mathschallenge.net WAS Brute force sudoku cracker

[Caleb Hattingh]

Very interesting that sudoku solving appears on the python group - there  
is a programming competition at mathschallenge.net (euler) where one of  
the puzzles is developing a sudoku solving algorithm...

Actually the python entrants are giving the C guys a good run!

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 09:12:54 +0200, Antoon Pardon  
<apardon at forel.vub.ac.be> wrote:

> Op 2005-09-16, my.correo.basura at gmail.com schreef  
> <my.correo.basura at gmail.com>:
>>
>> Bas ha escrito:
>>
>>> Hi group,
>>>
>>> I came across some of these online sudoku games and thought after
>>> playing a game or two that I'd better waste my time writing a solver
>>> than play the game itself any longer. I managed to write a pretty dumb
>>> brute force solver that can at least solve the easy cases pretty fast.
>>>
>>> It basically works by listing all 9 possible numbers for all 81 fields
>>> and keeps on striking out possibilities until it is done.
>>> [snip]
>>
>> This problem is desperately begging for backtracking.
>
> I don't think so. I regularly solve one and I never needed
> to try something out, to see if it worked or not except
> when there were muliple solutions.
>
> I think it is a beautifull problem, to make people think of
> how they could code some of their thought processes, which
> would be a more fruitfull experience as programming this
> with backtracking.
>