X-Treme Sudoku

The Nikoli books are really the best Sudoku books out there. They select puzzles which can be solved using logic rather than the really esoteric methods you can find out about on Sudoku web pages like X Wing and Swordfish. This tends to make them more fun because they are hard yet with enough effort can be solved. They also have a brief but helpful section with some strategy. How many books have you bought which are half worthless because you don't enjoy working the simple puzzles any longer? Well, these books are specifically made with only the tougher puzzles so you get more fun for your money. Otherwise the criticisms are true: it's a small book, which can be good since it takes up little space yet bad because you'll have trouble opening it very wide to write in since it's small and fat. If only they made it in a spiral format I'd give it 5 stars. It probably has few reviews because they aren't sold everywhere but they 're worth the effort to find and certainly worth purchasing. Printed on good paper, too, in case you need to erase or make pencil marks in the boxes.

It delivers the challenge; it's overall about a 9 out of 10 on difficulty. The publisher has a real ego about its superiority based on owning the trademark on publishing sudoku in japan at least. My main criticism of the book is its small size and dense binding. it makes for a very compact and portable book, considering it has like 300 (or was it more?) puzzles. The downside to this is that, while I'm right handed, it's easier to do the odd pages than the even pages because my hand bumps into the opposite page and the spine. I imagine that by the time I've gotten halfway through it, it'll look like a fanned out book dropped in the bathtub or something, though the spine appears strong enough to avoid this. Space in the margins is also more limited for checklists or other user notes compared to what I'm used to in larger format books. I think that a book this small should be spiral bound for ease of use. Great for a bedside book, but not perfectly ideal for an all-around sudoku companion book. edit: removed a criticism of radial symmetry (which this book adheres to), and update: the spine is strong enough to handle many harsh bends while solving the puzzles. All the same, it's still less enjoyable than other titles due to its cramped format.

...to computer generated sudoku after you start playing these. I don't know what it is, but somehow, these handcrafted puzzles don't only look so much cooler, they're actually funner! The book comes with two levels of challenge - creatively titled "Difficult" and "Very Difficult." Even though I'm relatively new to these puzzles, I'd posit that the former really should be called "Moderate," using the standardly accepted levels of difficulty. My only gripe with the book is that I wish the page's measurements were bigger, but that's personal preference. Nonetheless, this is a great buy with 320 puzzles, and it'll likely last you a long time!