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Most popular/common variants?
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Author:  enxio27 [ Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Most popular/common variants?

In your experience, which are the most common/popular sudoku variants? Note that I'm NOT asking for your personal favorites.

In my view, gattai (2-144+ overlapping puzzles) are not variants as much as they are puzzle extensions. (Clueless Special is an extension of vanilla sudoku, and Clueless Explosion is an extension of center-dot.) There are also hybrids of two or more variants; we'll exclude those for now. I've also excluded those that combine arithmetic with sudoku (such as killer, kakuro, etc.).

Here are the ones I've run across so far. Am I missing any? I've tried to group them in a logical fashion. Many are subsets of others (for instance, x/diagonal, windoku, asterisk, center-dot, etc. are all specific types of the extra-groups variant, many variations in addition to those below, such as Snake, Girandola, Old Lace, etc.). I've included as separate categories only those subsets that I've found in more than one place.

Extra Groups
Argyle
Asterisk
Bold-X
Center-Dot
Clover
Disjoint Groups (LOTS of variations/color patterns in this category)
Snowflake
Sudoku-X (diagonal)
Windoku

Jigsaw
No-Box
Plum (No-Box with color groups)

Sukaku

Consecutive
Even-Odd
Greater-Than
Non-consecutive
Chess Moves

Other Box Sizes (such as 16x16, 12x12, etc.)

Author:  Princess Amy [ Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Most popular/common variants?

For the vanilla puzzles, there are also a variety of Clue/Solution Sets:
Colors
Figure 8
Alphabet
Icons/Pictures
Domino Dots


For Grid Shapes, there are also
Gridless
Circular/Spider Web

You didn't want math-related, like Killer, but consider:
Pandigital


And where you had Chess-moves, I'd add things like
Navigator
Wheel
Creasing
Frames (clues outside the columns & rows)

And where you have Consecutive, etc, I'd add
Smaller/Larger numbers

I don't know how to do Skyscrapers, so I don't know what type they are.

Husband needs the computer. More later.

Author:  enxio27 [ Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Most popular/common variants?

Princess Amy wrote:
For the vanilla puzzles, there are also a variety of Clue/Solution Sets:


Do you have links to images for these?

I was also not including those that are shapes other than square (such as wheel/circle sudoku).

Author:  Princess Amy [ Sat Jun 28, 2008 12:14 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Most popular/common variants?

You will see hundreds of variants here: http://www.sachsentext.de/en/

In particular, you can see examples Figure 8 (aka Digital), Large/Small, Domino Dots (aka Pips) & PanDigital in this fabulous Combined puzzle:
http://www.sachsentext.de/en/combined_sudoku1.htm

I don't know if there are whole puzzles of any of those there, but there probably are.

I've seen all kinds of pictures, icons, etc. From Simpsons characters to baseball terms to stock market ticker symbols to the contestants on Top Chef. I'm sorry I can't find any links.

The "colors" one was in a children's Sudoku book. Instead of numbers, you just color in the cells with 9 different colors.

Another set would be Spelled Numbers. In that one, if the clue is "E" it could be onE, thrEE, fivE, sEvEn, Eight or ninE. If the clue is V, it can only be fiVe or seVen, etc. (I don't remember where I found that one, but I looked up the spellings of numbers in Dutch to try to make one for Para.)

For the math ones, here is Frames: http://www.sachsentext.de/en/sudoku_frame1.htm and Pandigital: http://www.sachsentext.de/en/sudoku_pandigi5.htm

Enjoy,

Amy

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