Programming Sudoku



Springer-Verlag |-| ISBN-13: 978-1-59059-662-3 |-| PDF |-| English |-| 232 Pages |-| 4.12 MB |-| No Pass

Introduction
Sudoku is the wildly popular new puzzle game that is taking the world by storm. Sudoku puzzles are 9×9 grids, and each square in the grid consists of a 3×3 subgrid called a minigrid. Your goal is to fill in the squares so that each column, row, and minigrid contains the numbers 1 through 9 exactly once. And some squares already contain numbers or symbols, which lend clues toward the solution. While the rules of Sudoku are extremely simple, solving a Sudoku puzzle is an intellectual challenge.

What This Book Covers
Programming Sudoku provides you with great approaches to building and solving Sudoku puzzles. Using logical deduction and analysis, you’ll learn how to get a computer to solve these puzzles for you. You will learn the various techniques that you can deploy to solve a puzzle, ranging from basic techniques such as Column, Row, and Minigrid Elimination, to the more advanced triplets identification technique. And if all logical techniques fail, bruteforce elimination will kick into action and solve the puzzle by making some educated guesses. In addition to solving Sudoku puzzles, you will also learn the techniques for programmatically generating Sudoku puzzles of varying levels of difficulty. One of the myths about Sudoku is that you must be good in mathematics to play the game. The fact is that people of all ages can enjoy Sudoku, regardless of whether they are mathematically inclined. All you need is a logical mind and a great amount of patience. I will teach you how to logically deduce a number for a cell and
how one confirmed cell can lead to the confirmation of other cells in the grid. Even if you are not a programmer, this book will provide you with a better understanding of how to logically solve a Sudoku puzzle.
While the code project provided in this book uses the Visual Basic 2005 programming language, C# programmers should not have any major problem understanding or translating the code. This book should be a fun, intriguing read whether you’re a novice or advanced programmer. You’ll find this book interesting whatever your programming background. The core techniques in the book enable you to solve Sudoku on any programming platform. The following sections provide an overview of this book.

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