Bio
Mark Danburg-Wyld has turned his life-long obsessions with puzzles and mathematics into a compulsive desire to write and solve sudoku puzzles. He first heard of sudoku in May 2005, thanks to an anglo-centric internet acquaintance. Within a week he had written his first sudoku. A month later, he had refined his technique to a point where he felt the puzzles he produced were worth sharing. This website was launched on July 2, 2005 as a result.
A native Texan, Mark relocated to Oregon in 1999 along with his spouse Jennifer and their two daughters. At about the same time, he dropped out of graduate school and started taking actuarial exams. Mark now crunches numbers professionally for a non-profit health insurer in addition to recreationally crunching numbers for this website. Running this website fulfills a residual desire from his years of academia to assign problems and make people grade themselves.
If you wanted sound effects as well, you should imagine him laughing like a B movie mad scientist every time he thinks up some new variation puzzle.
Press
8/18/05: Sudokuplace added to
The Eugene Weekly
Article about the puzzles originally appeared
here.
LOGICAL & PUZZLING
Eugene actuary and puzzler Mark Danburg-Wyld may be the first person in the U.S. to personally create brand-new, computer-generated brainteasers called sudoku, a Japanese word for the "single number" game that created a frenzy among players in Great Britain before jumping to America in 2005. The craze began in the 1980s in Japan and has spread throughout Asia. Eugene Weekly welcomes Danburg-Wyld's Sudoku puzzles in this issue.
Warning: This game is addictive. Use a pencil, with an eraser. Logic and reasoning, not lucky guesses, are required. The goal is to fill in the blank cells on the three-square by three-square grid that makes up a sudoku puzzle. In each of these nine boxes the numbers 1 through 9 may occur once only. Likewise, numbers 1 through 9 may appear only once horizontally in each row, and only once vertically in each column.
Danburg-Wyld suggests that the puzzle evolved as a "natural progression" from what are called "Latin Squares," but in sudoku the clues (some numbers are filled in) are "arranged symmetrically." I don't know exactly what he means by that, but I am pleased to note that no math is involved in solving the puzzle – you don't add or subtract to get the values.
Before you dust off your thinking cap and attempt this brain-stretcher, Danburg-Wyld has a few tips. First, look at the grid as a whole and begin working with those numbers that are closer to being done. For example, if the puzzle has five out of nine 1's filled in but only three 2's, it may be easier to place the remaining four 1's. To do that, get systematic. Pencil in all the numbers (values) that could go into a cell. This will let you see patterns otherwise not obvious. You may see that in one box, there is only one cell that could contain a 1. Put it there.
Another trick: When you end up with two cells in a column that could contain one of two values, pencil both values in each. Eliminate these values as choices for the remaining cells in that column. (I know: Words are hard to visualize. But when you try this trick, you'll see it in a flash.)
I'm not yet a sudoku addict, but I have started playing. For a word-addled brain like mine, it's reassuring to have nine possibilities per cell rather than 26 as in crosswords. If one puzzle a week doesn't satisfy your craving, check out Danburg-Wyld's website at sudokuplace.com (he also has an Excel-powered puzzle solver if you get desperate). Now, go to page 33 and get started. Enjoy! — Lois Wadsworth
Site History
A running journal, newest first. Entries the source didn't date are collected at the very bottom.
7/9/26
Every time I write an entry in this journal, it's been a long time since I wrote the previous entry. This time, it's stuff that would have been science fiction in 2007 – I have used Claude.AI to help modernize and fix the site. Circa 2017, I got tired of doing the annual updates required for the previous pdf based version, and everything just mostly broke. A "play one from the archives" remained, however, and now that is the front page of the site; except that it is updated to make a new random sudoku puzzle each time you ask. Infinite play, enjoy! (And thanks, Claude!)
8/22/07
You've pirated the video, now solve the sudoku! When I read about the
HD-DVD unlocking code 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0,
what leapt to my mind was that it was 16 characters long. "That'd be a
perfect excuse for doing a
16 by 16 sudoku!" I thought.
Sometime later it occurred to me that the number 56 appears twice. So
this puzzle uses the letters "DRM"
for the second 56. What the hell, at least we died trying. Oh, and don't
actually pirate any videos, please. That would be wrong. Enjoy!
