Sudoku Solving Techniques

Book excerpt: Whether you are a complete beginner or have already acquired some solving skills, this book will be extremely helpful. For beginners it explains what Sudoku is, and deals fully with the basic solving techniques. For solvers already able to complete puzzles graded as Easy or Moderate, but who find themselves up against a brick wall when faced with more difficult puzzles, the book describes and demonstrates a selected range of techniques which will enable them to go further and solve all the puzzles likely to be encountered in newspapers or puzzle books, from Easy through Hard and Very Hard to Diabolical. There are 84 pages to explain the mysteries of scanning, matching pairs, twins, triplets and quads, pointing and claiming, the use of rectangles and other 4-sided figures, X-wings and X-Y wings, swordfish, jellyfish, turbot fish, and chains and loops. These explanatory pages are followed by 30 graded puzzles, ranging from Easy to Diabolical, with which to test the techniques described in the book. A novel feature is that the puzzles come with fully reasoned solutions and detailed explanations which, by taking you through all the logical steps, show exactly how each puzzle was solved and what solving techniques were used to do so. These provide in themselves a valuable aid to mastering the techniques..