Every once in a while I come upon something that makes me scratch my head. This observation is about Sudoku puzzles. Wikipedia tells us the term Sudoku is not be confused with Sodoku, a bacterial zoonotic disease. Who knew? I guess this is helpful to know if you take your chimpanzee to the local vet-you wouldn’t want to say, “I think she has a Sudoku” lest you become a laughing-stock.
The Puzzle
Here’s the deal-the Sudoku puzzles look like this one in our paper today:
As you probably know you solve the puzzle by inserting the number 1-9 into each line. The same goes for each square-numbers 1 through 9. There is only one solution for each puzzle.
People who do Sudoku puzzles usually have a certain method for solving the puzzle, a specific logic. I was given a book about how to solve Sudoku. It was helpful except for the directions for the most difficult puzzles-the explanation was most difficult too.
Useless
I do puzzles-mostly crossword puzzles. It makes sense to provide the solutions to crossword puzzles. You may have inserted an incorrect word, mis-spelled a word or you don’t know the answer at all.
Why in the world do we need the solutions to Sudoku. There is only one answer-either you get it or you don’t. Seeing the solution doesn’t help. You don’t say “Oh, that’s where the three goes!”. It’s a waste of newsprint.
Someone told me recently that not all Sudoku puzzles can be answered by logic. There are some where you must guess. That can’t be true, can it?
Help me out here with a couple of things please
- Do you see a need for providing Sudoku solutions?
- Do you think some Sudoku puzzles can not be solved by logic?
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