3/17/07
At Johney's request here's a new JigSaw Sudoku! Enjoy!
3/10/07
Play Sudoku Online! Yes, at long last, I have programmed an elementary way to do sudoku online! There went one weekend... It will probably take me a while to recuperate before I attempt improvements, but please check it out in the meantime and let me know what you think...
2/5/07
Well it has just been ages since I wrote anything in this journal. And there's actually news to report! As of last week, I have added an online version of sudoku to this site, for people who don't want to print the puzzles out at all. Now, personally, I think that pencil and paper is the only natural way to do sudoku. But that's why it has taken me so dang long to get around to doing this. The version is perfectly functional, but for now kind of limited. Soon (and I mean that in the vaguest possible sense) I will add the ability to select a prior day's puzzle. At some point I will even add the ability to do Su Dozen online.
Otherwise, most of the changes have been the kind of background stuff that make my life easier but the site not very different. For example, I outsourced the sudoku by email delivery because it was taking me a lot of time to maintain the email distribution list by hand. Now it takes me a lot of time to get the messages queued up to go instead. But it's a change.
One thing has not changed, which is that I'm having fun making it easier for you to have fun, so enjoy those sudoku!
1/20/07
Relax with a couple of new diagonal sudoku! Just like regular sudoku, except the diagonals (which are shaded) also must each have the digits 1 through 9 exactly once each. Tricky, no?
12/20/06
New Jigsaw Sudoku available! If you've been missing the variation sudoku, check out the Variation Sudoku E-Book, it should keep you happy.
11/11/06
Happy Armistice Day! The actuarial exam is over, and so in theory I have time to start messing around with the site again. Some months ago I was thinking adding a daily 6x6 would be my top priority, but now I'm thinking the much more difficult task of programming an "online play" module would be better. I have to admit I'm unsure though. The focus and mission thus far has been to provide good printable sudoku puzzles. I personally prefer to print them out and do them to doing them online. But it's a tougher programming challenge, so there you are.
We'll see, I suppose. Perhaps laziness will overwhelm me and I'll do nothing.
On the business front, the big news in the past several months was adding Fresh Squeezed Weekly to the list of publications that carry my puzzles. Thanks guys!
9/28/06
Can't access sudokuplace from work? Just want sudoku delivered to your inbox each day? Check out the new sudoku subscription service! Sign up to get your sudoku fix via email!
8/1/06
More 6x6 sudoku puzzles await you – sheets 9 through 12 in each category are new this month. I need to make the release of new 6x6 sudoku puzzles a regular thing, don't you think? I also need a catchy name for them...
7/22/06
Well, the family has been out of town for a little while here, giving me more free time to attempt stuff with this website. What have I attempted? Two things:
- Syndication – if you have a website that would like a feed of my puzzles, it is now an option. Updated daily .png images with a link to the puzzle as a pdf file. It's free to add to your blog, news site, whatever. I'm doing it for the backlinks.
- Subscription Service – if you cannot get to sudokuplace due to Websense or some other net nanny program, you can now get my puzzles in your inbox daily. I need to add a link to the navigation bar, but it's still a "beta" program, so I'm holding off for another week. Sign up now and surprise me!
That's not bad – as usual it required a fair amount of learning on my part to accomplish, but that's life. I still hope to add a daily variation puzzle and a daily 6x6 in the not distant future. But my family will be home soon, plus I have an actuarial exam coming up, so realistically it will be quite a while before those happen.
7/20/06
Our friend Romeo Novembre has sent along another Romeo Plus Sudoku! Have you written a sudoku puzzle that you'd like to share? Let me know, I would be happy to host it.
7/2/06
Today marks the official one-year anniversary of this website. Probably no-one in the world other than me cares, but here's what the traffic has looked like.
Looking at it, the question that leaps to my mind is: "what happened in April?" The answer is Websense (and the other "net nanny" programs) discovered that my website has (gasp!) games on it. For the most part, visitors were coming by during working hours and printing out puzzles using their employer's computers.
So, things have been getting a little slower around here since then. I have been half-heartedly researching ways to deliver sudokus by email, for those who want to sign up for such an option. But it hasn't come to much yet. Give me time.
