Feedback and Questions

I'll try and help. In that little cluster of 6s you don't have many chains. These are where only two 6s are left in a unit. You have F2 to H2. H2 to H3. But these don't join up to the remaining: E3 to E5 and E5 to F5. So there's not enough there to work with. Being unconnected there can be no conclusions drawn between or over them as they are separate clusters.



There are a couple of Medusa eliminations further on which is the same principle as simple colouring but using all numbers.

The only reason is aesthetic. They look better in print. It is entirely possible to make non-systemtic puzzles but they look rather untidy and thrown together. Occasionally mine will have one number missing that breaks perfect symmetry but that just because I could remove one more number. Doesn't happen often.



Non symmetry is more fun and looks good in a puzzle like Str8ts, contrast the upper and lower puzzle on this page http://www.str8ts.com/

Not quite sure what happened but the kenken scripts didn’t seem to be the latest version. MXW is a strategy I junked some time ago. I've updated it now and it should work as intended. I have also added an "Email" button to make sharing puzzles easier. Do use that if you'd like to send me a puzzle.

All Sudoku puzzles exist along a scoring spectrum. I quartile this to give the grade name, although there are other rules and heuristics which may bump the grade up or down. A good discussion of the process for creating and grading Sudoku can be found in my paper here:
Sudoku_Creation_and_Grading.pdf

I am probably going to do that very soon. On the Killer solver the number of click could be enormous which is why I implemented it, but a number of people has written in to say they use the solvers in a slightly different way

Can I check you are seeing v1.75 under the big board? There was a new bug introduced with 1.74 that caused the back button not to reset correctly and broke Take Step. It should have been fixed this last week.

Thank you Lisa :)

Appreciate you're feedback, I'll see what I can do. I know many people have gotten used to the way the take step works, especially as it hasn't changed for many years. The feedback i'd had on the killer solver, for example, was that it took way too many clicks to get through a solution since for a lot of the time the basic strategies were not useful yet there was a pause at every stage. So all I have changed is to skip failed strategies on the basic ones. However, if you are used to clicking fast you will click over the replacement of single candidates changed to solved numbers and the bit at the top which restarts the order after success. You need fewer clicks and slower, since each step now produces some kind of result.



The other feedback I've had on this change is that some people appreciate the pauses since it allows them to consider each basic strategy in turn before the solver does. So the next update I'll add a tick box "always skip failed strategies" so everyone can decide if they want the new or old style. Just a matter of fitting it in somehow



As for numbers vanishing, I'm not sure how this can occur except legitimately. If you spot this, can you "go back" and take a couple of screen shots before and after? Always good to nail a bug.

It's a puzzle which solves using basic strategies almost entirely except for one bottleneck - and the score for that one tough strategy is simply not enough to get the overall grade above easy.

The solver needs to know what candidates are available at any given stage; so an empty cell is wrong since it contains no options. It would create too many ambiguous states to have the cells partially filled by the solver and partially the player. However, you can remove candidates if you are confident of your eliminations, by using the "Candidates can be Edited or Highlighted" options above the main board. The Puzzle Players, eg the Daily or Weekly puzzles allow you to enter positive candidates rather have negative removals, but I don't have a system whereby you can import your own puzzle into a player, only a solver. I'll think about what can be done.