The Ilusive 6
The following scenario happened to me on a medium sudoku a few days ago, and I thought that it can be interesting to share, especially with the beginner and less advanced sudku players.
First let's show and describe the initial situation and what I was solving for:
I was trying to find the missing 6 at the top middle box.
If you're up for a small challenege, stop here and try to see if you can
find it by yourself!
Fonud it? Well done!
Either way, you are probably curious if we did it the same way.
My Initial Approach
As always, my first attempt to solve for a digit in any sudoku board, is to search for other instances of the same digit, 6 in this case, and see if they can give me enough certainty to fill that number in the box I am solving for.
As you can see, this time it wasn't enough to be certain on where the 6 should go:
We know that it has to be in the 3rd row, because the third row on the left box is full, and doesn't hold a 6, but still can't be sure if its in the left or center cell, are you as thrilled as I am by now?
A Different Sudoku Angle
The next thing I did was to change my approach.
I saw that in the bottom sudoku row, I'm missing only two digits to
complete that row, and the digits are 6 ( which I don't know where to
place) and 8, but which goes where?
Now we know that if we can place the 8, we will be able to comfortably place the 6 as well and solve that riddle!
So again, I go about solving for 8 in the same 3x3 box according to my
first instinct - find other 8's who can tell me where not to place my 8
- so that I will know where I am allowed to place it.
And voilà are you seeing what I see? :
It's clear that the 8 can't go in the center cell and hence it has to be
in the left cell.
This leaves only the center cell for our ilusive 6 to go in, and thats
it - problem solved!
Thanks for reading I hope to see you back here, and if you're up for a quick sudoku challenge click here!