I have written a few modifications to SudoCue, good enough to release a new version shortly.

The easy methods (naked and hidden singles) have been modified, so that the program no longer does them via the queue but only when really solving the puzzle.

A rating system is in development that has a very fine tuning in the easy range. It emulates the way a human player would search the grid, and hit a possible placement. The score greatly depends on the time needed to search for breakthroughs, modified with bonus and malus for alternative routes, visibility, difficulty of the technique used and stategy bonus.

My clueless monster is well-received. One player spent 6 hours on it, another 3 days. Need a bit more feedback from the intenational audience, but another clueless sudoku is certainly an option.

I read a bit more about the birth of BUG on the players forum. Interesting how such theories develop. I posted a poll on the programmers forum to see what the general opinion regarding uniqueness is. I know what Angus’ opinion is.

What I want to add to SudoCue is a few more tools and tool combinations. The Peers tool should be a nice addition to scan for naked singles without giving them straight away, as with pencilmarks.

Another option should be to see the candidates/pencilmarks with Focus/Watch or Color tool active. It does not hurt, but players may like the way candidates are presented in SS.

I have decided to give it a final go and put all the things I’ve learned about writing a cool Sudoku program into this new version. It will not be a simple upgrade, but a complete rewrite of the program. A lot of posts about the project’s progress are to be expected, but here is the plan:

• Program will be rewritten completely in C#
• Program will be a sudoku framework, that can be expanded by others
• It supports custom puzzle formats and constraint definitions
• It supports custom plug-in skins
• It supports custom plug-in file formats
• It supports custom plug-in solving techniques, or complete solvers
• It supports custom plug-in imports and exports (clipboard and web)
• It supports custom plug-in helper tools (and the 6 we already have)
• It supports custom plug-in puzzle generators
• It supports custom plug-in puzzle rating tools
• The source will be available under GNU2 license.

Is this too ambitious? We’ll see. I’ve contacted the very inactive administrator of the sudoku programmers forum and offered to take over the administration. If that works out OK, then I’ll set up an Open-Source subforum, and this project can be posted there. If not, I will start a new SudoCue2 development forum on the SudoCue.net site. That would be more difficult to plug, but we’ll see…