Sudoku Challenge

July 5, 2019
 Sudoku
The word sudoku is the abbreviation of a Japanese
expression: suji wa dokushin ni kagiru (every digit must be
unique). Actually, it is the name of the game when it was
first published in the Japanese magazine Nikoli in 1984. Su
means digit and doku means single.
The rules of the game
The rules are simple: an 81-cell square grid is divided into 9
smaller blocks made up of 9 cells each. Some of the 81
cells are already filled (they are often referred to as given).
The aim of the game is to fill all the empty cells with one
digit from 1 to 9 in such a way that a digit does not appear
twice in the same row, or in the same column, or in the
same block. There is a single solution. If it is not the case,
the grid is called “invalid”.
The rules of the game
The rules of the game
For classical sudoku (9 × 9), the smallest known number of
givens that leads to a valid grid is 17. Nobody knows if a
smaller number is possible.
Solving Rules and
Techniques
Basic Techniques
The single position technique
This quite simple technique consists of scanning regions in
order to find not already placed digits. A cell must be
assigned a certain digit, if, because of givens and already
filled cells, there exists only a single position for this digit.
The single position technique
The single position technique
The single candidate technique
Consider here a cell and check the number of candidates
(considering the givens in the already filled cell in the
associate row, column and block). If there is only one
single digit left, the value to be assigned to the cell is
found!
The single candidate technique