You may also have noticed that the pdf version of the puzzles are now carrying a link back to sudokuplace instead of a plain text copyright notice. That's my technological breakthrough for the month. Exciting stuff, huh?
Looking back over the whole year's adventure, there's been a lot of learning. Most of that was probably invisible to the average site visitor. The changes made were on "back end" things, making it easier for me to produce puzzles. There have been about 5 versions of the Excel Sudoku Solver, and there's more I would like to do to the current version. And I am sure there must be better ways to "manage content" (a phrase I had no connection to understand a year ago...)
But the important thing is, I am having fun, and you are having fun. So go do a few puzzles, and enjoy the heck out of them.
6/27/06
We haven't had a Stairstep Sudoku in a while, so here's a new one for you! Enjoy.
6/6/06
Yes I have been playing with the page layout, colors, and so forth. Hope you like the new look. The puzzles have not changed. More is in the works, stay tuned!
5/18/06
Wow it has been a long time since I put in an update! Then again, the site was on "cruise control" for quite a while here...
These past few days I have done a number of things, however.
- Overhauled the colors (again)
- Modified the home page to automatically show today's puzzle (and a .png file)
- "behind the scenes" modifications to make the site more searchable
- added a "splash page" on the excel based sudoku solver
None of it all that difficult, but all of it time consuming. And I'm not yet happy with the graphical quality of the home page puzzle, but I'm working on it.
There are a number of additional projects in my mind, such as: email distribution (for those of us blocked from this site from work), an online solving page, and possibly daily versions of the su dozen and the 6x6. But, as usual, there's more ideas than time. Stick around, I'll get to them all eventually. :-)
5/16/06
More hopi blanket sudoku, because you cannot have enough variation sudoku puzzles. Well, technically, I suppose that could happen, but it hasn't yet! Enjoy
4/25/06
More, more, more of the 6 x 6 sudoku available now... Enjoy. Also, give diagonal sudoku a whirl – they are just like regular sudoku except that the two diagonals must also contain all the digits 1-9 exactly once each.
4/9/06
Mr. Romeo Novembre has sent along another Romeo Jigsaw Sudoku. I will be honest that I haven't done it yet myself, so I can't tell you how easy or difficult it is... But give it a whirl regardless, eh?
4/4/06
I thought you might enjoy another hopi blanket sudoku.
3/22/06
By request of both Harry and Greg, I've created a page with 6 by 6 sudoku! Because, after all, why should I always be trying to write harder puzzles? If you're in Greg's classroom, you might be seeing these puzzles if you join his puzzle club. If you're not, well, you can see them anyway. Enjoy.
3/13/06
Our buddy Romeo Novembre has sent along another variation puzzle – the Plus JigSaw Sudoku! Check it out... Have you written a variation sudoku puzzle? Let me know, I would be happy to post it for you. Maybe we can get a whole "user submitted" section going!
3/12/06
What the heck – it's been awhile since we've seen a variation sudoku puzzle. So here's another JigSawed Sudoku!
2/28/06
A big thank you to Joe R., who alerted me to a printing problem with the puzzles in Adobe 7. This should be fixed on today's and all future puzzles; I'm correcting previous puzzles as far back as I easily can. Please, everyone let me know if you see anything not working. Thanks to your feedback, this site keeps getting better!
2/21/06
You remeber Mr. Romeo November, who gave me the pattern for the Romeo JigSawed Sudoku? Well, he's coming along as a puzzle writer – now he'd like to share with you the Romeo JigStep Sudoku! This time, he even clued it himself. Enjoy!
2/15/06
I finally started an article section. Not too exciting yet – just one article on solving sudoku puzzles. But more will follow! More sudoku puzzles coming too, of course. Enjoy!
2/13/06
I admit it - I was hoping to pique your curiosity so you would buy the sudoku variations ebook by mentioning the "hopi blanket sudoku". You didn't seem to care. "What," you seemed to be asking, "is this dang thing?" Well, try one out and see what you think.
2/9/06
Still playing with the colors; plus I did figure out CSS after all, so if the latest color scheme doesn't work for the people who are giving me feedback then next time the switch will take minutes instead of hours. Ok, half-hours. By the way, the people who have been complaining of my color picks thus far include one of my sisters and my wife. No-one else seems to care...
