Customer Reviews

Sudoku Genius: 144 of the Most Fiendish Puzzles Ever Devised

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Most Sudoku books have puzzles from easy to hard; this book contains all difficult puzzles, taking you through the nine "circles" of Sudoku Hell. The levels are Daunting, Tortuous, Merciless, Harrowing, Horrific, Maddening, Murderous, Devastating, and Deadly.

The introduction contains a very brief explanation of the basic concepts and methods. Then, for the seasoned Sudoku addict, there are 15 pages of "expert methods" which includes new strategies that I hadn't seen before.

Each puzzle is about 4.5 X 4.5 inches, allowing plenty of room to write in the squares. The paper quality is good, allowing the maximum usage of your eraser without smudging and thick enough to let you erase over and over . . .

This is a great book for the person who has already mastered the easy to medium puzzles, and finds most of the hard puzzles too easy. If you want to learn new tips and experience a challenge, this is a great book!

Tom Sheldon's second book of sudoku puzzles picks up where the introductory Big Sudoku Brain Workout leaves off, presenting 144 difficult puzzles graded in nine levels of difficulty, from Daunting to Deadly. Though these are described as "the most fiendish puzzles ever devised," they can all be solved (albeit on the second or third try, sometimes) by someone who has a basic knowledge of sudoku strategies and a good sense of logic.

I began at the beginning, and either there is not much difference between the puzzles from the beginning to the end or I learned some tricks as I went along, but I found myself spending about the same amount of time on the puzzles at the end as at the beginning. Some of this may be because I gained greater practice using some of the techniques Sheldon includes in his helpful Master Class in Advanced Strategies, in the introduction.

The author helpfully lists the thirty puzzles which require "trailing," his term for the technique that is sometimes necessary when groups of pairs block further progress in solving the puzzle. He makes a case for why this controversial technique (which involves choosing one of the numbers in a pair at random and following it throughout the puzzle) is still logical, not simply trial and error. He didn't convince me, but the puzzles could easily solved (especially when the first trial number was done on a Xerox copy). Several intriguing puzzles are completely missing one given number, but those turned out to be the most fun, and, as a rule not difficult. Some not listed as requiring trailing did require it, and three or four listed as requiring trailing did not. and one puzzle, done by both my husband and me, turned out to have two completely different and correct solutions!

The book is a good size, easy to carry in purse or portfolio, and the extra grids are helpful is you don't have a Xerox machine handy for copying the puzzle as you have worked on it to date. The puzzles are large, with plenty of room for listing options, and the answer key is at the end. Overall, this is a terrific collection for the sudoku puzzler who doesn't want to spend all day on one puzzle, a collection of challenging puzzles which are still "do-able." n Mary Whipple

Sudoku Genius is by far the most enjoyable sudoku puzzle book I have every completed. One aspect I like about this book is that it is challenging but it does not require you to use brain-bending techniques like X-wing and Swordfish which after reading numerous definitions of I still have not been able to comprehend.

What makes the puzzles in this book perfect is the means by which the puzzles must be solved:

Step 1 Inspection: fill in all the obvious numbers that are the only possibility for a particular cell.

Step 2: Fill in the possibilities: Writing in all the number possibilities for the remaining cells.

Step 3 Look for Patterns: reducing the number of possibilities per cell by looking for hidden subsets, row and column elimination, etc.

Step 4 Solving: getting possibilities down to 1 unique candidate in a cell per row, column, or square, and solving further from there.

Some of the more difficult puzzles in this book require repeating steps 3-4 after you've solved a good deal of the puzzle.

The only negative about this book is the author's insane love for what he calls "trailing". Trailing is basically getting to a point in a sudoku where the only way to solve the puzzle is to outright guess at some of the numbers. To me this is not what sudokus are all about! I get much more satisfaction out of solving a sudoku using logic (and not guesswork) from beginning to end. Fortunatly the author provides the page numbers for the puzzles requiring trailing and I simply skipped over all of those puzzles. Were it not for puzzles requiring trailing I'd give this book 5 stars instead of the 4 I rated it.

Great for the experienced sudoku solver who's looking for fun and challening puzzles, I highly recommend this book after trying several others that were inferior.

I love very difficult Sudoku puzzles. And I find Mr. Sheldon's to be the very best. They are very difficult. But they are fair and honest. No gimmicks. No tricks. After being disappointed by many "self-proclaimed" hard puzzle books, I hit on an interesting idea. Since it is impossible to remember a puzzle's solution long after you've solved it, I thought that working these puzzles a second time would be as challenging as the first. So I bought another copy and started in. Much to my delight, the puzzles were as new and fresh as my first time through. So I've now purchased five copies of Genius and another five copies of Master Class. At one puzzle a day, I'm set for almost four years.

