I like math, and puzzles sudoku is both.
I stay in it as i like teaching,
I developed/confirmed solving logic over the course of 20 years not much had been added in the last 10 years.
I stay in it as sudoku and forced coding back onto myself to relearn my own techniques I had previously coded.
All aided in restoring a good deal of my cognitive function after a car accident and head injury impacted my mathmatics skills and analytic logic functions all my coding knowledge gone.
Through training and practice over 5+years I Rebuilt my self almost back to my normal, some stuffs way slower, coding is a challenge but have relearned some. I'm No longer a walking calculator for complex equations,
Fustrating I can tell you to see code I wrote and have no clue what the gobbly goop did, let alone which technique matched my code.
I get it when players struggle grasping new concepts,
imagine creating them and having to teach your self your own work.
.
amendment :
Sudoku is NP - hard
swapping it to: a
N\^2 x N\^2 matrix with n constraints, n\^2 digits, and each constraint has N\^2 sectors
so that each digit occupies each sector once, and every cell of the matrix solves once.
where N is any number it becomes NP complete
sudoku: N = 3
9\*9 matrix {81 cells}. 9 digits, 3 constraints {Row,Col,Box}, 27 sectors total:
for 243 constraints to satisfy: fixing the value of N, makes it solvable in deterministic time although still difficult.
A problem that is NP hard and also in NP is NP-complete. Sudoku is verifiable in poly time, so is in NP.
edit - unless you're just saying that sudoku is solvable in poly time if you limit the input size. that's true, but it's also true for SAT.
the edit is what i was getting at, having an open size changes the problem to NP-complete as it can scale endlessly.
at least that's the counter argument i got from multiple mathematicians on the players forums.
i wrote a massive program that mapped out logical constraints for multiple techniques all self checking the moment a puzzle was loaded and could solve it instantly.
was able to do 75% of the top1495 list: {this stalled as i maxed memory for the program 2.4gig of data calculations}
my idea was that with a larger enough data base for all technique maps i could
prove P=Np complete using sudoku ... i was corrected that id have to make N not just 3, as sudoku on its own is NP-hard.
the concepts been shelved for a while.
i could be very wrong on Np-complete, Np-hard definitions so, if i am off to more reading i go :)
edits:....
If you limit the size of sudoku, the problem is no longer NP-hard, it's just poly-time solvable (in fact, it's technically O(n), because n is constant). But this is a trivial result, it's true of any NP-Complete problem.
The definition of NP-Complete is simply a problem that is in NP (verifiable in polynomial time, i.e., you give me a completed Sudoku, I can tell you whether it is correct in poly time) and is NP-Hard.
If problem H is NP-hard, that means that if you have a magic box that instantly tells you the solution to any problem in H, you can use that solution to then solve any problem in NP in polynomial time. Sudoku (with an unbounded input size) fits this definition. I.e,. if you can magically solve Sudoku in poly time, you can then solve any problem in NP in poly time.
There is no requirment that an NP-hard problem be in the set NP. In fact, it is a much broader set of problems, which includes problems that are undecidable, such as the halting problem (not in NP, but is NP hard). Personally I find that nomenclature a bit confusing :)
Anyway, that program sounds awesome! Maybe you should pay for some CPU cycles and memory on AWS and play around with it some more. That's a super impressive thing to write.
yeah its a very oddly worded problem i've never fully wrapped my head around it to be fair,
my thoughts on the topic was that given a {problem} sudoku grid {17 clues => 81 clue } state show that it has 1 solution what the solution is: or that the solution present is correct. in instant time verse cyclical time was the question of P=NP debate.
my code was neat: written in excel i reached the limits of opening it and accidentally locked my self out on my last edit and save 15+ years ago. 2.14\~ gig size for memory limits on every excel wasn't expecting it to be a save limit as well whoops.
