Will Shortz Presents Ferocious Sudoku: 200 Hard Puzzles

90% of the puzzles were done. What a waste of my hard earned money

This collection of Sudoku puzzles is just what we were looking for. Most other books contain many that are too easy. These are just hard enough to make us think while still being solvable.

I got to where the 100 "hard" puzzles took the same effort that five-star puzzles in the newspaper were requiring of me. The next 100 "challenging" puzzles were just that. Soon I was working primarily the challenging ones and going back to a hard one when my brain needed a rest. I don't have any complaint about the paper it's printed on or the size of the book. Either regular ink or pencil will do. I wish puzzle publishers would get over wasting pages by printing answers. Either it comes out right, or you do it over. A few pages explaining advanced strategy would have been more welcome, though the strategies are a joy to discover on my own. Still, I have come to a point where I need some coaching. This is an excellent book if you don't want to waste your money and time on fast, fun, easy-to-medium puzzles.

Well, I've gone through quite a few sudoku books and thought I was hot stuff. Then Ferocious Sudoku book assaulted my ego. Well, if you're looking to step up to the big leagues, this is the book; I haven't found a tougher one.

This book gives you 100 "difficult" puzzles and 100 "very challenging" puzzles. Although there's no official grading system for Sudoku puzzles, I've done about half the puzzles in this book and I would say those descriptions are accurate. The "difficult" puzzles are hard enough to make me think but not so hard that I've had to use notations to solve them, and the "very challenging" puzzles usually require me to make notations and I've even gotten hung up on a couple of them. The book is big enough so that the puzzles can be easily read yet small enough that it will fit in your laptop case. It's also very fairly priced for the number of puzzles you get.

These puzzles aren't as hard as I had hoped, but are better than most books. Well worth it, and will pass the time as desired.