|  |
| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 10 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 29 found the following review helpful:
 Now here are some new challenges! Nov 17, 2005
By J. Guild
Just 4 months after her "Master Sudoku" (see my review of September 30,2005);Carol now gives us another great book This time she has upped it to 400 puzzles.
She gives us a couple of hilarious stories she's heard;and there are surely more to come.
"A mother of four has become so totally obsessed,her family is
considering moving her to a shed at the bottom of the garden
where she says she'd be quite happy".
"A wife has banned her husband from bed after a particular nite
when he was forced to shut off the light in the middle of a
Sudoku and went to sleep.Then he woke up again at 2am shouting
'I've got another number'".
This book has "Ten Top Tips for solving:
1.Slicing & Dicing
2.Completing Rows & Columns
3.Only One That Fits
4.Completing a row or column when two numbers are missing
5.Slicing & Slotting
6.Writing Options
7.Lone Numbers
8.Looking for Single Options
9.Twinning
10.Triplets
With each puzzle ,depending on difficulty, Carol gives a time and score so you can judge how well you did.
Here are a couple:
Medium
Less than 20 mins....15 Points
20-45 mins...........10 "
Over 45 mins.........5 "
Super Difficult
Less than 40 mins....15 Points
40-80 mins...........10 "
Over 80 mins..........5 "
Yeah,some are pretty hard.
Just to spice things up a bit she gives us 10 SQUIFFY Sukodus.
These are 9 by 9 cells where you must get 1 to 9 in each row and column, as normal.But here's the "SQUIFF' (I like that word).
Instead of getting 1 to 9 in each 9-cell mini grid you have to get them in each 9-cell shape that has been outlined in a bold border.
After trying these SQUIFFYS,maybe we'll all be heading to the
shed at the bottom of the garden.
Good Sukoduing!
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
More from Carol Vorderman! Feb 08, 2006
By Colleen McMahon
""Omnivorous Reader""
Of all the sudoku books I've bought, my favorite has been Master Sudoku by Carol Vorderman. Its hundreds of puzzles have kept me happily sudoku-ing since last summer, and it's nice to have 4 levels of difficulty to go back and forth between--sometimes you feel like a quick & easy one and sometimes you feel like one that will take some work and concentration to crack. She also has one of the best and lengthiest explanations of sudoku strategies to have yet appeared in any of the books.
Also, a diabolical innovation: suggested finishing times with a points-scoring system makes even the easiest ones challenging.
Massive Sudoku is more of the same, with some improvements. She reiterates the same strategies as she did in Master Sudoku; don't look here for more advanced ones, but what she lays out will get you through this book. Even a novice can start with this book without having tackled Master Sudoku first, although Master does work through puzzles of each level step by step and contain a bit more solving detail.
But if you already know how to solve and just want more, more, more! this is your book--400 puzzles, an interesting new variation where the sudoku blocks aren't perfect squares, and not only timed and points-scoring opportunities but every so often a puzzle has Carol's time posted for it. Who can help but want to pick up that thrown gauntlet?
I'm off for a vacation next week and bought this for it but I've already cheated and started playing with the puzzles in this. However, I've no doubt it will keep me happily puzzling through my vacation and beyond!
10 of 13 found the following review helpful:
From the Board Games Editor at BellaOnline.com Dec 12, 2005
By Megan Romer
This is a great follow-up to "Master Sudoku", Vorderman's first sudoku book. That book is an ideal starting point for both new and advanced sudoku-ers, and this book is no exception.
She re-covers most of her techniques in this book, so if you already own Master Sudoku, you'll find yourself skimming most of the introductory material, but she does go into some interesting discussion about the sudoku craze.
The best part of this book, though, is the bang for your buck value... 400 puzzles for only ten dollars (many puzzle books are 100 or 150 puzzles for the same price). And the quality of the puzzles is high, so it's a good investment all around.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 For Beginners Only May 12, 2008
By Wing Fat
If you're an absolute beginner to Sudoku this book might be a good start. There's a large quantity of puzzles progressing up through various difficulty levels, and some introductory Sudoku tips to get you started.
If you are not a beginner this book has little to offer. There are four grades of puzzles, but I can't imagine anyone of even modest skill wasting time on easy, medium, or "difficult" puzzles, all of which are the Sudoku equivalent of word searches (i.e., no logic involved). The "super difficult" puzzles are only moderately challenging at best, but there's no reason to carry around a book this large when you're only going to use 1/4 of it. The book attempts to add an additional challenge by including a time-based scoring system, but the time allotted is so ridiculously long, if you don't get the top score it's probably because you fell asleep.
On the plus side there are a couple of Sudoku variations like "Squiffy Sudoku," but there are only 20 total puzzles and there's no point in buying the entire book just for those.
If you're a beginner who wants a light diversion this might be a worthwhile book just because of the large number of puzzles included, but for everyone else there are better choices.
 New sudoku puzzle solvers will find this book very helpful. Aug 03, 2009
By J. Lesley
"(Judy)"
I would really like to recommend this sudoku puzzle book to people who are still exploring the puzzles and learning how to solve them. The puzzles in this book do give you a way to travel through puzzles labeled easy, medium, difficult, and super-difficult. Vorderman provides the basic rules for how to solve the puzzles and then she gives more detailed instructions for how to recognize situations such as writing options, twins, and triplets. If you have picked up any puzzle magazine from a newsstand and have had difficulty in getting started, these helpful hints will be of value to you. Frankly, after working your way through a few puzzles these "tips" reveal themselves very naturally, without needing this book. If you are having trouble, then that's where this book will come in handy.
The book is arranged with one puzzle on each page so there is ample room for writing in numbers in blank squares if you need to do that. The flip side to this is that the book is so thick that the first half makes the puzzles on the left page hard to work on and the second half makes the puzzles on the right side of the page difficult to work on. I solve that problem by tearing the page out, working the puzzles and then throwing the sheet away. Do you really think you are going to want to keep solved sudoku puzzles? No, you will want to get a new, fresh supply. There is a space at the bottom of each puzzle to indicate the time it took you to solve the puzzle and a "score" you assign yourself based on how long it took you to solve. Some of the puzzles give the solving time of Carol Vorderman. This aspect of the book was of no value to me since I chose not to make the solving of my puzzles a race, against myself, the clock, or another solver. I don't enjoy the tension created by putting myself against the clock.
These puzzles, even the ones called super-difficult are much too easy for even moderately proficient sudoku solvers. When I can look at a super-difficult puzzle and pick out which number slots into a space instantly, it's just not a very difficult puzzle. When I first began to solve sudoku's these puzzles would have increased my proficiency and given my confidence a boost. Not now, however. There are puzzles in the back of the book which Vorderman calls "squffy" and the 16 number puzzles. I find that the "squiffy" puzzles are usually easier to solve than regular sudoku's and I just don't like the 16 number puzzles. A "squiffy" is a puzzle which still uses the basic 9 numbers but where the grids are not square but in various shapes. No matter what the shape is, the numbers 1 through 9 must still be placed and perfectly co-ordinate with other various shapes. It's much easier than it sounds, but some solvers find the unusual shapes a visual distraction and don't care to solve this type puzzle.
I am giving this book a three star rating because there are many people who will find this book a huge help in increasing their sudoku solving skills. Just don't think you will find anything new and useful here if you have already worked your way through basic to moderate puzzles.
See all 10 customer reviews on Amazon.com
|
| | |
|
|
