Solving Sudoku puzzles - How it works

How to solve Sudoku puzzles?

In 1984, Japanese people began enjoying solving Sudoku puzzles, which is where the name comes from: Sudoku means "single number." Today, Sudoku puzzles can be found in the puzzle pages of many magazines; there are also special puzzle books dedicated exclusively to Sudoku puzzles, and a very simple and convenient way to solve Sudoku puzzles can be found online, using computers.

Many people initially sit in front of the number grid, perplexed, unsure how to handle it. How can one even solve such a Sudoku puzzle?

The answer is: combine and exclude.

• Combine
  To solve the Sudoku puzzle, you go through all the existing numbers and, by correctly combining them, find where the same numbers belong in the remaining empty spaces. It's best to start with the most frequently entered numbers. This way, the puzzle gradually fills in.
• Exclude
  If only a few numbers are missing in a block, row, or column, you can quickly identify the missing ones to solve the Sudoku puzzle. By elimination, you can usually quickly see where they can't be because those numbers have already been placed in other orientations, often finding the correct square. This also fills up the puzzle and reduces the number of empty squares.
• Clockwise method
  Despite the most intensive combination and elimination, when solving difficult Sudoku puzzles, you'll still stumble upon boxes where you can't clearly assign a single number. You can mark these boxes with clockwise lines (with a pencil) (or simply write the possible numbers if the boxes are large enough). This way, when compared with other boxes marked in this way, it often turns out that only one of these possible numbers is actually possible.

Different Sudoku variants

Nowadays, experts are attempting to solve Sudoku puzzle variants that add additional difficulty to the original puzzle. Some examples:

• Toroidal
  Here, the 81 fields are not divided into 9 blocks, but are distributed differently in the grid by strong borders, usually in some way symmetrical, whereby the upper and lower edges can also be interconnected.
• Irregular Extravaganza
  As with the toroidal grid, the blocks are arranged differently, albeit irregularly. They lie on the grid like irregular but equally sized gardens and are sometimes marked in different colors. The grid may also be smaller, such as 6x6.
• Sudoku cube
  To solve this Sudoku puzzle, you have to think outside the box, because it is three-dimensional.
• Killer Sudoku
  In this variant, Sudoku is either larger, e.g., 16x16, or combined with other number puzzles, such as Kakuro, where a specific sequence of squares must add up to a certain sum of digits to correctly solve the puzzle. Multiple nested Sudokus are also possible.

What makes solving Sudoku puzzles so popular?

• Challenge
  Anyone who enjoys puzzles loves a challenge. And solving Sudoku puzzles is especially challenging because there isn't just one straightforward solution; instead, various strategies must be used and logically combined.
• satisfaction
  If you manage to solve a Sudoku puzzle, you get a certain satisfaction, and this satisfaction compensates, at least for a short time, for many of the unsatisfying situations we are exposed to every day.
• Brain training
  Whether solving Sudoku puzzles and similar exercises train the brain and thus even have a health effect, read the following article: Does brain training or brain jogging really help?

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