*****
These puzzles are hard! "Sudoku Genius" is comprised of 144 hard puzzles, progressing from "Daunting" to "Tortuous" to "Merciless", on to "Harrowing", "Horrific", "Maddening", "Murderous", "Devastating", and finally "Deadly". I am just in "Merciless", the third level, and am really enjoying the challenge. There are some explanations of technique, which the author calls a "master class in advanced strategies"; it wasn't extremely useful for me, as I had known about the techniques already, but it was a nice refresher.

There is only one puzzle per page, large grids, and altogether a great book for those who really want to be challenged. Obviously, this would be an impossible book for beginners, and highly frustrated for those who weren't ready for it. I bought it a year ago, and kept working from other books until I was ready.

The author says that some of the puzzles require "trailing", which means that you DO have to guess, as there is not an logically identifiable solution. I have a problem with this. Fortunately, he lets you know which puzzles do require trailing, and there are only 30 of them. For those, I do cheat and look, as I think sudoku puzzles should not involve trailing. So I work around this feature of the book easily, and it doesn't detract from my fun. If you enjoy guessing and working a puzzle until you find out you've guessed incorrectly, then erasing everything, you won't have to do a work-around! Again, this really doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the book at all, though.

Definitely recommended.
*****

This book has sudokus organized into 9 levels, from "daunting" to "tortuous" ... ending with "deadly." But only a few at the highest of the nine levels are as hard or harder than the "hard" Pappacom sudokus in the Washington Post and elsewhere. Levels 1-5 are not very hard. Not a bad book, just not what it claims to be.

Challenging, which is awesome! Also it is printed on great paper that is good for erasing pencil without awful smudges and the puzzles are large enough for even my bubbly writing!

I bought this book about a year ago and found out early on that this book was not of the "hard" or "5 star" difficulty ratings of the newspaper puzzle variety. I was accustomed to polishing off those puzzles quickly. I wanted a challenging book with nothing but harder puzzles. Why waste time with a book that includes easy and medium puzzles? I got what I wanted with "Sudoku Genius". The puzzles were too difficult without guessing for me when I started it so I put it aside and went on the web to learn the more advanced strategies and methods to solve sudoku. Now I am cruising through the book and am close to the end in the 6th circle and already jumped to the end and completed the 9th Circle. With an understanding of the advanced strategies, I have not had to use the "Trailing" (guessing) technique. Left to the strategies in the "Master Class in Advanced Stategies" which are really just the simpler naked and hidden doubles and triples methods, I probably would have needed to "Trail". Puzzle 109 was a good example. I found 2 unique rectangles and the rest of the puzzle was child's play. Try the book if you like harder puzzles. Not quite "Diabolical" but close enough for Sudoku Hell.

Tom Sheldon's puzzles and books are in a league of their own. They are each logical, beautiful, challenging, and fun. Some will frustrate you -- and then yield a day or so later, when you come back fresh. The best part of Sheldon's approach, for me, is his specific identification of puzzles that require "trail and error" to solve. Each and every puzzle proceeds logically from start to finish, and so when you get stuck you know that you're either at the "trail and error" point or you've missed something. Even the "trail and error" approach, as he outlines in his introduction, proceeds logically. I had not thought of using digit frequency in pairs to determine a starting point, nor had I thought of marking the constraint chain that results from choosing one. I love this approach. He provides all the analytic tools you need in his marvelous introductory chapters. I found it helpful to devise my own "grid" paper to help me find buried pairs and triplets, for me these were the most difficult. All in all, this is the PERFECT gift for a sudoku lover. I now can't wait to begin his next, "Sudoku Master Class."

I get a bit tired of people claiming how fantastically hard their puzzles are, only to be disappointed in the end. In the end with this book I was very disappointed. The author claims 9 Circles of Sudoku Hell, but the highest level, "The Ninth Circle" contains only one puzzle and it can be solved in under an hour, pretty much ditto for all the rest.

I thought the master class in advanced strategies disappointing, simply a rehash of strategies known around the world.

What I really came away with from this book is the knowledge that my Sudoku solving process is superior to the author's lore, and that maybe I should write a book on Sudoku solving and get the author's permission to use puzzles from this book as examples.