HomeEverything ElseSudoku Easy Presented by Will Shortz Volume 1: 100 Wordless Crossword Puzzles |
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89 of 90 found the following review helpful:
 Great Starting Point for Sudoku Novices Nov 16, 2005
By Colleen McMahon
""Omnivorous Reader""
Do You Sudoku? This is becoming a true fad in the US as it already has in the UK and Japan and elsewhere. If you are wondering what all the fuss is about, like puzzles and logic and want to give it a try, this is a great place to start! Or, if you are looking for an inexpensive gift or stocking stuffer for a puzzle fan on your Christmas list, pick this up for him or her.
Will Shortz is a big name in crossword puzzles and has been for years. His name on a book on a book of crossword puzzles denotes high quality in both editing and production for the most part. It's the same with his new line of sudoku books.
Volume 1 is all easy puzzles. An experienced sudoku-er may find the consistent easy level boring, so for them I recommend #2 or #3 in the series, which have a variety of difficulty levels. But for someone just starting out, or a youngster/teenager, this is an excellent book. There's a decent explanation of sudoku's history and basic solving strategies in the beginning, and then 100 puzzles. The book is thin enough to be portable and unlike many newspaper puzzles, the big grids make it easy on the eyes, especially if you have to write the "possibles" in a box. The higher-quality paper stands up well to erasing (and there's almost always some erasing involved in sudoku).
Gift suggestion: include a packet of mechanical pencils with a sudoku book or books--your recipient will definitely appreciate it!
20 of 20 found the following review helpful:
From the Board Games Editor at BellaOnline.com Dec 05, 2005
By Megan Romer
This book is yet another wonderful collection of the highly addictive sudoku puzzles. This one is all easy puzzles, which makes it nice for both beginners and masters. Beginners will enjoy the well-written instructions and the sudoku history, and they'll find themselves breezing through the book in no time. Masters will enjoy the easy-level puzzles for situations when they don't have enough time to puzzle through a difficult sudoku (coffee breaks, subway rides, etc.) A great holiday gift idea!
89 of 109 found the following review helpful:
Two more SUDOKU books from one of the best! Aug 06, 2005
By J. Guild
Two more SUDOKU books No.1 & 2 just appeared.They carry the name of the master puzzlemaker,Will Shortz who is very well known to all puzzle enthusiasts (metagrobologists);especially crosswords.Will gives a short introduction to this "new" puzzle,which he shows us is not really that new.He's been in the game a long time and I think when he tells us something;you can take it to the bank.He thinks it is going to be as popular as were Crosswords in the 20's,Jigsaws in the 30's,and Rubik's Cube in the 80's.Rubik's cube came out 25 years ago;Believe It or Not!While it was a real craze,it was beyond the ability of most people.It has still got a following, and I attended a World Championship last year here in Toronto.The winner was a teenager from California who solved it in 16 seconds.One of the contestants he defeated was a college professor who competed in the First World Championship in 1981 and had been working on it all those years.Crosswords and Jigsaws can be done by just about anyone depending on the difficulty and patience and time.SUDOKU is also a puzzle that can be done by the masses but it also lends itself to speed competitions.If my memory serves me well;in competitions,the Sunday New York Times Crossword gets solved in 3 minutes. I think we are going to see SUDOKU competitions on TV very soon.
Shortz tells us the name SUDOKU comes from the Japanese phrase "suji wadokushin ni kagiru" meaning "only single numbers allowed".He also tells us these puzzles first appeared in Dell Pencil Puzzles and Games Magazine; in May 1979, and that the inventor credited for them was Howard Garns an Architect from Indianapolis, who retired in the 1970's and died in 1981.He was 74 when he sold his first puzzle.These puzzles were called"NUMBER PLACE"The editor of a Japanese Puzzle magazine took them back to Japan and published these puzzles under the name of SUDOKU and in the last year have caught fire and have spread all around the world and finally coming back to where they started.
The puzzles in these books were created by Peter Ritmeester.He is the General Secretary of The World Puzzle Federation which organizes World Puzzle Championships in which SUDOKU puzzles and variations on them have been popular for years.
Each book contains simple solution methods and 100 puzzles to solve .
These would be great books to get started or as gifts to someone who is already doing these puzzles in their local newspapers or anyone who likes "to do puzzles".
If interested,I have written Reviews on other SUDOKU puzzle books; see Aug 3 (2 books), Aug 10 and Sept 30.
It,s now Nov 23,2005,and here,s a bit of an update.Several other Sudoku books and sets for Dummies by Will Shortz have appeared They are much like the first one.If looking for Sudoko books in bookstores check out the Games section.You should find over 20 different ones;great Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers.
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
Well done May 06, 2006
By J. S. Radford
I bought (and eventually burned) another Sudoku book which had very inaccurately grouped puzzles. It's very first puzzle, supposedly "gentle", was in fact pretty difficult. I got very annoyed with the book.
By contrast, this Will Shortz book seems to have done a good job of ranking the puzzles. It's a very simple book. Well done. I've gotten hours of enjoyment from solving theses puzzles.
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
"the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real are the structural paradigms..." or something like that Mar 08, 2006
By My Uncle Stu
I love Sudoku, love these compilations from Will Shortz. I know this is volume one but it is the third one for me. I bought volume two first, then three, and have just worked my way backwards to one. When I was on my first book, I thought it was great but not enough light and easy puzzles, too many hard ones. By the time I got to my second book, I thought the light and easy ones were a bit silly, just plug in the missing number, but the moderate puzzles were great. Still too many demanding and very challenging puzzles.
I am proud to say I am now on my third book, and this time around I'm delving right into the demanding ones. In fact, I finished a demanding puzzle in just twenty minutes today, and that was while partially absorbing a cavernous, humorless lecture on Lacanian analysis. I'm not bragging, I'm sure plenty of Sudoku-heads are way beyond me. I'm just excited, and I wanted to share, and you're the only one who listens to me. So thank you.
Still don't get into those "Beware! Very Challenging" puzzles though. I just run out of moves and get frustrated. I know at some point you are just suppose to plug in numbers, track your steps, and do some trial and error, but at that point it begins to seem more like a rote exercise than a logic puzzle, and I lose interest. Maybe I'll get there someday.
Here's the thing about the super-sudokus, though. There are twelve boxes per grid, and they are numbered one through thirteen, skipping ten. Why? No explanation. If, like me, you have a system of writing in possible numbers or eliminated numbers, it's confusing to scratch in tiny 1's, 2's, 11's, 12's. Is that a one and a two or one twelve? Why not count one through nine with the digits and then switch to letters? A B and C are nice ones for example. Or just use all letters? Or write a single sentence explaining your logic or lack of it?
I'm just saying...
Thank you Will Shortz. Also, feel free to change your preface from one volume to the next.
Nighty-night
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