Some Interesting Alternative Ways to Play Sudoku

Here are two examples of interesting ways to plays Sudoku to make it more challenging. Force yourself to remember parts of the puzzle entirely through the game play. I prefer to play online at Web Sudoku

The Vast Empty Middle

Sometimes there are no numbers in the middle square when playing at the hardest level. An interesting way to play this game is to NOT record any plays to the middle square, but force yourself to remember any solved locations within the middle square for the entire puzzle play. You then wind up with a final solution that looks something like this:

You can check your work to make sure that the 8/9ths solution is correct, notice the message "Everything is OK, you have 9 to go!"

A Number is Missing

Sometimes playing at the hardest level will give you a puzzle with one of the numbers not appearing in the initial puzzle. So in this case I play forcing myself to remember the location of that number for the entire game play. This example has the number 6 missing. I have included several screen shots that show the play progression; the progression is left, right, top down.