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Introduction - It seems that these days everyone is enjoying the game of Sudoko wherever they are. The Sudoku puzzle is ideal for whenever you have a few spare minutes and want to indulge in a little bit of thinking power. Sudoku, sometimes spelled “Su Doku”, is a puzzle that originated in Japan. The puzzle is known as a “placement” puzzle. In the United States Sudoku is sometimes called the “Number Place” puzzle.

01. History - You would imagine that with such a name this puzzle originated in Japan, but it has been around for many years in the United States and in the UK. However, the Japanese found an example under the title “Number Place’ in an American magazine and translated it as something quite different: su meaning number and doku meaning single unit. It immediately caught on in Japan where number puzzles were much more prevalent than word puzzles. Crosswords don’t work very well in the Japanese language.

02. Explained - Sudoku can take on many different variant forms. The one main standard is that each of the numbers in a region needs to be unique. With so many different variations of the puzzle to choose from you will never run out of challenges. Start out slowly with the standard grid layout of 9 x 9 before you move on to one of the many variations that you can find. Your goal should be to solve the Sudoku puzzle with little “givens” as you can.

03. The Math - The Sudoku puzzle is unlike most puzzles in that it is based on mathematical structure and requires some level of logic in order to be solved. The main basis behind solving Sudoku is called “NP-complete” because it is solved on n2 x n2 grids of n x n cells. It is this concept that makes Sudoku so difficult to solve. When you put cells on grids and throw in a few “givens” it takes some determining finite power to solve the puzzle correctly.

04. Construction - The construction of the Sudoku puzzle is done in a variety of ways. In most cases, a “puzzle generator” will be used. It is generally thought that Dell uses a computer program to generate their puzzles. A Dell Sudoku puzzle will typically have over 30 “givens” which will be placed in random cells around the grid. Many of these “givens” will lead to the deduction of other obvious number placements. Dell, and other puzzle creators in North America, seldom give any authoring credit to the Sudoku puzzles which they create.

05. Solution - Scanning is one way that you can solve a Sudoku puzzle. When you first look at that puzzle you should scan it at least once and again a few times while you are trying to arrive at the solution. Take some time to analyze the puzzle as you are working it since scanning can help you to quickly pick up on a working in one or two needed numbers.

06. Beginning - Below is an unsolved Sudoku puzzle. It consists of a 9 x 9 grid that has been subdivided into 9 smaller grids of 3 x 3 squares. Each puzzle has a logical and a unique solution. To solve the puzzle, each row, column, and box must contain each of the numbers 1 to 9. Throughout this guide the entire puzzle will be referred to the “grid”, a small 3 x 3 grid as a “region”, and the square that contains the number as the “cell”.

07. Strategy - Once you have completed the steps in the previous chapter you may have come to realize that you need to change your strategy at some point. Easy Sudoku puzzles can be solved as the grid above was solved, but once you move on to more difficult puzzles you will need to come up with a different plan to find the right solution.

08. Eliminate - We have looked at the basic number finding strategies, but what if these are just not up to the job?  Until now we have been causally penciling in possible numbers, but there are many puzzles that will require you to be totally methodical in order to seek out and eliminate extraneous numbers.

09. If It Fails - So what do you do when everything else fails? You will have to rely on bifurcation and methodological analysis. Those are the technical terms for the process of picking a likely pair of numbers, choosing one, and seeing where the number you have chosen gets you. Because you can be confident that one of the numbers will eventually produce a route to the solution, it is simply a matter of carefully analysing the options and testing your choice. If your first choice doesn’t work out then you take the alternative route

10. Solving - In its structure there is no difference between a tough Sudoku and a diabolical puzzle. The grading is only increased because in a diabolical puzzle there are more places where clues can run out and more apparent dead ends. You can find diabolical puzzles in a variety of places including puzzle books and on the Internet. If you buy a puzzle book you will find difficult and diabolical Sudoku puzzles after the easy to moderate puzzles.

11. Samples - Following are samples of Sudoku puzzles to challenge you no matter what level you are at. Easy puzzles are followed by more difficult ones. Solutions follow in the next chapter. Take your time as you learn to solve these puzzles, keeping in mind that you put the strategies learned in this guide to good use.

12. Solutions - Puzzle 1: ........

Conclusion - Once you learn the basics of solving a Sudoku puzzle you will need to apply it to puzzles of all levels of ability. You  may find yourself struggling at first but this is just subjective and over time you will find yourself flying through puzzles that are mild to challenging. There are many mistakes that you will make along the way, and you may often find yourself wedged into a dead end with no where to go.

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