The Hindu : Front Page : Now, Colour Sudoku excitement is here

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Wednesday, Dec 19, 2007
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Now, Colour Sudoku excitement is here

London: Now you can try out a colourful and easier version of the solitary number game of Sudoku. A doctoral student at the University of Warrick in Britain has invented the Colour Sudoku while doing a study on how to use computers to show the complicated alternatives on offer to help solve a complicated problem.

“This spin-out from research seems to have caught the imagination of those already caught up with the Sudoku craze. This was the application that people got most excited about,” the Daily Telegraph quoted inventor Antony Harfield as saying.

Colour Sudoku adds a new dimension to the game by assigning a colour to each digit, taking advantage of how the human eye is quick to absorb information about colour and patterns.

Squares containing a digit are coloured according to the digit’s colour but the clever part comes with the colours assigned to empty squares. “If you look at the whole grid, the darker areas have fewer combinations, so to focus on them is a good strategy,” Mr. Harfield explained.

They are coloured according to which digits are possible for that square, taking into account all current entries in the square’s row, column and region, so an empty square’s colour is the combination of the colours assigned to each possible digit. Thus an empty square that has the same colour as a completed square must contain the same digit and empty squares of the same hue have the same spectrum of potential numbers on offer, according to him.

Players can gain additional clues by using the computer to vary the colour assigned to the each digit and watching the unfolding changes in the pattern of colours. And, if a black square is encountered, then a mistake has been made, again helping to focus the mind of the player on the puzzle. — PTI

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