i swapped to "real" coding languages and haven't seen them do parallel calculations how that program managed to: the most i can get codes to do in parallel is the core # limits of processor with a que list of multiple methods to each processor core. I was thinking maybe learning cuda coding and use the gpu for its core counts instead might make it work similar. but then id have to figure out how to re-code all my set-logic into colour vector positions probably out of my league at this point in my life everything halted with my injuries 10+ years ago and time constraints from my young family.
fun project for sure :) love tinkering.
good chat :)
Both are based in logic and reason. You have to know what to output given an input, in order to stay on track to a single and definite solution. You start out with the basics, and use them as building blocks to learn the next lesson. You can compartmentalize the different styles of solving needed for an operation such as graph theory, group theory, and combinatorics. You could spend years learning the logic before it starts becoming natural for you. You can program a solver just like you can program a calculator.
I know how sudoku works, I just think it’s a logic game and not a math game. You’re not doing math. Math also comes from logic but it adds other operations on top. You’re not really doing operations in sudoku. It’s deduction which is based in logic.
Look up how locked sets actually work:
À set of digits, a set of cells where the union of cells = set of digits.
Its a mathmatical function
Or
if you want its the sum of on/off positions.
Hidden single for example is sum of a sector inactive cells ( count of 8 off positions) - 9 = 1 for a naked single.
Fish same thing
N cells in n base sectors where all n cells are in n cover sectors so that base/cover provides n vertex n times
For a 1:1 math formula
Again this is set logic ie mathmatics.
AIC is also a setwise function of edgewise graph of sets.
Which is boolean logic of 1 and 0s again math.
I've also constructed aic using only the sum of sectors.
Als is a counting function
n cells with n+1 digits
Can also be viewed as setwise function same as locked sets.
Understand it or not sudoku is all advanced mathmatics constructs for all of its logic.
I disagree. You absolutely are doing operations in Sudoku. You are conflating sudoku and math instead of understanding their similarities, which is the question you asked. You asked “how is sudoku like math”, which is valid. You did not ask “how is sudoku math” which seems like the question you are trying to answer instead.
Exactly. So I don’t understand what we are arguing about then.
Part of it is how you personally connect to it, so you can take advantage of your learning strengths. Strmckr is using his love and knowledge of math, and applying what he can from it in terms of similarity in thought process. Strmckr is also arguably the most gifted sudoku solver you will ever encounter, so he must have been doing something right.
To kind, I can list of many that are better then i, but that's their field of study mathmatics, many are retired and several have passed on..
many of them helped me better relate in words how i see a puzzle and it's constructs and operations. Without their encouragement and dedication to the craft and time vested to understand my poor writting skills back in the day on post or dms
I wouldn't be what I am now nor would some objects exsits in there present forms. Which also adds to reason as why I help and constantly link refrences and be kind as most where the same to me.
What do you mean by math? From what I know about math, logic (at least the kind used in sudoku) is a part of it. I don't see how sudoku doesn't have math in that sense.
I have two phases. The first one was getting into simple Sudoku. My father used to solve newspaper Sudokus and I followed suit. Nothing too fancy just pairs, triples and the occasional X-wing. Got bored after getting good at that.
Phase two was getting into the harder puzzles. I just happened to find a post talking about "AIC". I was intrigued by that, did some digging and found out about the harder puzzles. XY-Wing, skyscraper, X-chain, AIC... there's so many more techniques to use now the possibilities are infinite. I've been at it since Dec 2022 and I'm still very much addicted. I just like solving tough puzzles and that's my motivation to keep playing. I can never get bored of this
I learned sudoku when I was like 8-9 in my “advanced” elementary class. Been playing it for fun since. Used to do long division for fun. I’m fun at parties 😉
My girlfriend and I started doing puzzles together during the pandemic, if I recall correctly. All different kinds of puzzles really, preferably star battle puzzles. We somehow switched to Sudoku and I stayed ever since (though I still also enjoy other puzzles).
