Extreme Sudoku for Dummies

What an absolutely marvelous idea for Sudoku addicts like myself! Andrew Heron and Andrew Stuart, the joint authors of this marvelous little puzzle compilation, explain the simple idea behind "Extreme Sudokuy for Dummies": " ... If you find yourself breezing through most Sudoku puzzles without even breaking a sweat, then this is the book for you." The puzzles in this marvelous little collection start at difficult and move to downright fiendish (and trust me here, fellow puzzle solvers, "fiendish" in this book means EXACTLY what it says!). The teaching section of the book takes you through the simplest gridlock busting techniques to the most complex. Most of the advanced techniques (at least, those that I'm aware of) are briefly and reasonably clearly explained in the opening pages but it takes solving the actual puzzles to switch on that "aha" light bulb, to come to understand how the technique is applied in a full puzzle and to see how it fits into the context of a developing solution. Heron and Stuart cover an enormous range of puzzle solving techniques including: Crosshatching Single candidate squares Single square candidates Virtual crosshatching Naked pairs, triples and quads Row, column and box claims Remote pair chains Non-unique rectangles Bivalue Universal Grave X-wings, Swordfish and Jellyfish XY-wings XYZ-wings Conjugate Pair Chains Multi-colouring XY-chains This is NOT a puzzle book for beginners but if you're already a competent solver looking for challenges and a way to stretch your puzzle solving abilities with more esoteric techniques, then look no further than this delightful book. Highly recommended. Even if you're already an accomplished solver familiar with these techniques, you'll find the puzzles more than sufficiently challenging to justify the cost of the book. A handful of jigsaw and killer sudoku variations will round out your pleasure and stimulate the old synapses with a little variety. Paul Weiss

This book has increased my confidence and enjoyment of the puzzles a geat deal.I have yet to finish reading it, as I'm still practicing the new skills learned in the first few pages.Beatrice Jordan

This book contains not only difficult Sudoku puzzles, but also a good description of strategies for solving them. These strategies include: Naked pairs, naked triplets, hidden pairs, hidden triplets, intersection removal, the X-wing, swordfish, various chains, etc. Although many of these strategies can also be found for free on the internet, the clarity of the explanations in this book, in my opinion, alone make it worth having. A series of conventional advanced sudoku puzzles is provided, and answers are given in the back. Each puzzle is 3.25 inch by 3.25 inch (8.3 cm by 8.3 cm) in size, making it conveniently large enough to pencil-in the possibilities for each square. This book also includes unconventional sudoku-based puzzles and their solutions. This encompasses sudoku jigsaw puzzles, killer puzzles, target puzzles, and 12 by 12 (instead of the conventional 9 by 9) sudoku puzzles. Get busy!

As a lot of people have, I have become a big fan of Sudoku lately. A problem with a lot of books out there for Sudoku is that they can have way too many easy puzzles for the more advanced Sudoku user or they don't quite follow the rules I find are important (an earlier book I owned required guessing to get to solve a puzzle in the more advanced stages, or they don't start out with symmetric patterns, which the more traditional sudoku start with). This book is fantastic in that the puzzles start off challenging (this is not a beginners book). They incorporate more advanced techniques that one doesn't often find in books while not putting in techniques that are so advanced one would need a computer to use (This is a flaw in other books as well). The only drawback. I've seen in the book is that some of the terminology is inconsistent with a lot of the seemingly official terminology seen on internet forums and puzzles. I'll also admit that I am not a huge fan of some of the variations presented in the book. They aren't necessarily bad, but I think it would have been neater to throw in a couple of Killer Sudoku or Samurai Sudoku puzzles to show some challenging variations.