Re: [Pythoncard-users] Sudoku

[Alex T. <al...@tw...>]

normanwinn wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Just read that Alex Tweedly is working on a Sudoku for Pythoncard. I 
> immediately thought he might have a solution for my rather simple 
> problem - to produce Sudoku blanks. Quickly rejected posting this 
> request as I thought it was too lazy of me.

Do you mean completely blank blanks ?
Or to generate puzzle definitions ?  (i.e. 9x9 squares with 30-36 
initial values filled in).
(I noticed the cheaper newspapers seem to use what must be 
machine-generated puzzles, with 4 initial values in each of the small 
3x3 squares, while the broadsheets have fewer initial values and 
asymmetric allocation of them).

I'm not sure if I'll do any printing  - that's an area I have never had 
any reason to look at yet, and I suspect it's got a few quirks involved.
I probably will do puzzle generation (either random, or allow the user 
to give any number of initial "seeds" and complete the generation of 
enough initial values to ensure a unique solution).

>
> Then an idea hit me. Why not something that will take the scanned 
> image of a Sudoku game and put that into Alex's implementation. I 
> don't know what the state of things is elsewhere but in the UK every 
> newspaper has them. The Times has three daily. This could just be 
> Python's killer app, and via Pythoncard.
>
Scanning them sounds like a lot of trouble to me. To enter a puzzle from 
a paper into the file format I use takes about 30 seconds; to enter a 
puzzle definition and save it within the program takes about 60-90 
seconds (but is much more user-friendly).
[ I think there's a general lesson about GUI vs command-line hidden in 
there :-) ]

And it won't be PythonCard's killer app - there are already a good 
number of Sudoku solvers, helpers and generators out there in a variety 
of languages. I haven't yet noticed a good free one - but I haven't 
really been looking, because I wanted to solve this programming task 
myself for the fun of it.

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net




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