Re: BB Sudoku 20250321 very hard

On 01/04/2025 01:53, gerson wrote:

March 21 very hard was the hardest ever for me, whereas the super hard was relatively easy.
I may have overlooked something. Anybody else?

I missed it, but BB lets you go back in time, so I did just that. Yes, it's hard, but I hit a couple of early Swordfishes, and then about 12 minutes in (I'm by no means a Sudoku speed king) I found myself staring at the top three rows:
  69    7 689 | 5 2 18 |  4  3   16
   4  123  38 | 9 6 18 | 58 25    7
268 1268   5 | 4 7  3 |  9 26 1268
If the first 3x3 has its 1 in the middle, eliminations leave no room for a 1 on the third row and lead to all kinds of other problems:
  69 7 689 | 5 2 1 | 4 3 1
   4 1   3 | 9 6 8 | 5 2 7
   2 2   5 | 4 7 3 | 9 6 8
With that possibility eliminated the rest more or less cascaded into place, but yes, I'd agree that this was harder than your average very hard, and yes, the Super Hard came in at under ten minutes.
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Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
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