Main Page - Back

There are two ways one can group all the stratgies for Sudoku. By difficulty and by family. Difficulty is rather subjective but necessary, for example, when selecting which strategies to test for in the solver. Some strategies will always be easier for some people to spot than others but I believe I have chosen an ordering which is not too controversial. So the main documentation has a side menu organised by difficulty. Article: The Relative Incidence of Sudoku Strategies

Basic Strategies Chaining Strategies Exotic Strategies Uniqueness Strategies Getting Started Naked Pairs Naked Triples Naked Quads Hidden Pairs Hidden Triples Hidden Quads Pointing Pairs Box/Line Intersection Articles: Introducing Chains and Links Weak and Strong Links Strategies: X-Wing Family Sword-Fish Jelly-Fish Singles Chains Multi-Colouring Y-Wing XYZ-Wing WXYZ-Wing Y-Wing Chain XY-Chains 3D Medusa Remote Pairs Digit Forcing Chains Cell Forcing Chains Unit Forcing Chains X-Cycles (Part 1) X-Cycles (Part 2) Grouped X-Cycles Inference Chains AIC with Groups AIC with ALSs Almost Locked Sets Finned X-Wing Finned Swordfish Franken Sword Fish Pattern Overlay Aligned Pair Exclusion Empty_Rectangles Sue-de-Coq Death Blossom Bowman's Bingo Multivalue X-Wing Guardians Unique Rectangles Hidden Rectangles Avoidable Rectangles BUG Sudoku X Strategies Sudoku X Pitfalls Jigsaw Strategies Killer Strategies Law of Leftovers The Killer Cage Convention Cell Combinations - An example cage combo Cage/Unit Overlap Innies and Outies Cage Splitting

With chaining strategies there is definitely a theme going through them. This theme is all about bi-value (two candidates left in the same cell) and bi-location (two candiates left in the same unit) pairs and the incredible number of deductions one can make from them. You will find, if you read through this group, that earlier strategies become part of a more general theory as the theme develops. Thus for example, Remote Pairs are a sub-set of XY-Chains; that is XY-Chains is a more general approach of which Remote Pairs are specific instance. Do read the introductory articles Introducing Chains and Links and Weak and Strong Links. Exotic strategies do overlap with chaining ones, but they have a peculiar flavour of their own and some wonderful, if obscure, logic. They are definitely worth presenting as a demonstration of peoples ingenuity but you will only need to have recourse to them on the extreme puzzles. There are naturally special strategies for Jigsaw and Killers because of their differences. These are now included for the first time on this site. This strategy list is by no means complete. Many can be further extended and we do not have a complete theory of all sudoku puzzles. If you are interested in the concepts behind creation and grading there is a PDF document here called Sudoku Creation and Grading. With the communities help I hope to extend the documentation here. For those people wondering why "Escargot" cannot be solved by the solver, there is an article on this special sudoku here.

My response to Crooks Algorithm is here.

I'm pleased to include on this web site the Sudoku Song (MP3 file) by Peter Levy (official web site here). Peter wrote and recorded this song a couple of years ago and managed to capture the essence of the Sudoku craze to great aclaim. Thanks for sending to me Peter.