World's Hardest Sudoku 179
jones_supa writes "A Finnish PhD in mathematics, Arto Inkala, has allegedly created the world's toughest sudoku puzzle. 'There's no straightforward way to define the difficulty level of a sudoku. I myself doubt if this is the hardest in the world, but definitely harder than my previous ones,' Inkala sets off humbly. The news agencies around Europe are nonetheless excited (Google translation of Finnish original). The particular difficulty in this version lies in the number of deductions you have to make in order to fill in a single number on the grid. 'It is a common misconception that the less initial numbers, the harder the puzzle. The most challenging ones have 21-25', the creator adds."
Re:Easy peasy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy peasy (Score:5, Insightful)
brute force != solving a sudoku
Yes it is. It's a totally pointless activity, but you have certainly solved it if you end up with the right answer.
If someone asks me what is the next number in the sequence 1, 4, 9, 16, 25 and I say "36" that is the correct solution whether I knew it, guessed it or worked it out in any way whaatsoever.
Not so hard (Score:5, Insightful)
The following crappy solver I cobbled together solved it in 33 seconds under Cygwin:
https://github.com/fhstoica/NumbersAndLettersSudokuSolver [github.com]
Check out Peter Norvig's web site for a very elegant solver and look for the "impossible puzzle" if you really want a difficult one:
http://norvig.com/sudoku.html [norvig.com]
Really Slashdot? WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot is coming undone. (Score:2, Insightful)
but at least they were topical.
today's top story: worlds hardest sudoku
summary: not actually the world's hardest sudoku.
more at 11.
Re:Easy peasy (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe i'm a super programmer then, since i wrote a brute force sudoku solver in 10 min that can solve sudokus in max 100ms on my aging laptop.