The Original Sudoku Book 2

There's something about human generated sudoku puzzles that inspire you to continue trying to solve them long after you would have given up on a computer generated puzzle. My house is falling down around me, my wife is threatening divorce, and my health is failing....but I am having so much fun working these sudoku puzzles! The is the best sudoku puzzle series!!

This is a nice little book. The small size means you can carry it easily with you for a diversion while awaiting a bus, an appointment or friends. It's a little difficult to physically manage because of this fact, however, and the squares are small, so it's difficult if you like to write in the possible solutions for the individual squares as I do. The puzzles are graded into "easy," "medium," "hard," and "very hard," and these assessments are accurate. You can solve any of them with the usual methods you employ for them but will find that the greater the level of difficulty the greater amount of time it'll take to solve them. I find that I tend to select a puzzle level based on how I'm feeling rather than strictly on what level I think I can do. If I'm not feeling like a major challenge, I tend to do easy puzzles. It gives me a sense of satisfaction without frustrating me when I may already be stressed out enough. I choose more challenging puzzles when I'm feeling more up to the demands, but then for me the point of doing these puzzles is to enjoy the experience, not to "prove" anything to anyone.

The puzzles are top notch and you get 320 for your money, a very good deal. As the book is so thick, the page size is a bit small, making the left hand puzzles at the beginning of the book (and vice versa for the right hand pages at the back of the book) difficult to keep flat. The paper is tough enough to withstand multiple erasings and there is only minimal bleed through from puzzles on reverse page faces. It is up to you to decide whether or not these "hand-made" puzzles are better than computer generated. I have never played a computer generated puzzle, so I can't comment.