Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Samurai Sudoku

I was recently rear-ended by another driver.[1] Even though I had an easy time finding my registration and proof of insurance, I decided that it was time to clean out the glove box. There were coupon books from 2007 and 2008, registration and safety inspection certificates dating back to 2006 (when I bought my car), and over a dozen old proof of insurance cards, a menu from Pier 49 Pizza, and a printout of an incomplete samurai sudoku [2], all of which no longer needed to be in the glove box. But I couldn't help myself—before throwing away the sudoku, I had to finish it.

My mom introduced me to samurai sudoku back in 2006. December 8, 2006, to be precise. How do I know this? Because that's when I printed out the sudoku I found in the glove box. It's the only one I've ever done. She started me on an "easy" one, which can still be found in the archives at http://www.samurai-sudoku.com/ (the December 4th, 2006 puzzle). I managed to get through a little less than 20% of the puzzle before it became lodged in my glove box. When I pulled it out, I instantly remembered it and recalled feeling a little frustrated that an "easy" puzzle was as hard as it was.[3] I spent another hour or so on it and this time was able to finish it:


Since I'm not sure how copyright applies to sudoku grids, I'm not including the numbers that were given to me (represented by yellow squares). If you want those, you'll have to follow the link above to the website I got this from. I don't believe they can copyright the solution, though, so here it is. If you're looking for something new in your sudoku diet, I'd recommend samurai sudoku. It was definitely challenging.


Notes:

[1] Read more at my post Out of the Old and Into the New II.

[2] Sudoku is from the Japanese 数独, which means "one number". A samurai sudoku organizes five regular sudoku grids into a quincunx. If regular sudoku have lost their thrill for you, you can find a list of sudoku variants at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudoku#Variants.

[3] Given all the other things I have going on, I don't think I'll be spending any time working through another samurai sudoku—especially any of the harder ones.

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