SudokuSolver Forum

Simon, I absolutely agree with you.

Since I also was (and still am) disappointed, I decided to ask djape why he abandoned the forum.This is of course a fair answer.


I then asked for his help in retrieving the URL of Maurice's image for Cage Pairs 4 AKA Killer Colour 3 (KiCo3)On 06.09.2010 20:58 I also sent djape my request per email, to be on the safe side.
So far I have not received an answer to my PM, and I do not expect to receive one any more.

To my email I got the following two replies.


So I now irregularly receive The Home of Perfect Sudoku newsletter, which always contains information like this:I personally find his phrasing a bit pathetic.

Perhaps I will get more attention if I wrote reviews of all his books, saying that they are terrible

Guess I'd better start working on more variants that are still in my Unfinished folder for Ruud's site. It's months since I last posted a walkthrough there.

More seriously, I hope Ruud continues making his site available. I'll really miss his excellent Combination Calculator if that site disappears. Thanks Ruud for a great site and for providing Assassins single-handed for almost two years.

Børge


Thanks for informing us about your exchange with djape.

I agree with you that he looks a bit pathetic with his hard selling approach.

Normally you would think only people with above average intelligence would buy these puzzle books so they would be less prone to these marketing tricks, and rely more on their own judgement.

And seeing how he values the importance of knowledge and wisdom, from the way he dumps the forum fill with invaluable material (not from himself but from numerous contributors who helped raise his reputation in the puzzle community), I am not sure I want to spend any more of my time or brain cells just to help him sell more books, earn more money.

Sorry for the ranting. I guess I should care less from now on.

Today I received the latest issue of The Home of Perfect Sudoku newsletter.
A pleasant read, and the commercials were toned down to an absolutely OK level.

I wonder if djape has read what has been posted here.
According to his profile he has not logged in since 11 September 2010, but perhaps he drops by as a guest.

Thanks HATMAN for another challenging Human Solvable puzzle.

I got the first Human Solvable step, the one in N5, quickly enough but soon got stuck because I wasn't able to find the second Human Solvable step. After seeing Simon's step 2, I decided to have another try and made some further progress but got stuck again until I gave it one last try this week. I won't post a walkthrough; some of my steps were very messy.

Thanks Simon for great walkthroughs for the original puzzle and for the harder version . As I've suggested to Simon in a PM, I think his steps 2 and 6 should also be given *. Step 2 should have a * because it is a key step and is the theme for this puzzle. Simon may not have realised that step 6 is also an important one deserving a *, for the reasons I'll show in the next paragraph.

When I went through Simon's walkthroughs, wondering what I'd missed apart from step 2, I found that I'd got the first line of step 6 but missed the second and third lines of that step. I don't know why I missed those two lines; those interactions are something which I would "automatically" check; I can only think that it was so long since I'd got the 26(4) cage in N3 and the 14(4) cage in N7 down to two combinations each that I'd forgotten that I'd done this.

As a result of missing those interactions I had R1C89 = 12,13,14 and R89C1 = 6,7,8 which meant that I only locked 1,2 in N3 for C7 and 8,9 in N7 for R7. Simon's steps gave R1C89 = 13 and R89C1 = 7 so that R123C7 were the hidden triple {123} and R7C123 the hidden triple {789}. This made subsequent steps a lot easier.