Sudoku

Welcome to Sudoku Me. If you like sudoku, then you'll love sudoku me!

This site will contain a large number of resources all related to sudoku, from links to websites where you can play sudoku puzzles online, to sudoku magazines that you can download, to those that you can print off and play.

But first things first... what is sudoku and why is it so popular?

About Sudoku

Sudoku is a logic puzzle. It comes in a range of square grid sizes, that require you to place a series of numbers once in each row, column and box region. A good sudoku puzzle has only one solution that can be reached through logic alone. It has 32 or less givens, and no guessing is required as only deductive steps are needed at each stage to progress, though these can require difficult to spot patterns or logical inferences to be applied.

Sudoku is so popular because it is easy to understand, fun to play, and has many subtleties. It is also easy to generate by computer compared to many puzzles, but unfortunately a large number of generators do not create valid puzzles, most do not generate good puzzles, and very few assess difficulty accurately. Therefore hand made puzzles tend to be most enjoyable to solve, though there are a few good quality computer generators that create enjoyable puzzles.

Solving Sudoku

Solving sudoku requires a series of rules to be applied, which may or may not be obvious, and may or may not be hard to spot and apply whilst solving a puzzle. Easier puzzles are those that have several moves available at a time and require only simple solving rules. Harder puzzles may only have one move that can be made logically at a time, and it may require harder logic to be applied in order to make that move. In between there is a whole range of different difficulties.

Whether there is an 'objective' difficulty for each puzzle is disputed as different solvers work differently, however the number of possible moves available at one stage and how hard the logic needed to progress at each stage at each possible point of attack seem like the only sensible metric to adopt. However many computer generators assess difficulty purely on the number of givens, or starting numbers, in the sudoku grid - which is a relatively poor measure of difficulty as whilst difficult puzzles will tend to have fewer givens than easy ones, there is not necessarily a correlation between the number of givens and how hard or easy a sudoku puzzle is to solve.