I'm also proud (a little bit) of the new feedback page and link-to-us page. There's loads more I'm planning on, so stay tuned! The puzzles, of course, will keep rolling along.
2/7/06
Major change, inspired by Melanie's observation that I am (in fact) color blind... the process is making me reconsider my position with regards to cascading style sheets. Presumably if I was using those, I could have made this change all at once to all my pages. But in the process of re-visiting some of the archive pages I also made them easier to navigate, so it all works out.
Weird, isn't it? On the one hand I'm tech savy enough to just sit down and program my own sudoku puzzle generating system; but I can't figure out css. Well, really, I just haven't tried. Too much else to do in life -- like more sudoku! Enjoy the puzzles.
2/3/06
A somewhat easier JigSawed SuDoku, because we need an easy one from time to time.
1/16/06
One nice side effect of being an actuary who hangs out in cyberspace with other actuaries is that, whenever something is wrong with my website, there's sure to be someone with a technical mindset who will point it out to me. And having someone with a technical mindset point out your problems is a refreshingly nice way to have them pointed out to you. These are people who understand that you don't always get the exact, perfect result you want the first try.
If you're wondering what that's about, it's about the sudoku solver. Two nice, if internetly anonymous, people have pointed out to me various shortcomings of the sudoku solver. Coincidently, they did so within a 24 hour period following my decision to do something about the comparative slowness of the program.
What this means in practical terms is, if you're using the sudoku solver to attempt puzzles from your local paper, or one of the myriad sudoku books written by someone other than me, is that you might run across one which is solvable by logic but which the solver doesn't completely get.
Which brings me to the technical improvement that came with this version of the solver: it took out duals. By "duals", for example, I mean when you have two cells in the same box (or row, or column) that are both down to two possible values that happen to be the same. So that means no other cell in that box (or row, or column) can have either of those two values. It's not that complicated of a logic, but the old solver didn't have it, and the new one does. Incompletely.
One of the examples I am looking at can be done if I just expand the logic a step further – it has a dual in a box which leaves one other cell in that box with two values, making a dual in its column, determining another cell. Did you follow that? Congrats!
The other is more complicated yet. It has a triple possiblity which reduces to make a dual which determines another cell once you take into account that the third value has to be in the next box over. I've currently no idea how I'm going to capture that one.
Anyway, what I think I'll do is quietly work on adding the logic for the first example mentioned and then slip the new, improved solver into place. Hopefully without making it slower again. And nobody will be the wiser, unless they read this page, which I'm under the impression hardly anyone does. So don't tell. Or something.
Enjoy the puzzles!
1/14/06
One of this website's regulars, Mr. Romeo November, decided that the jigsaw puzzle sudoku wasn't "extreme" enough. So he recommended to me a new pattern, which I have turned into this Romeo JigSawed Sudoku! How cool is that?!? Enjoy! Got another variation puzzle shape for me? Drop me a note!
1/6/06
Try another JigSawed Sudoku! The last jigsaw sudoku was perhaps too easy to be called difficult, but I think this one will keep you busy for a while. Enjoy!
12/24/05
I've been too busy lately to do much to this site, which is ok really. But today I'm making a few small changes, mostly to deal with the fact that it won't be 2005 much longer, so everyplace I hardcoded in the year is about to go kablooey. Hopefully not, now, but disaster was (put your finger and thumb very close together) this close!
The change in design of the excel sudoku solver was more than merely cosmetic, although I think it looks much cooler now than it did before. It was also a big change in the underlying mechanism, which among other things made it easier for me to adapt my version for creating variation sudoku. I'm putting together an ebook of them, and I plan to push it somewhat harder than I have anything else I have for sale. I mean, not that the money matters (thank goodness! If I was trying to make a living off of this I'd be dang hungry), but these variations are something I do that I don't think many other people do.
Of course, I don't think most people who publish sudoku puzzles really know what they're doing. I happened across a crossword puzzle generating program the other day which listed sudoku as a bonus feature. Which I already suspected. Most "puzzle writers" are just putting out computer generated sudoku and didn't even program it themselves. So I claim some moral high ground there as well. I use a computer, sure, but I know exactly what's going into the program (because I put it there). So there.
Meantime, happy holidays, and I appreciate all of you who visit this site regularly. I'll keep pumping out the puzzles as long as you keep enjoying them.
