the really dumb sudokus in the daily paper. It takes me about 4 minutes, which very conveniently is also the limit of my attention span.)

timefactor, once the 5 is in the lower left box, only the 2,6,8 are left to place, and that line can't have a 2 or 6 (because of the horizontal), so it has be an 8.

I did finish it with no guessing, but it was definitely evil.

Thanks! It seems obvious after it's been explained. The dumb ones I do in the paper are really one-dimensional: you only need consider one number at a time. Finding the 5 in the middle or the 8 in the lower left require you to consider the simultaneous possibilities for multiple numbers. Unfortunately I'm required to dedicate all of my remaining capacity for that to keeping track of my house keys.

These are really evil because (as far as my own solving technique goes) you can only get the majority of the spaces by creating lots and lots of "only-this-or-this" possibilities; for example, if on one square, or horizontal or vertical, you manage to come up with two space that must be, say, either 6 or 8, then you can turn your attention to the other remaining numbers and spaces. So even though you don't know which of the two blanks the 6 or the 8 go into, you know that those two spaces are accounted for, and that the 1,2,3,4,5,7 or 9 aren't going there.

Does that make sense? Anyway, for the tres difficult ones, I can't keep all those possibilities in my head, so I end up with something that looks like this (solvers, don't look! not that it will help that much... heh.) until things break open. Is it ridiculous to spend that kind of effort on something like this? Surely it is, but I just can't resist a nice, nasty puzzle!

I personally like this sudoku site best because it allows for notes in each box. so I just go around plugging in the possible answers as I progress.

I'm addicted.

OK, I did it. 33:02 (starting from taz' diagram above). Websudoku does let you enter multiple numbers in a box - it's in the options. For a while I had a big mess with two or more numbers in many boxes, then reached some kind of critical mass where the possibilities sort of melted away and the answers revealed themselves. That was fun.

But now I'm locked out of my house.

taz, you're awesome!

freudianslipper: www.websudoku.com lets you pencil in more than 1 number in each cell (you have to enable it in options).

lol, timefactor!

also, I didn't know about the option for multiple possibilites (I just kept track on a photoshop copy). That's sweet.