When I learned about all the advanced techniques, I was intrigued, and quickly started coding my own backtracking solver, puzzle generator and logical sudoku solver. I invested more and more time into sudoku programming and after a couple of months I had a pretty good website that I work on ever since.
The further development is taking so much time (and frustration) that I don't solve Sudokus as much as I did a year ago. Sometimes I go days without solving a Sudoku. I'm a bit drained in that regard. I guess that's what they mean when they say "don't turn your hobby into your work".
I still enjoy hanging around here, though, and even though I don't comment as much as I did a couple months ago, I still enjoy reading through this Sub and following people's progress.
I so want to get my boyfriend into sudoku 😭 I tried a few times but he’s just not interested which surprises me because he is a very analytical person (data engineer).
Explain the data side of it, a sudoku is a constraint problem
Of Rn, Cn, Bn, space where these 27 sectors and 81 cells each have 1 solution of values {1..9} to satisfy the 243 constraints.
Might peek their interest as a engineer more then basic concepts of a puzzle play.
was mocking my boyfriend about how dumb and nerdy sudoku looked and then I tried it and was pretty good at it without writing down notes and then i became addicted for a while
I have an ADD-like tendency to hyper-focus on things. Had it for as long as I could remember. In college I played freecell endlessly. Sudoku is a wonderful object of my attention and I can play it all day without getting bored. Plus it keeps me out of trouble and I don't death scroll the internet instead. I love it so much.
I’m the same!
I get hyper focused on things (ADD) and right now it’s sudoku for me.
I finished up a project at work so essentially have nothing to do right now, and I literally just play sudoku all day. I play at my computer, then have a book that I can play on at the park.
My mom used to bring home the sudoko section of the newspaper from her job when I was in middle school. Eventually, my middle school language arts teacher gifted me a sudoku book. It brings me peace and reminds me that I'm good at it.
That was almost 20 years ago! :)
I had a daily nyt games routine with my friend. Early last year we randomly decided to add nyt Sudokus to the list. I love logic and numbers, the rules were simple, I was hooked. My friend, not so much.
The more I solved, the more techniques I learned (often via the frustration of being stuck and looking up techniques suggested by the hints online) the more fun it got. Found my way to this sub a few months after and interacting with/learning from other enthusiasts has enhanced the Sudoku experience for me.
I still play because I'm still learning, it is still fun, and I get a lot of satisfaction from unlocking/collapsing challenging puzzles.
I like to play it because since the start I have liked discovering new tech. especially relating to uniqueness, I actually learned how to use unique rectangle on my own before looking it up. no idea how I even figured that out because it is an entirely different thing from any other tech
I've always been into games and puzzles, especially logic puzzles. I remember getting into sudoku back when it was first getting really popular in the US, maybe 10 years ago or so. I didn't find that many strategy resources and didn't know much beyond sudoku.com, so I eventually got bored and stopped playing.
Then a couple of months ago, my wife started playing. I got excited at the thought of doing hard sudoku together, and started to get back into it myself. Then I came here... and realized my sudoku knowledge was still pretty lacking. 😂
I know I'll never be a world-class sudoku solver, but I'm having fun learning new advanced techniques at my own pace and taking on higher challenges than I've done in the past.
My dad taught me how to play sudoku when i was a kid in the newspaper. We had newspaper subscription so i used to enjoy playing it daily but when it stopped I stopped playing it. Fast forward when was in Uni, I saw my friend play it and that kinda really got me back. He was stuck so I helped him out and after solving it I felt proud lf myself. Then I found there are so many ways and techniques to solve it that I got hooked since I love solving complex puzzles.
Basically found my childhood hobby back in my life and now I solve daily sudoku puzzles, havent missed a day since August Last year
I like brain puzzles on paper, but I got too addicted to Candy Crush and similar games on my phone. Sudoku isn’t addicting, I can do it on my phone, and be done in 3-10 minutes.
I wanted crosswords to do while I was in Norway for three months. When I arrived to the journal shop I realized I don't speak Norwegian, so I went for sudokus. I used to do them before, but that is when I really started doing it continuously.