Also that day: New & Improved! The Excel Solver has been re-vamped, re-imagined, and re-coded. What will you notice? Probably that it is slower. But it is also more powerful and more versatile. This move was prompted by "1695814" (with such a name, you can guess he's a sudoku addict), who found a logic-only puzzle the old solver could not solve. This one can. Moreover, you can store your position and later recall it; and there's a "give me a hint" button. How cool is that?
12/11/05
It's been over a month since our last stairstepped sudoku, and that's just too long. Enjoy! Archive is working again – I gotta think up a better system for that page though.
11/26/05 or 12/8/05 (source unclear)
The sudokuplace shop has been re-vamped. Most importantly, a sudoku puzzle eBook has been added! More are on the way, stay tuned.
11/19/05
At long last! It's the JigSawed Sudoku – give it a try, I'm sure you'll agree it was worth the wait. Meet you back here in a week or so.
11/16/05
A number of changes, some minor, some not so minor... First of all, I have instituted the Su Dozen as a regular feature, to run each Sunday. I had put this matter up to a vote, and the strong consensus was to have Sunday be a "mix it up" day. So I'm not doing that. Why? Well, for one thing it is just systematically much easier to put together a Su Dozen once a week than a new variation once a week. Also, I decided I really like being able to put all the variation puzzles into a seperate listing for the archive. Who knows, my opinion may change after another month or two, but that's it for now. I will, however, try to be more diligant about getting variation puzzles out there – I'll try for at least every other week.
I would like to repeat my plea for assistance: if you have a website or a blog, please consider adding a link to sudokuplace.com! More links makes for a higher google ranking, so even if you think no-one will ever follow the link, it will really help. Along the same lines, if you have a newsgroup, a web forum, or an email list where it would not be inappropriate to mention your sudoku addiction on and mention this site... Well, you get the idea.
So help me make more people addicted to sudoku, and in the meantime continue to thoroughly enjoy the puzzles!
10/27/05
Well, not entirely. It's another stairstepped sudoku! Haven't had one in a while and I know some people enjoy a change of pace... Incidently I am working, slowly, on a few other variations. Hint: size matters.
10/22/05
While taking a break from studying... ok, not studying exactly: more like making peace with the inevitable... I signed up for the sudoku webring. This is a blatent attempt to drive up traffic to this site, as you might expect. Why? We've been averaging about 600 puzzle downloads/day for the past several weeks – about 150-200 people getting that day's fresh puzzle, another 400-450 dipping into the archives... from the outrage I generated by trying to put the answers out there as well, I'd guess that's actually another 200 people downloading and printing 2-4 at a time. But obviously they're not doing that every day. Anyway, I'm guessing it really is about 550 'regulars' and another 50 'drive-by' visitors.
I'm just pleased to be bringing a little bit of distraction into so many lives. But, as with so many things, once you get a taste you want more More MORE! So, I do little things, like joining webrings, in hopes of more visitors, more downloads, more distraction into more lives. Compulsive? Maybe. But who ever got much of anywhere without being compulsive?
Enjoy the puzzles.
10/20/05
The people have spoken! I asked if you liked having the solutions available, and you said: "mmm... no, not so much." So, ok, I can not do that. The solutions are gone. Sorry to the minority of ya'll who liked that feature – I'll be thinking about an alternate way to accomodate you. Perhaps a seperate file of just solutions? We'll see.
10/9/05
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Mark, you promised no more 'pattern' puzzles. Yes, yes I did say that. But are you going to trust me? Probably never again.
But I mean it this time. Thursday's patch was based on a late night, whack it out, stomp the problem approach. Today's is based on a two-days, systematic, root out the cause approach. And please do keep in mind I ought to be studying for my last actuarial exam right now, so doing anything is, well, a sign of how foolishly proud I am of this whole thing.
To understand the problem, you have to learn a little about how I make the puzzles. I start with a solution. Well, actually, I start with a set of solutions. Originally I was working with about 3 dozen. Gradually I crept that number up to over 100. Then I had a brainstorm on ways to rearrange the digits to get new valid solutions and shot up to over 60,000.
