Using the gimp for sudoku

[hazel]

Is anyone else here addicted to sudoku? I have been ever since a friend showed me a method for solving sudoku puzzles. It works for most of them, but not for the ones described as "diabolical" or "very difficult". With these, you eventually reach an impasse in which there are no further squares with a unique number and no more numbers with a unique position. You have to guess a value and then see where your guess takes you.

I've now found a way to solve these using the gimp, of all things. I have a permanent image of a blank sudoku form and I create a layer on top of it called "numbers". Into this I enter all the values I can be absolutely sure of. Then I duplicate this layer, hide the original, and call the new layer "guess". I find a square which can have two and only two possible values, and I put in one of them in a different colour. If my guess leads to a solution, well and good. If it leads to another impasse, I can create a new "guess" layer and repeat the operation. If it leads to a contradiction, I simply delete the guess layer and enter the opposite value in "numbers". Eventually you are guarranteed to reach a solution.

[cousinlucky]

Six days a week the very first thing I do with my newspaper is the sudoku and then the crossword puzzle, and then I read the comics.

[hazel]

Six days a week the very first thing I do with my newspaper is the sudoku and then the crossword puzzle, and then I read the comics.

Shame on you, Lucky! I read the news first. Sudoku comes last.

[peteh]

I skim through the news first - stopping if anything takes my interest - and then do the sudoku.
I also check the Daily Sudoku online. I've just printed today's off.

[cousinlucky]

If I sent you a weeks worth of the " New York Daily News ", Hazel, you would see just how much dribble there is in the rest of this newspaper. Today's big story is titled: Hedge Hog Bust which is about some portly Insider traders who got caught with phone taps. Then there's the story Hell No - I Won't Go about a nefarious New York State Senator that was just convicted for assaulting his girl friend. Or the story about the funeral of a young girl killed by a drunken mother driving a carload of girls to a " slumber party ". Of course there are page after page of propaganda, scantily clad women and the usual sports hype. The on-line edition is not as bad as the print edition, take a look for yourself:
New York News, Traffic, Sports, Weather, Photos, Entertainment, and Gossip - NY Daily News

Hedge Hog Bust
Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Group, ex-Bear Sterns directors, others charged in insider trading scam

I Won't Go!
Despite pressure from fellow Democrats after conviction, Sen. Hiram Monserrate insists he won't quit

[hazel]

If I sent you a weeks worth of the " New York Daily News ", Hazel, you would see just how much dribble there is in the rest of this newspaper.

Typical tabloid rubbish! But don't you have any better papers in NY? For example, aren't there any American equivalents to the Guardian or the Daily Telegraph? This is drifting off-topic, but I'm curious.

[cousinlucky]

Hazel, In New York City there is the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal which do not interest me because I am not a rich high-brow person. The Times has a crossword puzzle that requires a college education which I, unfortunately, do not have.

There is also the New York Post which, to me , is below being a tabloid; it is owned by Rupert Murdock.

I pick up the New York Daily News because it has three pages of comics and two crossword puzzles in addition to sudoku. The rest of the paper is mostly local sensationalist dribble; which I may, or may not even, read.

As for the National and International stories contained in this paper they are one to four days after the story has already appeared upon the Internet!

[Thrillhouse]

There does exist an algorithm that can solve any Sudoku puzzle. You could write it up in your favorite programming language, hazel.

There's a free newspaper published by the Washington Post that is given out to those who ride the Washington DC subway every day. It contains one Sudoku puzzle and one Crossword puzzle. I try to do both (on the ride to and from work). And on Fridays, they have a Samurai Sudoku.

[hazel]

There does exist an algorithm that can solve any Sudoku puzzle. You could write it up in your favorite programming language, hazel.

I know such programs exist. A friend of mine wrote one in QuickBasic to run on Windows. In fact he was the one that got me interested in Sudoku in the first place. But writing a program to solve sudokus automatically seems to me to completely miss the point of the exercise.

[cousinlucky]

I have to admit that being immersed in a sudoku or crossword puzzle keeps the wierdos and oddballs riding the bus and ferry completely out of my mind.

Sometimes though I do get distracted by loud kids or people arguing or screaming into their cell phones. Sometimes when I am distracted I make mistakes.

It seems to me that if someone used a program to solve the sudoku puzzle they would soon lose any interest in doing it at all.