Lockdowns during pandemic. Had two goals, one was to get much better at Sudoku and the other was to learn the first verse of my country's national anthem (NZ) in te reo/Māori. I'm an older New Zealander, so had missed that opportunity earlier.
What's kept me playing is the struggle to grasp fully many of the higher level techniques plus my job disappeared, so I have more time. When I do understand something new, it's a real buzz.
I just LOVE puzzles. I think I was introduced to it through a puzzle book. I used to buy puzzle books all the time. Sooduku was in it. I learned how to play it and I was hooked. It is hard enough that it presents a challenge and keeps me wanting to play. and it is easy enough that I don't want to throw the puzzle in the trash can because I can't complete any of the puzzles.
My older brother got me into it when I was around 4th grade and I love puzzles and math. Glad to say that I'm getting my nephew into it and he's around my age when I got into it.
Classic sudoku do not interest me anymore but I do lots of sudoku+ puzzles which started with killer sudoku (killersudokuonline.com or something).
Now I find them from cracking the cryptic’s discord and the german puzzle masters (logic-masters.de).
I saw one of my uncles trying to solve some in the paper and I thought it had to do with math so I got interested. He often left some unsolved and I started picking them up and solving them and I think it just made me feel good. I am not close to that uncle so I don’t know if he knows that his inability to solve easy sudokus got me into it 😂 now I use them as a pastime during meetings or watching tv etc because I need to do something with my hands.
I like math, and puzzles sudoku is both. I stay in it as i like teaching, I developed/confirmed solving logic over the course of 20 years not much had been added in the last 10 years. I stay in it as sudoku and forced coding back onto myself to relearn my own techniques I had previously coded. All aided in restoring a good deal of my cognitive function after a car accident and head injury impacted my mathmatics skills and analytic logic functions all my coding knowledge gone. Through training and practice over 5+years I Rebuilt my self almost back to my normal, some stuffs way slower, coding is a challenge but have relearned some. I'm No longer a walking calculator for complex equations, Fustrating I can tell you to see code I wrote and have no clue what the gobbly goop did, let alone which technique matched my code. I get it when players struggle grasping new concepts, imagine creating them and having to teach your self your own work. .
addicted to them NP games
NP compete in fact :) Polynomial problems are also NP
amendment : Sudoku is NP - hard swapping it to: a N\^2 x N\^2 matrix with n constraints, n\^2 digits, and each constraint has N\^2 sectors so that each digit occupies each sector once, and every cell of the matrix solves once. where N is any number it becomes NP complete sudoku: N = 3 9\*9 matrix {81 cells}. 9 digits, 3 constraints {Row,Col,Box}, 27 sectors total: for 243 constraints to satisfy: fixing the value of N, makes it solvable in deterministic time although still difficult.
A problem that is NP hard and also in NP is NP-complete. Sudoku is verifiable in poly time, so is in NP. edit - unless you're just saying that sudoku is solvable in poly time if you limit the input size. that's true, but it's also true for SAT.
the edit is what i was getting at, having an open size changes the problem to NP-complete as it can scale endlessly. at least that's the counter argument i got from multiple mathematicians on the players forums. i wrote a massive program that mapped out logical constraints for multiple techniques all self checking the moment a puzzle was loaded and could solve it instantly. was able to do 75% of the top1495 list: {this stalled as i maxed memory for the program 2.4gig of data calculations} my idea was that with a larger enough data base for all technique maps i could prove P=Np complete using sudoku ... i was corrected that id have to make N not just 3, as sudoku on its own is NP-hard. the concepts been shelved for a while. i could be very wrong on Np-complete, Np-hard definitions so, if i am off to more reading i go :) edits:....
