If you’re an avid Sudoku player or even a new starter, this trick may just be the answer to never leaving a puzzle unsolved and help to diminish the time spent scratching your head
Whether you’re an expert Sudoku player, a new starter or looking to get improve on your brain game skills, this quick numbers trick could quite literally be a game changer.
Sudoku is a popular puzzle using numbers one to nine on a 9×9 grid that is divided into nine 3×3 boxes. The aim of the brain exercise game is to fill the grid with the numbers so that each number appears once in every single row, column and box.
But it’s no secret the game can be testing at times, especially if you’re trying your luck at a more advanced version, and so gaming enthusiasts at Smart Hobbies have shared the ultimate hack in a Youtube video. Their strategy claims to solve even the most “extreme” of Sudoku puzzles.
The expert shows that when you’ve made a good start at the puzzle and you have your given digits, it leaves some boxes with the only options left of a one, two or three, so he makes a small note in these blocks of those numbers. He continues to do this for the entire puzzle, making note of all the number options left.
He tell viewers: “Do this as many times as you need to, to convince yourself that no matter how often you do it, you’re always going to end up with a problem in the full block.”
So, when you’re left with the triple number option, you’ll notice that the puzzle will not solve with just three digits, which is where your other digit, nine, comes in – he calls this trick a trivalue oddagon.
It is also known as a chromatic pattern when you use it to highlight boxes in different colours, because now you can look at the puzzle to learn to break this pattern. He added: “I love gobbling up all these marks I made. The more you clean up the clutter, the closer you are to getting the puzzle solved and the finish.”
Fellow gaming enthusiasts took to the comments to thank him for this useful tip. One person wrote: “This solution clarified more for me about the trivalue oddagon. I saw other oddagon puzzles in four blocks, all 123s in diagonal. I thought four blocks must be “diagonal 123s”, but this puzzle shows the final one diagonal is enough to solve. Great learning puzzle.”
Another person added: “It takes some time to master and to fix those techniques. I can say that one thing that really helps me solve is the possibility to make corner and centre notes and also paint the blocks. Now I’m feeling more confident to solve extreme puzzles.”
Another person claimed the trick was “amazing.” They wrote: “Even the best online sudoku solvers do not have this one integrated. Kudos to you, sir, and thank you!”
The online software used to play this version of Sudoku is a program named SudokuPad. He also pairs this up with a tool that allows him to mark up the puzzle and add colour, called Pretzaal.
