Sudoku by Serkan Yürekli
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Theme: S is for Sudoku
Author/Opus: This is the 187th puzzle from our contributing puzzlemaster Serkan Yürekli.
Rules: Standard Sudoku rules.
Answer String: Enter the 1st row from left to right, followed by a comma, followed by the 9th row from left to right.
Time Standards (highlight to view): Grandmaster = 4:15, Master = 6:30, Expert = 13:00
Solution: PDF
Note: Follow this link for other classic Sudoku. If you are new to this puzzle type, here are our easiest Sudoku to get started on. More classic Sudoku puzzles can be found in The Art of Sudoku, The Art of Sudoku 2 and in our beginner-friendly collection Intro to GMPuzzles by Serkan Yürekli.
3.58. nice one
I spent a very long time staring at this puzzle because I was sure I missed some elegant or simple next step. Turns out I didn’t, and the next step (as I confirmed via sudokuwiki) was something I would not have expected on gmpuzzles, maybe except for a saturday puzzle, but even then the strategy is always beyond my comfort zone in sudoku and I find it quicker to just take a guess.
Definitely a strange ending to an otherwise smooth solving puzzle :/
This was indeed a weird puzzle from Serkan because it is fairly easy up to the end when it needs “simple coloring”. This version of coloring is not too hard to spot if you focus on the 5s, particularly because there are just 19 digits left, so it felt more Friday-ish than Saturday-ish, and a once in a blue moon puzzle because of the coloring.
Yup, I can report that I easily got down to 19 open cells and then performed “speculative execution” because I must not know the term/technique “simple coloring” in this context.
5:24.Awesome sudoku.Always fun to use “fxlfpencre” in a sudoku.I think the difficult deduction is “xabjvat gung 5 pna’g or va E8P6.Guvf pna or qrqhprq ol gur sbyybjvat : Va P2, 5 vf va rvgure E3 be E8 naq va P4, 5 vf va rvgure E3 be E9.Fb guvf vzcyvrf gung 5 unf gb or va bar bs E8P2 be E9P4 juvpu ryvzvangrf 5 sebz E8P6 “.