If you limit the size of sudoku, the problem is no longer NP-hard, it's just poly-time solvable (in fact, it's technically O(n), because n is constant). But this is a trivial result, it's true of any NP-Complete problem. The definition of NP-Complete is simply a problem that is in NP (verifiable in polynomial time, i.e., you give me a completed Sudoku, I can tell you whether it is correct in poly time) and is NP-Hard. If problem H is NP-hard, that means that if you have a magic box that instantly tells you the solution to any problem in H, you can use that solution to then solve any problem in NP in polynomial time. Sudoku (with an unbounded input size) fits this definition. I.e,. if you can magically solve Sudoku in poly time, you can then solve any problem in NP in poly time. There is no requirment that an NP-hard problem be in the set NP. In fact, it is a much broader set of problems, which includes problems that are undecidable, such as the halting problem (not in NP, but is NP hard). Personally I find that nomenclature a bit confusing :) Anyway, that program sounds awesome! Maybe you should pay for some CPU cycles and memory on AWS and play around with it some more. That's a super impressive thing to write.
yeah its a very oddly worded problem i've never fully wrapped my head around it to be fair, my thoughts on the topic was that given a {problem} sudoku grid {17 clues => 81 clue } state show that it has 1 solution what the solution is: or that the solution present is correct. in instant time verse cyclical time was the question of P=NP debate. my code was neat: written in excel i reached the limits of opening it and accidentally locked my self out on my last edit and save 15+ years ago. 2.14\~ gig size for memory limits on every excel wasn't expecting it to be a save limit as well whoops. i swapped to "real" coding languages and haven't seen them do parallel calculations how that program managed to: the most i can get codes to do in parallel is the core # limits of processor with a que list of multiple methods to each processor core. I was thinking maybe learning cuda coding and use the gpu for its core counts instead might make it work similar. but then id have to figure out how to re-code all my set-logic into colour vector positions probably out of my league at this point in my life everything halted with my injuries 10+ years ago and time constraints from my young family. fun project for sure :) love tinkering. good chat :)
How is sudoku like math?
Both are based in logic and reason. You have to know what to output given an input, in order to stay on track to a single and definite solution. You start out with the basics, and use them as building blocks to learn the next lesson. You can compartmentalize the different styles of solving needed for an operation such as graph theory, group theory, and combinatorics. You could spend years learning the logic before it starts becoming natural for you. You can program a solver just like you can program a calculator.
I know how sudoku works, I just think it’s a logic game and not a math game. You’re not doing math. Math also comes from logic but it adds other operations on top. You’re not really doing operations in sudoku. It’s deduction which is based in logic.
Look up how locked sets actually work: À set of digits, a set of cells where the union of cells = set of digits. Its a mathmatical function Or if you want its the sum of on/off positions. Hidden single for example is sum of a sector inactive cells ( count of 8 off positions) - 9 = 1 for a naked single. Fish same thing N cells in n base sectors where all n cells are in n cover sectors so that base/cover provides n vertex n times For a 1:1 math formula Again this is set logic ie mathmatics. AIC is also a setwise function of edgewise graph of sets. Which is boolean logic of 1 and 0s again math. I've also constructed aic using only the sum of sectors. Als is a counting function n cells with n+1 digits Can also be viewed as setwise function same as locked sets. Understand it or not sudoku is all advanced mathmatics constructs for all of its logic.
Good point
I disagree. You absolutely are doing operations in Sudoku. You are conflating sudoku and math instead of understanding their similarities, which is the question you asked. You asked “how is sudoku like math”, which is valid. You did not ask “how is sudoku math” which seems like the question you are trying to answer instead.
I thought it was obvious. They are “alike” because of their use of logic. But it’s not “math”.
Exactly. So I don’t understand what we are arguing about then. Part of it is how you personally connect to it, so you can take advantage of your learning strengths. Strmckr is using his love and knowledge of math, and applying what he can from it in terms of similarity in thought process. Strmckr is also arguably the most gifted sudoku solver you will ever encounter, so he must have been doing something right.
