Doctor’s Note – Week 2
Another week, and another set of puzzles I hope you really enjoyed.
By now you are probably sensing that during this “introduction” phase I will be showcasing one sudoku variation and one other puzzle style each week. This will continue this week with another of my own sudoku variations and another of my favorite puzzle styles. Can you guess which ones?
All of the sudoku variations are present in books I’ve published if you are interested in more; the puzzles — with the exception of TomTom Puzzles — are all styles that I’ve never had the opportunity to write for any domestic publisher. But now that I am publisher, all of these styles will be featured in “The Art of Puzzles” and I hope some of you choose to contribute puzzles to this book project.
This 50:50 split is good for the introduction phase of Grandmaster Puzzles, but does beg the question of what ratio of Sudoku to other puzzles you would like to see in the future. If the question was about most other sources of Sudoku, this would be an easy 0:100 for me. But Grandmaster Sudoku are very cool, and I hope any rating you give is reserved to the quality of Grandmaster puzzles in each of these genres, not your own preconceptions formed from “Number Place” puzzles that lack the elegance of hand-crafting.
In other site news, sometime this week I will add the much requested “pdf” form of each puzzle at the same time as posting for my paper solvers. Other changes will be coming by the end of the month, but certainly not this week as I prepare for a trip to Cambridge for the MIT Mystery Hunt. Better Luck This Time I always say!
— Dr. Sudoku
Genre guesses: Thermo-Sudoku and Star Battle.
On the ratio question:
I like the idea of focusing on two types of puzzle per week. I don’t know that it always has to be one sudoku and one not, but my gut reaction is I’d like to see at least 1/4 of the puzzles as sudokus. I’d hate to discourage one of the beet designers of sudoku around to dial it back. Frankly, I’d let your own sense of inspiration guide you — if you have good ideas for sudoku, I’m always interested in seeing them. If you feel like you are getting into a bit of a sudoku rut and want to do a week of battleships and corral, also good.
There is a frightening amount of “match” here – you either can read my mind or my google docs.
At the moment, I’m planning an eventual 8 day rotation. 8 days allows each genre/subgenre to move forward a day of the week by the coming week. 2 of the 8 will be sudoku or sudoku variants. So 25% is my eventual target, but before hearing other input it is obviously subject to change.
I am fine with any percentage of puzzles. I am not that fast (usually 5-15 times the master speed), but I enjoy making it through each of your puzzles.
I wanted to make a suggestion for the future. I would like to see a calendar feature where, when you’re logged in, you can see what days’ puzzles you have and have not completed.
Thanks for all the work you put in for us to have interesting puzzles to solve.
That is a very good suggestion. The next wave of updates will really start to implement the user-side features better (knowing what you’ve solved, what you’ve marked as favorites, etc.). Trying to make a simple page that can be sorted by puzzle type or day of week as in a calendar is what we’ll strive to achieve.
I think my preference (certainly not a demand since I’m not paying for these puzzles) would be to see about the same number of Sudoku as each of the other puzzle types (ie if there are 10 types, then sudoku is 10%). But I think the more interesting break-down to think about is between standard and variant types. I’d prefer to heavily weight towards variants (say 25% standard, 75% variants) since those are the puzzles that tend to have new, but still accessible (ie those that are derivable “over the board”) theorems. Those are the puzzles I remember months and years later (the botsu-baku puzzles on Nikoli usually have this sort of deduction featured). It’s very hard/rare (though not impossible) to find a nice new theorem in the standard types. Of course, developing a whole new set of rules or even finding a nice mixture of old rules has its own difficulties, and a single or even several puzzles aren’t enough to really dig down into the intricacies at play.
I have a 25:75 variant:classic formula in mind. Not as weighted as you want, and eventually I might want you to pay somehow so I’ll have to keep your opinion in mind.
That there is a term “WPC-style” puzzles suggests a lot of what we solve are esoteric one-off styles. The puzzles in the finals at the WPC last year were basically all unrecognizable by the standards of US puzzle publishing. I’m only really interested at the moment in styles I think I can make 100+ interesting puzzles in. Once I’ve made all those puzzles, I’ll rotate in another 100+ puzzle style.
Cubic Sudokus and Battleships are my prediction and i have developed a predilection for cubic sudokus and besides i see cubic cudoku in the background screen..I would love to see cubic sudokus.
And regarding the distribution of sudokus and puzzles,being your fan motris i will never want you to reduce the number of sudokus .An equal number of sudokus and puzzles would be ideal for me.I can never forget that sudokus were what informed me that a medallion exists in sudokus by the name of Thomas Snyder through the book The Art of sudoku.
Even Variants would do in sudokus.But i would suggest you to never reduce the preference for sudokus given in this site.Newbies like me dont know that many puzzle types.(I am happy that i learnt a new puzzle type this week)Would love to slowly get used to different puzzle types by clinging on to sudokus on alternate days.And good luck motris for your mystery hunt(though I have no idea what mystery hunt means).
Thanks for your comment! That a lot of people know sudoku, but maybe not all that one can do with sudoku, is why I still really like to feature it. People who are into sudoku may not know all these other styles (and the audience I hope to grow here will certainly come at these styles more like you with no prior knowledge of Nurikabe or anything else but Sudoku and maybe one or two others).
So to help grow the audience, not just to cater to the die-hard fans I already have, I have to both have easier puzzles than some would want, and more “standard” puzzles than some would want.
I’ve appreciated your persistence over the first two weeks with new puzzle ideas. I hope this continues.
My answer varies depending on whether we’re discussing variant sudoku types or traditional sudoku. I don’t like traditional sudoku very much, even good quality puzzles like these, and I’m not very good at it (draw your own conclusions about the cause and effect relationship here); I spend too long searching for numbers and not enough time thinking, if that makes sense. I skip the Sudoku puzzle on the USPC each year because it isn’t a good use of solving time for me.
So far on this site, I can achieve Master times on the Nurikabe puzzles, between Master and Expert on the TomToms, and Expert on Tight Fit Sudoku. However, I only finished one of the three traditional Sudoku within the Novice time limit!
So, could I use the practice? Probably. Will I enjoy it? Probably not, and since this is just a hobby for me and not a serious competitive activity, I’m all about the fun right now. Unique sudoku variants are better for fulfilling that fun factor.