The Clueless Days

Sometimes I feel clueless myself.

The first of these monster puzzles were meant as an experiment. People jumped on it and wanted more and more. Creating these puzzles manually involves some risk. You have a shot at it and when it can be solved by 10 instances of SudoCue, then it should be OK. Difficulty can only be determined by testing. Because that takes such a long time, I tend to approve anything that passes the test, no matter how difficult.

Now I have CluelessMaker. It accepts 9 template-generated puzzles and a solution as input, maps the 9 puzzles to the central solution, and solves the whole thing in a fraction of a second. It counts naked/hidden singles, line-box interactions and naked/hidden subsets. More techniques will be built into it, but I can manually assess an almost solved clueless to see what is needed to complete it. If it’s a fair technique, I’ll let it pass.

What worries me, is that players no longer fancy the ‘regular’ sudokus. They want more and more clueless specials. If have made 4 by hand, the rest will be machine made, and more reliable.

Also had some fun on the player’s forum with the superior and inferior threads.

Long time no blog

I have been involved in so many development issues that blogging was sort of forgotten.

The release of version 1.2.0 of SudoCue went like a train. No single bug report has come in while I noticed several hundreds of people have already downloaded this version. Without any initiative from my side, the program is now listed at a dozen or more freeware download sites. Seems that sudokumakers are not the only people stealing stuff from the competition hehehe…

Clueless 3 has been released. These puzzles are immensely popular. Site visits have almost doubled since I started publishing them. This #3 is a naughty one. There are optional clues. Another first in sudokuworld.

New batches have arrived from SudokuGo, my little maker. About 20 of the 60,000 generated puzzles are Nightmare-worthy. The bar is very high.

Had an interesting discussion on both the programmers and the players forum about finned fish. Devised an algorithm that can find them all, regardless of the presence of vertices. My fellow programmers are a bit reluctant to follow suit and need more proof. I’ll give it to them soon. But then my solver is the first to catch any fish in a sudoku.

Lots of forum discussions going on. Especially on the player’s forum it is hard to focus on productive threads. You gotta read a lot to pick up the nice pieces.

Sudoku X

Almost forgot to blog this.

With my SodokuGo program, I can now also generate Sudoku-X puzzles. Posted a few on the NL forum, but not a lot of response. Interesting that you can easily generate 15 and 16 clue sudoku-X. I saw one with 13 clues on a website.

It would be cool to generate my Clueless Specials with SudokuGo.

Clueless the Sequel

I have managed to construct another Clueless Special. It took some time to build this one, because the diamonds template does not have a lot of room to play with. I had to change 3 of the 9 puzzles to ensure they have a unique solution with the center box filled.

When I tested the complete puzzle, it turned out to be extremely difficult, but solvable with a single solution. I wonder how many people will manage to solve it. It takes a lot of force to connect the dots in this one.

My hosting company www.mijndomein.nl is doing some maintenance that they think is best done at midnight. That is the time that all the addicts come to look for a new Nightmare. I hope they are ready now, because for me this is becoming a nightmare. Too many sites now depend on my puzzles.

SudoCue 1.2.0 testing

Tests are going remarkably well. Despite the large number of changes, no errors have been reported. The only problem may be the bandwidth required for the release. With more and more users, the maximum bandwidth could be exceeded with the release of a new version. This version may be OK, but the next…


SudoCue release 1.2.0 status

The following solver techniques have been added and tested:

  • XYZ-Wing
  • Finned X-Wing
  • BUG+1

The ‘Peers’ tool has been added. This tool could be placed between Focus and Markup. It focuses the view to the selected cell and it’s peers. The candidates for the selected cell only are visible and can be maintained. The tool is aimed at people who want to maintain candidates, but do not like the spoiling effect of seeing all the candidates in the entire grid.

Rating system implemented. This rating system must be tested and calibrated. We probably need to add something like mode-change scores, e.g. when pencilmarks are required, or when value patterns need to be examined.

As an option, markup can be combined with the watch and color tools. This combination can be useful for those accustomed to the Simple Sudoku interface. Markup can be toggled on and off independently when watch or color tools are selected.

Fixed a bug that left the previous menu item available when opening single puzzle after a collection. The statusbar panel no longer shows 1/0 or 1/1 when no collection is loaded.

The analyzer has been split into a separate status dialog, with the current situation (filled cells, remaining candidates, etc) and the Analyzer with required solving techniques and ratings.

To avoid confusion with true pencilmarks, pen and pencil have been remaned to Pen 1 and Pen 2. The latter has a dark green color. The erase and confirm functions are still available for pen 2.

New scramble function. Permutate the current puzzle without changing the difficulty. Nice tool to play a variation of an interesting puzzle (which is a whole new puzzle) or avoid copyright claims. Not that the sudoku vault masters would like it (or Wayne G) but this feature will not operate on batches, just single puzzles.

I have decided to introduce a beta testing period, due to the many changes. I want to make sure this all works, before I throw it at the large audience.

XYZ-Wing

So proud this is working!!!

XYZ-Wings are now supported in SudoCue. With the complexity of the program, adding new solving techniques has become more of an administrative task tham simply writing the code to perform the technique. Anyway, this technique is now part of the standard solving techniques suite of SudoCue.

More to come.

I set up a forum for sudoku beginners on a free forum hosting provider. I’m not sure whether or not I’m gonna use it, but there is a gap in the market to embrace and cuddle new sudoku players. With SudoCue I’m at the high-end of the market, but there is a requirement at the lower end.

Back in Business

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.

More Free Hosting

Things are going too slow. I don’t know why.

Another free host added. They are all a little different, but very quickly to launch, and require no maintenance.

sudokuforum.nl suffered a severe forum-spam-attack yesterday. Edwin was not present, so the forum was a mess most of the day.

A nice list of keywords is present for SudokuStart. Got the languages with flag images, ratings and keywords, so now a few rating images and content can be added.

Free Hosting Satellites

With free hosting, it is possible to set up a few sites in a short amount of time. I was still collecting links for sudokustart and sudokuplaats, when I stumbled on a few free hosting companies. Daily sudokus are now shown on a couple of new sites, and links to sudocue.net have been added.

A Dutch user guide for SudoCue was long overdue, and in fact the only thing missing on sudokuplaats. It is now there.

Still programming and planning SudokuStart. This site must have a good launch, so I’ll give it a bit extra time.

Finally had contact with Milo, the site admin of the sudoku programmers forum. I’m now a moderator for the forum, which allows me to take care of the forum, by adding sticky topics and remove rubbish.

Another candidate for sudocue daily syndication, and received an interesting business proposal. The activities seem to produce results now.