Technical Difficulties from on Top of the Mountain
2005-06-16
  Turning the wheels of the mind
I like puzzles. Unlike Games, they don't rely on luck or manual dexterity. They're almost completely skill & persistence. A long time ago, when my Quadra was a hip machine (with its 64mb of ram), besides compiling lots of pascal code, I'd use it to play seahaven towers (there was also a version for Xwindows as early as 1989 with a handy auto-solver module).

Unlike other solitare type games, this was more of a puzzle, as all the cards were exposed, and the game was usually winable (occasionally when I didn't think it was, the X-windows solver was good at producing a more authoratative ruling, though not always in my favor). Sometimes the solutions were especially tricky, but I was persistent and almost always would solve one in about twenty minutes.

I haven't played seahaven in a long time, but recently, I ran across a pointer to a new puzzle called SuDoku.

[puzzle]

You start out with the red numbers only, and the rules that each row, each column and each 3x3 square can only use each number (1-9) once. From there, logic dictates where all the other numbers must go. Sounds easy, and some of the puzzles are pretty much that easy. But some of them aren't. You get to a point where the easy answers have all been found, and you have to start looking more far afield for the solution. There are plenty of sites that talk about strategy, so I won't get into it too far here, but some supposed "medium" puzzles really had me straining my brain to find the answer.

I had filled in quite a bit on this puzzle, but had reached a point where I had to fill in something in the lower right square, and was just racking my brain trying to figure out what the answer was. I even broke down and used the solver at the Daily SuDoku draw page to check my answers so far and to tell me what the next step was. It told me the next step was a 1 in the middle bottom of that square. But How? Finally I scored up everything I knew about that square from the others and this is what I saw:

So each of those other four squares had two possibilities, but more interesting, was that those four numbers had to go in those four spots. So that left the other square for the number one. I finally convinced myself of that logic, and the rest of the puzzle solved itself, but what a reach. We'll see if I can pull it off next time without the computer helping me. Today's puzzle wasn't much of a challenge.

[links]
the Daily SuDoku featuring a puzzle a day, archives going back several months, a solver, and good links to other sites.
BBC: The puzzling popularity of Su Doku
Wikipedia: a good introduction and many links & references

Update 2020:
The people at Longwood have closed up shop, so Seahaven for classic MacOS is not available anymore and even the product pages have been pulled, but I received a comment from Tomas with a link to an online playable version. Load up on your ad-blockers if you're easily distracted, but otherwise its quite fun.

 
Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home
Life in the middle of nowhere, remote programming to try and support it, startups, children, and some tinkering when I get a chance.

ARCHIVES
January 2004 / February 2004 / March 2004 / April 2004 / May 2004 / June 2004 / July 2004 / August 2004 / September 2004 / October 2004 / November 2004 / December 2004 / January 2005 / February 2005 / March 2005 / April 2005 / May 2005 / June 2005 / July 2005 / August 2005 / September 2005 / October 2005 / November 2005 / December 2005 / January 2006 / February 2006 / March 2006 / April 2006 / May 2006 / June 2006 / July 2006 / August 2006 / September 2006 / October 2006 / November 2006 / December 2006 / January 2007 / February 2007 / March 2007 / April 2007 / June 2007 / July 2007 / August 2007 / September 2007 / October 2007 / November 2007 / December 2007 / January 2008 / May 2008 / June 2008 / August 2008 / February 2009 / August 2009 / February 2010 / February 2011 / March 2011 / October 2011 / March 2012 / July 2013 / August 2013 / September 2013 / October 2013 / November 2013 / December 2013 / December 2014 / February 2015 / March 2015 / July 2016 / September 2016 / December 2016 / April 2017 / June 2017 / July 2018 / November 2018 / January 2019 / February 2019 / April 2019 / December 2019 / March 2020 / April 2020 / May 2020 / September 2020 / November 2020 / March 2021 / May 2023 /


Blogroll
Paul Graham's Essays
You may not want to write in Lisp, but his advise on software, life and business is always worth listening to.
How to save the world
Dave Pollard working on changing the world .. one partially baked idea at a time.
SnowDeal
Eric Snowdeal IV - born 15 weeks too soon, now living a normal baby life.
Land and Hold Short
The life of a pilot.

The best of?
Jan '04
The second best villain of all times.

Feb '04
Oops I dropped by satellite.
New Jets create excitement in the air.
The audience is not listening.

Mar '04
Neat chemicals you don't want to mess with.
The Lack of Practise Effect

Apr '04
Scramjets take to the air
Doing dangerous things in the fire.
The Real Way to get a job

May '04
Checking out cool tools (with the kids)
A master geek (Ink Tank flashback)
How to play with your kids

Powered by Blogger