[casual_games] Sudoku difficulty

[Hal Barwood]

 From what I read, figuring out the difficulty level is non-trivial. 
Check out this article on Sudoku math from a recent issue of American 
Scientist-->

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/48550


Andy Makely wrote:
>  >From the few I have played, it seems that the difficulty levels vary.  
> Rob's Sudoku on Shockwave.com <http://Shockwave.com> and websudoku.com 
> <http://websudoku.com> have an "Easy" mode that starts with at least one 
> row/grid/column with 3 empty spaces.  The Miniclip.com 
> <http://Miniclip.com> Sudoku game has an Easy mode that starts you with 
> at least one row/grid/column with 4 empty spaces.
> 
> I would imagine that another measure of difficulty is how one find 
> triggers the next.  When the process of elimination is fairly 
> straightforward and have several squares that have only one or two 
> possible values, things move along quickly.  When a player is having to 
> do more logic comparing several squares with multiple possible values, 
> it's obviously more challenging.
> 
> I'm not sure exactly how one controls such complexity via code, but it's 
> an interesting problem.
> 
> --
> andy makely
> 
> On 2/14/06, *Charles Parcell * <cparcell at toxictoy.com 
> <mailto:cparcell at toxictoy.com>> wrote:
> 
>     This actually is spawning from another list I am on where we are
>     talking
>     about Sudoku puzzles. the question has been posed, how do you rank a
>     Sudoku puzzle as simple, or difficult?
> 
> 
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