Customer Reviews

Sudoku Easy to Hard Presented by Will Shortz, Volume 2: 100 Wordless Crossword Puzzles

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Well, I do work for the government, but I am just sort of kidding about doing these puzzles during government time. This book by Will Shortz is very well presented. I looked at five other books before settling on this and I am very pleased (when I am not breaking my pencil in despair).

Most important to me in buying a Sudoku book was that the puzzles must be large enough so that I can easily write in the squares without jumbling the numbers. When I do them from the newspaper, I usually enlarge the puzzle on the copy machine.

This book seems to do the best in presenting puzzles that are easy on which to write. In addition, there are a good number of puzzles (100) ranging from easy to "very challenging." Some of the easy ones are tough. I just completed the puzzle that appears on the book's cover. This took me two tries and there is no answer key for that one, so keep trying. All the other puzzles in the book contain answers in the back. As with the other Sudoku books, this one contains a brief history of the game and some tips.

There isn't much else that can differentiate one Sudoku book from another. But, I would certainly buy another from this author when it is offered. Even though it is a solitary game, my family/friends have a laugh watching my frustration and successes.

This book's puzzles are a lot more difficult than the ones you see in your daily newspaper. Working a sudoku puzzle does get easier as time goes on, however, so take heart.

One tip I can share is to put a letter in the corner of each square to help you remember in what order you filled it in. I start with 'a', go on through 'z', then to 'aa' and so on to 'zz', and then to 'aaa'. That way, when I find a mistake, I only erase the squares that I filled in after the mistaken square.

Good luck and happy solving!

Anyone familiar with crossword puzzles knows the name Will Shortz--renowned crossword puzzle creator and editor associated with the New York Times and Games magazine and editor of countless high quality crossword puzzle books. He brings the same high quality to this series of sudoku books.

If you are new to sudoku, I recommend you start with book 1 of the series, which is all easy level puzzles. This book, #2, has four levels of puzzles--Light and EAsy, Moderate, Demanding, and Beware! Very Challenging. I like this because sometimes I like to do a fast, less demanding puzzle and sometimes I like a "chewier" puzzle that requires more time and attention, and I can skip around to the different levels in this book.

The explanation of how to solve sudoku is the most basic one (fill in the numbers 1-9 so that each number appears only once in each row, column and square of the grid) with the very basic steps for solving explained. This isn't a book that walks you through the higher level solving strategies.

But if you just want a bunch of high quality puzzles, with a variety of difficulty levels, on good paper that stands up to lots of erasing, in nice light portable book, this is a good choice!

I love this series, it's nice to progress from simple to more complex. The "light and easy" puzzles I think have more built in redundancy, so it can be approached and solved from multiple angles, in any particular order. But it is still fun to do, fun to see how quickly it can be done. The more challenging puzzles require more specific approaches, there may be fewer ways you can go to solve it, or it may require you to hold more steps in your head, integrating rows, columns, and grids together by groups and subgroups of numbers as opposed to individual numbers.

I appreciated the introduction by Will Shortz. I liked the historical information, had no idea the jigsaw puzzle was less than a century old. And the poor puzzle-maker from Indiana who originated the game never lived to see its current popularity. Still, I bet he knew.

I noticed Will Shortz doesn't update the intro in his various volumes. That's a little lazy, don't you think? It's only about a three page intro, Mr. Shortz should be able to bust out a few extra paragraphs of new material each edition. But maybe I'm being petty. Again.

Above all, I love the addictive magic of the puzzles, numbers drop in, sequential viruses, and infect the rows, columns and grids around them. Nothing like Sudoku, it's like a Rubic's Cube on steroids, nerd crack for the soul, a treadmill for the right parietal lobe. Free your mind of all earthly attachments and surrender to the oblivion.

My wife got interested in Sudoku in our local newspaper and I bought her Volumes 1 and 2 of Will Shortz' Sudoku books just before going on vacation. Guess what? I got hooked too. She has stayed focused on Vol 1, which is all easy Sudoku puzzles. I started out with the easy ones in Vol 2 and quickly worked my way up through the moderate and demanding puzzles to the ones Shortz calls "Very Challenging." Indeed they are but they are solvable. For me, the best part of learning to solve Sudoku puzzles is figuring out the logic that enables me to solve even the difficult puzzles. It has been a first-rate learning experience and, at the ripe old age of 68, it's nice to find out that my brain still works. Sudoku might help keep it working.

This is a great puzzle book with nicely delineated difficulty levels, great for anyone from beginners to masters. Unlike with other types of puzzles, even the best sudoku-ers enjoy doing easy puzzles once in a while, usually because they only have a few minutes to do one but sometimes because they just want a light and easy puzzle.

My one complaint (and it's not a complaint about this book) is, Mr. Shortz, if you're such a sudoku fan that you've now published a few books on the subject, why not include sudoku in the New York Times!? I, of course, love the crossword puzzles, but there must be room for a little sudoku as well!

This clearly written Sudoku collection is perfect for beginners. Each page is in large format, with plenty of room for notes and possibilities as you learn the Sudoku process. Shortz explains the process of finding numbers in the beginning of the book, and gives a practice grid to work on with tips. Shortz is the master puzzler from NPR's Sunday program--you cannot go wrong with this book, and it's likely that after completing all 100 puzzles you will become as addicted to Sudoku as I am.It involes logic, and once a grid is successfully completed, I have a sense of deep satisfaction and peace.Try it!

Recently I was bored on a flight because I had finished my novel. I discovered the Sudoku puzzle in the airline magazine and it took me the next hour (the rest of the flight) to complete it. That was it- I was hooked. No more boring flights.

While in theory all Sudoku books are the same, Will Shortz's book is particularly good because there's only one puzzle on a page, they're printed rather large (to allow you to fill in possible answers) and there's plenty of room around the puzzle to calculate the missing numbers.

My only complaint-- and maybe this is just me-- for some reason, I have much more trouble solving the "moderate" level puzzles than the "demanding" ones. Makes me wonder if some of them were switched by mistake. Oh well. They're still frustratingly fun to solve.

By the way, if you plan to do Soduko on a flight, here's a tip: Bring a pencil. For some reason, it's almost impossible to find pencils with erasers in airports. Just pens. The few pencils I've found are mechanical and way, way overpriced.

Okay, so this is the upteenth Sudoku book I've purchased (yes, I'm addicted)as well as a plethora of websites I utilize. I can say, this is really hard!
The easy puzzles in this book are equivelent to the hard in others - forget the other levels. I'm usually very good at these puzzles, and especially enjoy completing some of the easier, timed versions on-line. So maybe it's just me and I am, after all, an idiot, but these are too hard to be much fun.
Keep looking. There are many books with a variety of levels, for those who love a challenge and those who are just enjoying some diversion.

This book is great.I absoulutely love it! My first time I started to like sudoku and get addictive to it was when my math teacher, Mrs. Carpine was in the hospital. Mrs. Carpine gave the substitute teacher 10 sudoku puzzles for us Advanced Singapore,8th grade, and also called Pre-Algebra kids.When I got one I was like crazy. Even though there were insructions it was hard to do. It was a three level puzzle.I soon did another puzzle and then got addictive to it.When Mrs. Carpine came from the hospital I started doing more.My friend got a sudoku book and started doing it. Days passed. I kept getting sudoku puzzles until I was tired of it.I ordered a book.This book.I loved it because there were 25 of each Light and Easy,Moderate,demanding,and Beware! Very Challenging.I think the puzzles are great