In late November 2006, a Finnish applied mathematician, Arto Inkala, claimed to have created the world's hardest Sudoku.

"I called the puzzle AI Escargot, because it looks like a snail. Solving it is like an intellectual culinary pleasure. AI are my initials," he said.

"Escargot demands those tackling it to consider eight casual relationships simultaneously, while the most complicated variants attempted by the public require people to think of only one or two combinations at any one time", Inkala said.

This puzzle is available in the drop down list of examples in the Sudoku Solver. The solver cannot currently solve it, however, using the logical strategies at it's desposal. The brute force "Solution Count" can find the solution but such a method is less interesting than a logical solve route.

Escargot recieved a good deal of publicity in newspapers around the world.

Load Escargot