Another “miscellaneous” post before we move on. I wanted to give you an indication of what you should be able to do by now, just using the sudoku techniques discussed so far.
I picked up this week’s Sunday Times (UK version) last night. Some of you will know that they publish a “Hard” and a “Very Hard” puzzle every week. This second puzzle is widely regarded as being among the hardest published globally.
Anyway, with just the stuff we have covered up to now, I was able to complete the “Hard” puzzle, using no pencilmarkings (and this is anothe personal challenge). It only needed two naked pairs from what I remember. I would also expect you to be able to regularly complete a Daily Mail 5-star puzzle without markings in the same way.
Is there anyone who has a feel for how these match up to papers elsewhere in the world? It would be great to try to build up a comparitive list for newspaper sudoku around the world.