Now, what I do with these is, I make a pattern for the clues, then test it against each solution until I find one that gives a valid (solvable without guessing) puzzle. Obviously, the more solutions I have to work with, the more likely I am to eventually find one which works. Thus the 60,000 was a good thing, I thought.
The problem was, one of my original 100 had this 'pattern' in it. The rearrangements did not get rid of the pattern, it just sort of shuffled it a bit. So I ended up with more like 6,000 solutions with this 'pattern' in it. (If you don't know what I am talking about, print out and solve today's puzzle – today being October 9, 2005).
Somehow, these ended up more concentrated towards to front of my list, so not only were they there, they were showing up more often than you'd expect because I quit once I've found a workable puzzle. (What would be the point of making dozens of puzzles with the same pattern? Well, maybe if it was especially pretty...)
Thus, the recurrent and pernicious pattern. Well, it should be gone now. I've culled my solution list down to under 50,000; based not just on this but on other esotetic criteria as well. I do hope we are now good to go. Oh, and I changed the way I was storing the puzzles so that I am storing the answers as well. Why? Well, mainly to triple assure myself that the patterns are really gone. (worse than bamboo, this stuff...) Side effect of that is, I figured I may as well start publishing the solutions as well as the puzzles. So, starting tomorrow, we will. That is, Monday's puzzle will appear as normal, but the solution to Monday's puzzle will appear underneath Tuesday's puzzle – thereafter you'll always be able to get to the solution by coming back the next day. Which I hope you were doing anyway.
Now I'm going to go read some more about "Individual Underwriting". It's almost as exciting as it sounds...
10/6/05
I swear sometimes this is going to make me nuts. Those "patterns" I thought I had gotten rid of? Well, they weren't gone. I've just finished a 2 hour edit and update to the quality control mechanisms. Now they're gone. Thanks to Ed for noticing they were still there, and congrats (by the way) to him and Jen.
If something else goes wrong, I promise to fix that too. What's really weird is that I never notice these "patterns" emerging! Too much trust in my own system, I suppose? There's a lesson there.
9/25/05
A few people have mentioned to me that they had noticed certain "patterns" occurring in my puzzles. Ahem. Yes, well. They were. I am learning as I go here – what I have learned from these comments is that it is not necessarily wise to recycle the same cannonical answer too many times in a row because people will notice.
Anyway, quality control has been modified. If you notice any other oddities, please let me know; I'll see if I can't make a correction.
9/11/05
I re-arranged the layout of the front page a little bit. Mainly because I ought to be studying, you know. Also I read something which claimed I could up my google ranking by using more h1-3 tags. Why? Well. As I said before, my purpose in setting up this website is to conquer the world, one brain at a time. The site has been growing steadily in popularity, but I suppose I am impatient.
Anyway, if you wish to help (which would officially make you my minion), you could do so by linking to this site through your blog, if you have a blog. Or by setting up a blog and linking to this site from it, if you don't have a blog.
Meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy the puzzles.
8/20/05
The big news is not about the website at all... We have our first syndication arrangement with the Eugene Weekly. I am thrilled and grateful that they have decided to take a chance on my puzzles. I am also in conversation, albeit not serious yet, with other publications – so watch for sudokuplace to appear in the press nearer to you someday. Or heck, prompt them along – tell your local editor about sudokuplace!
Also have added a guestbook to the website. It's very gratifying to see people's comments, so thanks again to everyone.
I still have the intention of someday making a 'training document', a guide for beginners sort of thing. Maybe that's not so urgent – at least I haven't had anyone ask when I'm getting to it. Eh. We shall see.
8/5/05
Finally figured out how to put a difficulty next to the puzzle's date on the archive page. Next nice step might be getting that onto the front page as well... Well, maybe not.
Also, and this is a purely geeky thrill that no-one would ever notice, I changed the table cell on the front page which says New! to reference an include file so I don't have to edit the whole entire front page to change it. How cool is that? Not cool at all? Yeah, probably not.
That little spot stayed exactly the same for weeks, then in the past three days it has announced the introduction of the "fortune" program to the front page (properly sanitized and cut for length for your protection), the arrival of t-shirts to sudoku_gear (0 purchases so far!), and now the inclusion of difficulty ranks on the archive page. So this change would have been darn handy three days ago.
