Sudoku blues
I can't decide if the Washington Post's idea of letting its Sudoku players type down all the possibilities for a box is a good idea or not. Because now my grid resembles some strange outer-space creature with thousands of numbers (thousands? or would it be closer to hundreds? if i were not to solve ANY of the boxes in a given grid, but were to merely count the number of possibilities each grid could have, how many would they number?), in 3 different colors and I'm fast losing focus.
What the WP should do instead is this:
You know how there comes a point where you have exhausted all logical possibilities and now have to start guessing what a particular box might be, and then work your way from there till your guess is proven either right or wrong?
There should be a little trick where you can tell the computer that the number you have inserted into a box is a guess (one out of two possibilities, say), and then every box you fill after that is now a product of that guess. So the software should keep track of each of those "product" boxes. Then, if your guess is incorrect, you can go back and delete all the "product" boxes and start with the second possibility.
This is why I have a Sudoku grid pasted to my desk (covered with Scotch tape so that the boxes don't get erased or smudged) and loads of scrap paper where I manually write down what I just described above. It would be environmentally so much friendlier if the Sudoku software would just do that for me.
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In today's cat news, my fastidious nose has picked up unmistakable signs that the cat has been over the clothes that I'm currently wearing. When I sniff at my clothes though, I can't really tell where the whiff of cat-smell is coming from, but it's there. I know it.
Cat, in the meantime, is getting used to the house and the habits of its inhabitants quite fast. When my alarm goes off at 4:45am (I keep the alarm a good hour before I wake up, so that I do wake up one hour later), it bounds to my bed and meows til I wake up (45 minutes before I actually meant to). It has adopted the man's couch for itself. Every time the man pushes it off, it comes meowing piteously to me. Clever cat.
What the WP should do instead is this:
You know how there comes a point where you have exhausted all logical possibilities and now have to start guessing what a particular box might be, and then work your way from there till your guess is proven either right or wrong?
There should be a little trick where you can tell the computer that the number you have inserted into a box is a guess (one out of two possibilities, say), and then every box you fill after that is now a product of that guess. So the software should keep track of each of those "product" boxes. Then, if your guess is incorrect, you can go back and delete all the "product" boxes and start with the second possibility.
This is why I have a Sudoku grid pasted to my desk (covered with Scotch tape so that the boxes don't get erased or smudged) and loads of scrap paper where I manually write down what I just described above. It would be environmentally so much friendlier if the Sudoku software would just do that for me.
*********
In today's cat news, my fastidious nose has picked up unmistakable signs that the cat has been over the clothes that I'm currently wearing. When I sniff at my clothes though, I can't really tell where the whiff of cat-smell is coming from, but it's there. I know it.
Cat, in the meantime, is getting used to the house and the habits of its inhabitants quite fast. When my alarm goes off at 4:45am (I keep the alarm a good hour before I wake up, so that I do wake up one hour later), it bounds to my bed and meows til I wake up (45 minutes before I actually meant to). It has adopted the man's couch for itself. Every time the man pushes it off, it comes meowing piteously to me. Clever cat.