What is the Fastest Way to Solve Soduko?
How math can help you with this addictive puzzle
I love Sudoku! This puzzle is one of the most popular games in the world. If you go into any bookstore, you will undoubtedly find tons of Sudoku books. A quick glance at the app store shows hundreds of Sudoku games that are perfect for long road trips. What makes Sudoku so enticing is that it falls into the category of games that are simple to learn, but hard to master. It is so satisfying to finally solve a puzzle after wrestling with it for a while. If you are unfamiliar, I’ll briefly go over the rules.
To begin, you are given a 9x9 grid with some numbers filled in. To solve a Sudoku puzzle, you must fill in each of the 81 boxes with numbers 1–9. However, there are some constraints. Each row and column may only contain each number one time. Additionally, the 9x9 grid is divided into 9 3x3 boxes (shown in the bolder lines). Within each of these boxes, the numbers 1–9 may only appear once. Your challenge is to figure out what numbers to put into the empty boxes to fill the board while satisfying these conditions.
