Date achieved:
Sunday 7th June 2020
Where?
Home
Why is this experience on the Challenge List?
When I was high school I used to do Soduku’s quite regularly with my Grandfather, as he taught me how complete them. One day I was given a ‘Diabolical Soduku’ cut out from a paper, which I carried with my to every class for weeks, trying to figure it out. I was completely stumped and then one day I accidentally left it in my pocket and it got washed. Which meant that I never got the opportunity to complete it. Since then I have wanted to prove to myself that I was able to do it.
Description:
In December 2018, when I was in the Thailand airport in coming home I found a Soduku book that was at the level of ‘Grand master’, upon seeing this I believed that it would be similar to that of a diabolical level Sodoku. I purchased the book and attempted the Sodoku on the plane ride home and I just couldn’t solve it, I just kept getting stumped.
I came back home and over the following month, I kept attempting to solve it without much luck in getting closer to the answer. I asked many people, to just check and see if they could see an alternative to what I had done or a way to move forward. When I was halfway through, I even asked my Mum to check the answers in the back of the book to see if I was right so far and even though they were all correct I still couldn’t move forward.
This left me quite stumped and it wasn’t until June 2020, during COVID that I decided that I was going to complete it. The way that I was able to do this was by photocopying the page and when a square presented with a choice of two numbers being a 50/50 choice well I took a chance and played it out until the Sodoku square was full. Sometimes this just wouldn’t work, there was one time when I didn’t find out that it hadn’t worked until the very last number had been pencilled in. This particular method took a few attempts through persistence I finished it.
I am unsure if this is an actual method to solving a Sodoku but I tried everything horizontal and vertical checks and even box checks of 1-9. The main point for me is that it worked and I can officially say that I achieved a ‘diabolical Sodoku’!
Would I do it again?
Currently I do one Soduku a week that comes in the paper, I usually complete the easy pretty quickly. I would like to be able to complete another diabolical Soduku to just have another go at that level.
Highlight:
Gettting advice from different people, on what could be the next move with the Sodoku and leaving them just as stumped as I was!
Cost:
I paid approximately $10 for the Soduku book which had grand master level Soduku’s but a diabolical level Soduku could just as easily be found on the internet and printed for free.
Further information:
Learning to complete a Sodoku is a great way to challenge the mind and they are fairly easy to learn the fundamental rules to then go on to complete any Sodoku.
If you are interested in learning the basic rules of how to play Sodoku, follow this link to Sodoku.com, have fun with these brain teasers.