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HomeKakuroSudoku For Dummies |
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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 4 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Mostly Puzzles Feb 21, 2006
By S. Osborne
"steve8511"
This is a very very basic beginners book. 28 pages of "how to"
300+ pages of puzzles
 NOT in "for Dummies" tradition Mar 23, 2010
By rufous
Got this when I was past being a solver of easy sudoku puzzles hoping for strategies on how to solve these puzzles beyond the basic guidelines.
In the past, I've turned to the "for Dummies" series for pretty thorough HOW TO instructions on whatever...for Macs by David Pogue was one). These books had delivered on what they promised, so I got this "Sudoku for Dummies" Vol. 3 with high expectations.
MASSIVE DISAPPOINTMENT. It's mostly puzzles!--240 of them of varying difficulty--with only 28 pp of the most basic beginner guidelines. Of the 28 pp (taken up mostly by illustrative puzzles, only 21-26 go beyond the basics, but even then I had an issue with the clarity of the instructions and with the scarcity of different examples that would clarify a strategy. For ex., on p 24 about "hidden matched pairs" they refer to an element without defining that term. "If the 9 is somewhere else in the options of that element (it would have to be, otherwise it's the 9 for that element)..." what does "element" refer to? the #9? a square? Not clear and it's key to understanding the strategy.
Two sentences farther along: "In Figure 2.5 our matched pair eliminated just one 8, [which one?] but sometimes such a matched pair can get rid of large numbers of extraneous options." So...please show us.
On p 25 the authors give an illustrated example of "the rule of three numbers" and point out that "While this example eliminated only a single option, you can usually cull more with this method." So...please show us more options.
Then the authors reveal that these strategies help solve "all but the most difficult and extreme sudoku." They direct one to "one of the many Web sites and sudoku forums that have been set up just for sudoku solvers." But that's precisely why I bought this book!
If you're looking for strategies beyond the most elementary, don't bother with this book. It's a puzzle book, not a how-to book in the Dummies tradition.
3 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 good collection Jun 01, 2006
By SSL
The reason I chose this book over others, is for its variations of sudoku. I was originally introduced to sudoku years ago, in the book "MENSA Math & Logic Puzzles" by Dave Tuller and Michael Rios. Since this was published before sudoku became so popular, it is called by the name "Number Place". In addition to the standard sudoku, the MENSA book has great variations--not all sections are 3x3, but rather irregularly shaped (some like puzzle pieces, but still 9x9 grid). After enjoying those, when sudoku exploded, I got bored with the standard 9x9 grid really fast, so it was great to see a book (this one) with a variation on the original. Here is a warning, though: the 16x16 games take FOREVER and require a lot of patience to do it methodically. (The 9x9 grids have 81 squares, the 16x16 have 256--more than 3x as many squares.)
3 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Sudoku Addict! Mar 23, 2006
By A. Schaffer
Well ever since June when I was in a cast and stuck on the couch for a few months I have become an absolute addict to sudoku. The first series of the For Dummies books was the first one I got and so far they have all been consistently great. It is a nice mix of different levels of puzzles. Get all 3!
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