Customer Reviews

The Book of Sudoku #2

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Addictive.

But this particular book will tend to drive you crazy for 2 reasons:

1 - too little space: the puzzles are too small to allow one to write in solutions (gets awfully, awfully messy).

2 - misleading organization: some of the easy puzzles are really too complicated and some supposedly complicated ones are relatively easy -- leading to much confusion and frustration!. After hours of obsessive puzzling I went back to puzzle #1 for an easy break (I didn't solve it when I started). It was NOT easy at all but harder than most subsequent puzzles even in the "tough" section. I can prove it quite graphically.

Did the authors actually solve these puzzles??? I wonder.

50% LARGER VERSION (workaround): I eventually used Excel software to make a resuable, easily printed layout with nicely bold borders like in the book BUT 50% larger so I could have space to pencil in and erase the often very complex potential solutions.

I also had to devise a simple way of marking numbers to keep track of how selection of one number selected or eleminated others. The pathways get very complicated and you can trace effects through 20+ numbers before discovering a conflict or, worse, not discovering a conflict in a number selection which actually is incorrect. [My markings were underline "_" under selected number and short vertical mark "│" under eleminated number.]

I got so frustrated with the bad organization and overly complex puzzles that I eventually threw the book away (into woodstove).

If you want to avoid the addiction of this game, don't buy the book.

If you buy the book, use a spreadsheet program to make a simple grid that you can fill in from the book and print. It's the only sane way. My revised puzzle size makes it possible to solve the more complex puzzles AT ALL. And, like I say, the difficulty has little to do with the groupings, which is misleading (to repeat myself).

I did not enjoy this book as the puzzles are small making it difficult to put your "ideas" in the boxes when needed. The quality of the paper is poor which makes it nearly impossible to erase those occasional mistakes. I would not purchase this book again.

Michael Mepham does it again. A great follow up to the first book. I love this one too.

It amuses me to hear these number puzzles referred to as a hot new craze to hit the US, since I used to solve these puzzles many years ago in the Dell puzzle magazines. I believe Dell is actually the originator of this puzzle, which was called "Number Place" rather than "Sudoku." The rules are quite simple. Given a 9 by 9 square grid, you have to arrange the digits one through nine into the grid so that the same number does not appear more than once in any row, column, or subgrid. Although it sounds easy, it can be fiendishly difficult. It takes reasoning, logic, and, in the case of the harder puzzles, a lot of persistence.

This Sudoku collection contains a detailed guide on how to solve easy, medium, and difficult puzzles (and yes, the harder the puzzle the more complex the approach that must be taken to solve it). It contains more than 130 puzzles arranged in order of difficulty from easy to diabolical. The grids are large and easy to work with. This book will keep you challenged for a long time. Warning: these puzzles can be habit forming!

Eileen Rieback

Last night I had a friend over and my sudoku book happened to catch my eye. Suddenly I wanted her to go home so I could work on the puzzle. That book has some serious power over me!