Product Description

The second collection of Su Doku puzzles, the crossword without words, which is taking the puzzle world by storm. Literally translated, Su means number and doku means place. Su Doku is a number grid consisting of 9 large squares each divided into 9 smaller squares. Between 3 and 4 numbers are already provided in each of the smaller squares. The point is to fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9. This book contains over 100 unpublished puzzles with four levels of difficulty. There are more difficult and fiendishly difficult puzzles than easy and mild puzzles included. Since The Times started to publish Su Doku they have received an enormous number of enquiries about the puzzle and the availability of books. Wayne Gould, 59, is the brains behind Su Doku. Now retired, he was a High Court judge in Hong Kong.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #192671 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Gould was a lawyer for 13 years in Matamata, New Zealand, before coming to Hong Kong in 1982 where he worked his way up to become Chief District Judge in 1993. He retired from the Judiciary in 1997 and, that same year, during a visit to Japan, he was in a bookstore where, not knowing how to read or speak Japanese, he was drawn to the puzzle which he first thought was a crossword. He was intrigued and later on he decided to take it with him to the United States and Britain. After his initial retirement, in efforts to pass time and sharpen his computer skills, Gould developed the computer program that generates Sudoku puzzles. Wayne Gould says retirement can now wait as Sudoku keeps him busier than ever. He travels between his different bases; Lantau and New Hampshire in the United States, where his wife Gaye is a professor of linguistics, and other parts of the world to which his new hobby has taken him. He has two children, daughter Sally, 29, and son, Scott, 27.

Customer Reviews

Innovative Addictive Puzzler
I first found Su Doku while browsing through the Times one day and thought that it looked a bit different from the usual crosswords and chess puzzles that I am not really interested in. Simply put, you must place the digits 1 through 9 into a 9 by 9 grid that is split into 9 3 by 3 boxes. However, each digit must only appear once in every column, row and seperate box and you are only given a handful to start with. Using logic you must deduce where each digit goes.
This book starts with a short introduction by the author about the rules of su doku and a couple of simple methods however his main advice is to develop your own techniques to solve the harder Su Dokus.
To begin with there are 4 'Easy' grids to lead you gently into the puzzle before 26 'Mild' where you start using more complicated techniques. 45 'Difficult' follow which are personally my favourites as they are tricky enough to keep your brain on its toes but are not taxing enough to mean you are stumped. Finally there is 25 'Fiendish' grids which are exactly that, fiendish. All are solvable using the numbers provided it just isn't that obvious how! I am really pleased to solve a 'Fiendish' and have maybe done about 10 so far. This is such a broad spectrum of difficulty that however long you have you can choose a puzzle to suit you. Finally an answer section is provided as a quick means of checking the whole grid without going over each row, column and box to check for repeated numbers.
Personally I do my grids by copying them out onto paper as the beauty of Su Doku is you can come back to a puzzle and start as if you have never seen it before because you don't remember the positions of the 81 digits so grids can be done again and again. I must recommend pencil especially for the harder ones and I have found myself many a time rubbing out a whole grid realising I have two 5's in a box.
Overall I have found Su Doku to be very stress relieving and quite a lot of fun. A great way to wind down at a night and a puzzle you can do anywhere.

Su Doku the way it should be
If you now consider yourself a veteran Su Doku solver, this is the only level you should be considering (apart from Killer). Unless you want an easy life, anything less will not suffice. 'Difficult' Su Doku requires you to stop and pause occasionally, but 'fiendish' is where the grids become genuinely satisfying challenges which can take over an hour to complete, and with 200 grids to solve, you'll not be rushing through to the end of this one. This is an excellent value collection from the popular The Times series that will last you ages. Su Doku at its best.

Hours of fun and frustration await you. You will almost certainly need a pencil for this book and it is, of course, not the place for beginners to start...

I can't put this down
I'm not a great crossword enthusiast, so I was a little hesitant to give this a try as it resembles a crossword, but I needed a way of passing the hours of boredom on the train every day, so when I saw multitudes of people on the train doing su doku puzzles, I thought I would give it a go.

There's a simple-looking grid of 9 rows x 9 vertical columns, split into 9 boxes with 9 squares. Using logic (no maths skill required) you have to arrange the numbers in to them. Perhaps it sounds boring, but it isn't; it is thoroughly addictive.

There are a few other books, including one published by The Daily Telegraph (which I bought last week), but so far, I prefer this collection of puzzles. Even my wife, who hates any sign of numbers, is addicted and for an introduction, the simple puzzles in this book are great and lead you nicely on to the more difficult ones you find in the book too. The editor of this book has been credited with bringing su doku to Britain, and seems to be the authority on su doku, so this seems like a good place to start with it.

Try it if you dare, but it will change your life completely. You will be obsessed!