Editor's Weekly Ramblings 116

Friday 30th Sept 2005

Sudoku

Sudoku has been taking the world by storm just lately. And so seeing as I know that you guys are a seriously bright bunch. I thought I would up the anti on the normal 9x9 grids that you see jotted around online and in magazines, and give your brains a proper workout with an online and interactive 25x25 grid version that instead of numbers uses letters of the alphabet! (No Zzzzzz's allowed because this column is too much fun to be sleeping through it!) First though. For the unitiated sudoku puzzle virgins amongst you...

What is Sudoku?

The sudoku puzzle is most frequently a 9×9 grid made up of 3×3 subgrids (called "regions"). Some cells already contain numbers, known as "givens". The goal is to fill in the empty cells, one number in each, so that each column, row, and region contains the numbers 1–9 exactly once. Each number in the solution therefore occurs only once in each of three "directions", hence the "single numbers" implied by the puzzle's name (pronounced sue-do-koo; su = number, doku = single)

You can try a simple 'warm-up' example below: ( Please note - If you are having trouble seeing the puzzles then try downloading a Java update from here - http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp)

OK. Got the idea?

Right. Well, the Big Monster 25x25 Sudoku Grid I have created in my Evil FirstScience Laboratory is exactly the same principal. Only, instead of using numbers, it uses letters of the alphabet. Specifically, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY IE All of them EXCEPT Z.

Ok. On your Marks. Get Set. Go....

The Monster FirstScience.com Sudoku Challenge

Cool! How did you get on?

PS If you want further information then Wikipedia has done an admirable job of chronicling....