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HomeSudoku BooksX-Treme Sudoku |
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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 12 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
 It'll be hard to go back... Jun 01, 2007
By Tamara Mady
...to computer generated sudoku after you start playing these. I don't know what it is, but somehow, these handcrafted puzzles don't only look so much cooler, they're actually funner!
The book comes with two levels of challenge - creatively titled "Difficult" and "Very Difficult." Even though I'm relatively new to these puzzles, I'd posit that the former really should be called "Moderate," using the standardly accepted levels of difficulty. My only gripe with the book is that I wish the page's measurements were bigger, but that's personal preference.
Nonetheless, this is a great buy with 320 puzzles, and it'll likely last you a long time!
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 A great series of Sudoku books Aug 19, 2008
By Thomas W. Roth
"twroth"
The Nikoli books are really the best Sudoku books out there. They select puzzles which can be solved using logic rather than the really esoteric methods you can find out about on Sudoku web pages like X Wing and Swordfish. This tends to make them more fun because they are hard yet with enough effort can be solved. They also have a brief but helpful section with some strategy.
How many books have you bought which are half worthless because you don't enjoy working the simple puzzles any longer? Well, these books are specifically made with only the tougher puzzles so you get more fun for your money.
Otherwise the criticisms are true: it's a small book, which can be good since it takes up little space yet bad because you'll have trouble opening it very wide to write in since it's small and fat. If only they made it in a spiral format I'd give it 5 stars.
It probably has few reviews because they aren't sold everywhere but they 're worth the effort to find and certainly worth purchasing. Printed on good paper, too, in case you need to erase or make pencil marks in the boxes.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Nikoli is the only Sudoku Feb 15, 2011
By Mark S. Millman
I've been addicted to Sudoku now for about four years and discovered the Nikoli series a couple of years ago. I've completed a few thousand Sudokus including all the Nikoli books: Original Sudoku One & Two, More Original, Expert, and X-Treme (twice now). They are a pure joy and obviously created by craftsmen whose wicked wit shows through. Nikoli Sudoku have made me laugh and wince. A simple puzzle might mean that you spend 30 minutes finding the first key and then the puzzle unravels or a hard puzzle may mean that you get the first dozen numbers immediately and are then stymied for half a day. Easy or hard, Nikoli Sudoku leave me feeling satisfied.
What frustrates me about other Sudoku books is the number of times a 'hard' puzzle is just hard because you are forced to trial and error endings, where you are stuck with no where to go and have to start trying to pick one of a pair in order to discover a bust. In a book like X-Treme Sudoku by Nikoli I might be forced to that inelegance once or twice but even then on review I can see that there was a way to solve the problem. It might require 3 or 4 levels of indirection, but that's what 'hard' Sudoku are should to be about.
Nikoli Sudoku can be very personal, I feel like they are a game between me and another human being. They are now the only Sudoku I do.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Amazing Puzzles! Nov 05, 2009
By A. Jennings
After trying Nikoli handcrafted puzzles a couple of months ago, I was desperate to find a challenging book. X-Treme Sudoku is that book! It is obvious they put a lot of detail in crafting their puzzles and they are a real treat to tackle. They aren't impossible puzzles, but you will spend a nice chunk of time working through these. I highly recommend this book to anyone tired of computer-generated puzzles and eager to be challenged!
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
This was my favorite Sudoku book ever Aug 23, 2009
By John S. Shelley
"zorpiedoman"
There definitely IS something nice about these hand-crafted puzzles. I found as I worked my way through the book that it became a cat and mouse chase as I learned what the author of the puzzle was doing - and it was slightly different in each puzzle. Someone else wrote about having to guess in some of the more insane computer generated puzzles. I would never want to work a puzzle where guessing was ever part of the solution. These puzzles use pure logic. It is a joy when you finally crack the really hard ones. This book kept me entertained for almost two years. (Mind you I rarely spend more than 15 minutes in a day at these things.)
As far as all the comments about the size of the book there was a simple solution - rip each puzzle out of the book like a note pad. They all came out clean, then it is easy to work on both sides!
I don't know why they waste all the extra pages to print the solutions. Does anyone ever look at the answers? You know when you get it, and you know when you don't.
See all 12 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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