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Arthur Whitney's one liner sudoku solver (2011)

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Re: Arthur Whitney's one liner sudoku solver (2011)

#3

Sudoku was always a meditative thing for me. It’s impossible not to win so long as you pay attention. Optimizing solutions seems contrary to the point to me.

I guess I'm the opposite. After doing a couple of sudoku many years ago my thought was "Hey, I could just automate this" and started thinking of algorithms.

Re: Arthur Whitney's one liner sudoku solver (2011)

#4

Sudoku was always a meditative thing for me. It’s impossible not to win so long as you pay attention. Optimizing solutions seems contrary to the point to me.

Solvers are useful for confirming that a puzzle you've recieved or generated is solvable. The meditative process can really go sideways when there is no solution for you to stumble upon.

Puzzles in commercial collections don't usually have that problem, but those from other sources sometimes do.

Solvers also make for a nice craft exercise, as here. Simple but not trivial, you can approach them in a lot of different ways and thereby work through different techniques or constraints you mean to explore.

Re: Arthur Whitney's one liner sudoku solver (2011)

#6

Sudoku was always a meditative thing for me. It’s impossible not to win so long as you pay attention. Optimizing solutions seems contrary to the point to me.

Optimising solutions is the meditative exercise for me.

I enjoy running simulation after simulation after simulation, studying possible outcomes and optimising everything. Everyone is different :)

Re: Arthur Whitney's one liner sudoku solver (2011)

#9

Sudoku was always a meditative thing for me. It’s impossible not to win so long as you pay attention. Optimizing solutions seems contrary to the point to me.

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