FREE SUDOKU PUZZ IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ROLE TO ENJOY THE CHILDREN AS WELL AS PARENTS.
ABOUT SUDOKU
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You're a Smart Bunch!
It took countless hours of reading, studying, and head-scratching, but we are pleased to announce to the world that we have discovered the one true secret to solving Sudoku puzzles.
Coffee.
"When the puzzle gets tough, the tough get coffee," said one of roughly 2,000 contest finalists who submitted their best Sudoku-solving secret as part of the first Reader's Digest Super Samurai Challenge. In fact, at least 50 people mentioned coffee as part of their answer. By comparison, there were merely two mentions of tea.
Last spring, Reader's Digest invited Americans to solve an extra hard Samurai Sudoku (five standard Sudoku puzzles clustered together into one oversized puzzle). The prize for the winner: $10,000 in cash. However, knowing that a fair number of Sudoku lovers would be able to solve the puzzle, we also provided two tough math questions to serve as tiebreakers.
You're a smart bunch, though. In total, we received roughly 4,000 entries, far beyond our expectations, given the toughness of the puzzles. Of those, about 3,200 had the Samurai puzzle correct, the two tiebreakers correct, and the entry form properly filled in.
On to tiebreaker No. 2, the final one, in which we asked these finalists to submit their best secret for solving Sudoku (maximum length: 150 words). Again, we were naive. Sure, there are lots of great puzzle masters out there. But how many of them can write well?, we smugly thought to ourselves.
Mistaken yet again! We received more than 2,000 short essays from the finalists on how to solve Sudoku. Their creativity was stunning, even humbling. It is clear that folks read the judging criteria. We slyly made viability and practicality of the advice a mere 20 percent of the scoring equation. The other 80 percent was focused on creativity and use of language. In other words, we weren't looking for a precise scientific methodology or algorithm, but rather creativity and inspiration. Here's a review of what we received and, to conclude, the winning submission.
EASIEST :
EASY :
MEDIUM :
HARDER :
HARDEST :
Creativity
She strolled into my office like she owned the joint, all legs and lipstick, giving me a smoky look that makes a man want to put on shiny shoes and take up the tango.
"Tell me your Sudoku secret," she purred.
"No dice, doll face," I growled.
So began the contest entry from Linda Robinson of Illinois, quickly proving that Sudoku lovers are hardly the math geeks that non- Sudoku folks suggest. In fact, we were highly amused at the humor that hundreds of finalists revealed in their essays.
Essays came in all shapes and forms. Several entrants used the grid form of a Sudoku as a framework for essays or poems. The entry of Linda Hiltenbeitel was a good example, cleverly and simply presenting the nine characters "P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E-!" in a correct Sudoku format. Then there were the creative writers. This wonderful ode to erasers came from Jared Deaton of Idaho:
I have an eraser crumb problem. My wife thinks it's a Sudoku problem, but that's not quite right. The problem is not the Sudoku; it's the eraser crumbs. They're starting to take over. I shovel a path through them to my car every morning, we vacuum small mountains of them off our kitchen table daily, and my kids spend their evenings building eraser crumb castles in the living room. I'm not one of those casual Sudoku puzzlers -- the kind who do a few on a long plane ride, or half a puzzle after the comics and Sunday brunch. For me, it's an obsession, and with that kind of commitment and dedication come the eraser crumbs. That's my Sudoku secret: a good guess and a large gum eraser .. . works every time. Then all that's left is to figure out which eraser crumb pile the barbecue is under.
We enjoyed many entries that were cleverly packaged as well. Lance Yunkin of Pennsylvania burned the edges of his paper to give the feeling of a centuries-old document and wrote in fine Elizabethan form:
Thou logic test! Thou Worthiest of foes! Hear this: Thy lofty state thou must resign If I should place the numbers one through nine ..
Penelope Wilkie of Florida went contemporary, using the tools of modern motivation to convince us of her essay's superiority: She sent her essay beautifully displayed on an official-looking prize certificate, replete with an "excellence award" ribbon.
Finally, there were the metaphors. Sudoku is like a romance. Sudoku is like piloting an airplane. One entrant, a diehard baseball fan, used nothing but baseball analogies and then supplied "Give Me a Fun Sudoku!" lyrics to the tune of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."
But in the metaphor category, we favored this particularly tasty comparison that started the entry of Rochel Burstyn of Michigan:
Explaining Sudoku by writing is like eating fried chicken with a fork and a knife. Possible, but it's just easier to use your fingers!