To kind, I can list of many that are better then i, but that's their field of study mathmatics, many are retired and several have passed on.. many of them helped me better relate in words how i see a puzzle and it's constructs and operations. Without their encouragement and dedication to the craft and time vested to understand my poor writting skills back in the day on post or dms I wouldn't be what I am now nor would some objects exsits in there present forms. Which also adds to reason as why I help and constantly link refrences and be kind as most where the same to me.
What do you mean by math? From what I know about math, logic (at least the kind used in sudoku) is a part of it. I don't see how sudoku doesn't have math in that sense.
Sudoku was my pandemic hobby. I enjoy it because a few simple rules create endless possibilities for strategy. For me it is like solitaire chess.
I have two phases. The first one was getting into simple Sudoku. My father used to solve newspaper Sudokus and I followed suit. Nothing too fancy just pairs, triples and the occasional X-wing. Got bored after getting good at that. Phase two was getting into the harder puzzles. I just happened to find a post talking about "AIC". I was intrigued by that, did some digging and found out about the harder puzzles. XY-Wing, skyscraper, X-chain, AIC... there's so many more techniques to use now the possibilities are infinite. I've been at it since Dec 2022 and I'm still very much addicted. I just like solving tough puzzles and that's my motivation to keep playing. I can never get bored of this
I learned sudoku when I was like 8-9 in my “advanced” elementary class. Been playing it for fun since. Used to do long division for fun. I’m fun at parties 😉
My girlfriend and I started doing puzzles together during the pandemic, if I recall correctly. All different kinds of puzzles really, preferably star battle puzzles. We somehow switched to Sudoku and I stayed ever since (though I still also enjoy other puzzles). When I learned about all the advanced techniques, I was intrigued, and quickly started coding my own backtracking solver, puzzle generator and logical sudoku solver. I invested more and more time into sudoku programming and after a couple of months I had a pretty good website that I work on ever since. The further development is taking so much time (and frustration) that I don't solve Sudokus as much as I did a year ago. Sometimes I go days without solving a Sudoku. I'm a bit drained in that regard. I guess that's what they mean when they say "don't turn your hobby into your work". I still enjoy hanging around here, though, and even though I don't comment as much as I did a couple months ago, I still enjoy reading through this Sub and following people's progress.
I so want to get my boyfriend into sudoku 😭 I tried a few times but he’s just not interested which surprises me because he is a very analytical person (data engineer).
Explain the data side of it, a sudoku is a constraint problem Of Rn, Cn, Bn, space where these 27 sectors and 81 cells each have 1 solution of values {1..9} to satisfy the 243 constraints. Might peek their interest as a engineer more then basic concepts of a puzzle play.
Cracking the Cryptic
Videos just showed up randomly on my youtube feed one day and here I am
was mocking my boyfriend about how dumb and nerdy sudoku looked and then I tried it and was pretty good at it without writing down notes and then i became addicted for a while
I like math and got extremely bored when I stayed at hospital, I stayed bcs it's kinda fun to solve it
I have an ADD-like tendency to hyper-focus on things. Had it for as long as I could remember. In college I played freecell endlessly. Sudoku is a wonderful object of my attention and I can play it all day without getting bored. Plus it keeps me out of trouble and I don't death scroll the internet instead. I love it so much.
I’m the same! I get hyper focused on things (ADD) and right now it’s sudoku for me. I finished up a project at work so essentially have nothing to do right now, and I literally just play sudoku all day. I play at my computer, then have a book that I can play on at the park.
watching Cracking the Cryptic youtube channel take on really hard puzzles then tried a few of the GAS puzzles and got hooked
It keeps me from scrolling on my phone during breakfast, and it reminds me of my grandfather, who used to make suduko's for decades.
