Scan the rows and fill the gaps
 Roopinder Singh

How to Solve Sudoku
 by Robin J. Wilson. Rupa.
Pages 116. Rs 95.

What do you need to solve a new puzzle? Focus, concentration and patience — a self-help book helps, of course. Sudoku has triggered a mini-publishing tide of such books and this one comes from an eminent mathematics professor in England who has previously written books like Sherlock Holmes in Babylon, and Other Tales of Mathematical History, Topics in Algebraic Graph Theory, and Music and Mathematics.

In this slim volume, he gives tips to make sense out of the number grid that is arguably the most popular mindgame today. Like many readers of The Tribune, now Sudoku has become a challenge for this reviewer, too. What seems like a mathematical puzzle and thus daunting, turns out be something logic can crack, thereby making it possible for the mathematically challenged too to undertake a journey in solving Sudoku.

If you get stuck

  Look at all rows, columns and boxes that have several (say, five or more) filled-in cells (squares) and investigate those numbers that still have to be inserted.
  Concentrate particularly on numbers that occur frequently in the grid as a whole, or on those parts of the grid that have a lot of filled-in cells.
  Write in the little numbers, and use them to locate those cells that have the fewest number of possible entries.
  Look particularly for twins and triplets, and use them to reduce the number of possibilities for other cells in the same row, column or box.

— Excerpted with permission

When you "scan your rows and fill your gaps", you begin to see patterns in the arrangement of numbers in the grid, and that’s a good beginning. The writer communicates well, and puts the reader on the right track. Solving the puzzles given in this book helped a lot in understanding the game and of course, gave me quite a feeling of satisfaction. The chapter scheme is logical, though prosaic. There are many practice grids and worksheets. The book reminds you of a good class-room tutorial— effective, makes you review your sessions, and takes you from one stage to the next quite efficiently.

The tips are effective, and some of them are given in the accompanying box. Will this book make a Sudoku champion out of you, well, I really don’t know, it will certainly help you become a better player, but you will need a lot of patience, I can guarantee that the time spent on this slim volume will be inversely proportional to its size. This is not a book you will read from cover to cover. You will dip into it for fresh insights again and again as you go about sorting Sudoku puzzles.

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