I've had several people ask how I determine the difficulty ranking, so that's going onto the FAQ, too.
Also, for what it's worth, I've been tracking how many people download each day's puzzle the first day they become available, and this is a turning point week – we're consistently at 100+ downloads per day. Well, we'll see tomorrow about today. But still, pretty good! This is almost doubled since two weeks ago. So tell all your friends to stop by. We're headed for the top of the online sudoku world, baby!
7/30/05
Not too many changes. The Excel Sudoku Solver went up over a week ago, and seems to be popular. If you hadn't already figured that out: you do have to erase the "sample" puzzle that is in there and manually enter what you've got of the puzzle you are working on.
I have set up the archive to hopefully roll over and work correctly when the new month starts, everyone keep their fingers crossed for me, please! Next I will have to think how to make it work for September without being re-written again...
7/6/05
I do think that the settling in process is nearly over. Still need to write a tips on how to solve, and any suggestions on making a prettier site are welcome. My nephew suggested I make the puzzles bigger, because he likes to write out all the possible numbers for a cell inside the cell, and that was previously difficult. Done. (Hi, David!) I have resized all the archive ones as well.
In my haste to get the website up, the first few puzzles were not in any particular order, but going forward they will be. Henceforth, they will scale, that is, easier ones towards the beginning of the week. But since I threw you all off so far, I'm putting out an 'easy' for tomorrow.
Keep solving puzzles, and thanks for stopping by.
7/5/05
Well, the site is semi-functional now. The to-do list includes adding a links page, putting something useful in the right hand bit of the front page, adding a page with tips on how to solve the puzzles, and generally completing the de-uglification of the site.
One cool thing is that I've discovered there is some traffic monitoring happening in the background. Don't worry about your personal information, I assure you I'm not savy enough to do anything with it even if I could discern it, which I can't. But it does track ISP numbers, which gives me a rough idea of how many individuals have been by. Somewhere over 50, thus far! Considering this site is still apparently invisible to Google, that's rather impressive.
So hello all you peoples, and I hope you are enjoying the puzzles! Tell all your friends to stop by, too, what the heck.
7/3/05
I first encountered sudoku puzzles in mid-May this year, via an article a friend forwarded to me. Almost immediately, I thought, "I could write those!" Well, I was correct, but it took a bit longer to work out the details than I suspected at the time. But now that I have a system in place, it seems time to start sharing them with the world – thus this website.
Like everyone else, I have fantasies of fame and fortune via the eventual book deal and syndication rights. Yeah, right! You never know. But for now, I am happy just to have the puzzles "out there". Hopefully someone finds them soon!
I used to be into html and website production back in the dark ages, that is, the 1990's. Apparently some new ideas have come forward since then. (For reference, the pages I wrote did have graphics, etc., for the benefit of those using Mosiac or Netscape, but I wanted good backwards compatability for those using Lynx. Like I said, the dark ages.) I'm giving myself a crash course in ASP and hopefully MySQL, to take full advantage of the limited resources of this cheapest of all webhosting deals I bought into. Bear with me for a bit, I do very sincerely hope to get the means of accessing the puzzles to look decent and work at least semi-automatically. Meantime, I'm writing html on Notepad and planning to update "when I can" by hand.
(undated)
Welcome! Sometime this week, based on "unique server IDs", we should be getting our 10,000th distinct visitor. So if you're here for the first time, assume it's you! If you're a regular, tell a friend – maybe you can refer the 10,000th visitor to this site...
(undated)
I've received many compliments on them, so here's another stairstepped sudoku... this one somewhat between the others in difficulty. Enjoy!
(undated)
Please consider making a donation to the red cross to help those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Thank you.
(undated)
I was thinking of having a contest of some sort, maybe give away a t-shirt or two. But I don't like the obvious idea of a race to finish one of the puzzles. Especially since anyone could just use the Excel solver to cheat... So, send me some other ideas. If I use your idea for a contest, I'll send you a t-shirt or something.
(undated)
It's probably seems like deja vu, and it is, 'cause it's another stairstepped sudoku! This one is difficult, but possible. No, really, it is! Don't you trust me??
(undated)
It's not deja vu, it's another stairstepped sudoku! This one is difficult. No seriously, this is pretty dang hard. Get a fresh pencil.