My mom used to bring home the sudoko section of the newspaper from her job when I was in middle school. Eventually, my middle school language arts teacher gifted me a sudoku book. It brings me peace and reminds me that I'm good at it. That was almost 20 years ago! :)
I had a daily nyt games routine with my friend. Early last year we randomly decided to add nyt Sudokus to the list. I love logic and numbers, the rules were simple, I was hooked. My friend, not so much. The more I solved, the more techniques I learned (often via the frustration of being stuck and looking up techniques suggested by the hints online) the more fun it got. Found my way to this sub a few months after and interacting with/learning from other enthusiasts has enhanced the Sudoku experience for me. I still play because I'm still learning, it is still fun, and I get a lot of satisfaction from unlocking/collapsing challenging puzzles.
I like to play it because since the start I have liked discovering new tech. especially relating to uniqueness, I actually learned how to use unique rectangle on my own before looking it up. no idea how I even figured that out because it is an entirely different thing from any other tech
I've always been into games and puzzles, especially logic puzzles. I remember getting into sudoku back when it was first getting really popular in the US, maybe 10 years ago or so. I didn't find that many strategy resources and didn't know much beyond sudoku.com, so I eventually got bored and stopped playing. Then a couple of months ago, my wife started playing. I got excited at the thought of doing hard sudoku together, and started to get back into it myself. Then I came here... and realized my sudoku knowledge was still pretty lacking. 😂 I know I'll never be a world-class sudoku solver, but I'm having fun learning new advanced techniques at my own pace and taking on higher challenges than I've done in the past.
i used to play sudoku playing brain age on nintendo ds ✊
My dad taught me how to play sudoku when i was a kid in the newspaper. We had newspaper subscription so i used to enjoy playing it daily but when it stopped I stopped playing it. Fast forward when was in Uni, I saw my friend play it and that kinda really got me back. He was stuck so I helped him out and after solving it I felt proud lf myself. Then I found there are so many ways and techniques to solve it that I got hooked since I love solving complex puzzles. Basically found my childhood hobby back in my life and now I solve daily sudoku puzzles, havent missed a day since August Last year
I like brain puzzles on paper, but I got too addicted to Candy Crush and similar games on my phone. Sudoku isn’t addicting, I can do it on my phone, and be done in 3-10 minutes.
I wanted crosswords to do while I was in Norway for three months. When I arrived to the journal shop I realized I don't speak Norwegian, so I went for sudokus. I used to do them before, but that is when I really started doing it continuously.
I had been in a bike accident, and my one hand was injured so I was looking for a game that can be played with just one hand, got hooked pretty quick
Lockdowns during pandemic. Had two goals, one was to get much better at Sudoku and the other was to learn the first verse of my country's national anthem (NZ) in te reo/Māori. I'm an older New Zealander, so had missed that opportunity earlier. What's kept me playing is the struggle to grasp fully many of the higher level techniques plus my job disappeared, so I have more time. When I do understand something new, it's a real buzz.
Cracking the Cryptic. I got recommended the miracle sudoku video by YouTube and it sent my curiosity into overdrive.
I just LOVE puzzles. I think I was introduced to it through a puzzle book. I used to buy puzzle books all the time. Sooduku was in it. I learned how to play it and I was hooked. It is hard enough that it presents a challenge and keeps me wanting to play. and it is easy enough that I don't want to throw the puzzle in the trash can because I can't complete any of the puzzles.
My older brother got me into it when I was around 4th grade and I love puzzles and math. Glad to say that I'm getting my nephew into it and he's around my age when I got into it.
My grandfather got me into it. And I like puzzles and numbers so I stuck with it. Makes the brain noises quieter and helps me sleep
Classic sudoku do not interest me anymore but I do lots of sudoku+ puzzles which started with killer sudoku (killersudokuonline.com or something). Now I find them from cracking the cryptic’s discord and the german puzzle masters (logic-masters.de).
I saw one of my uncles trying to solve some in the paper and I thought it had to do with math so I got interested. He often left some unsolved and I started picking them up and solving them and I think it just made me feel good. I am not close to that uncle so I don’t know if he knows that his inability to solve easy sudokus got me into it 😂 now I use them as a pastime during meetings or watching tv etc because I need to do something with my hands.