until I tried to feed my spreadsheet with another puzzle and failed again. When I finally managed to get the tool working, it was a relief. Not only was I slower but also the first version of the solver did not find all the numbers. The whole thing started on a Saturday night when I naively bet my partner that I would solve a puzzle with an easy spreadsheet calculation faster than him doing it manually. One feature of the solver I personally find very special: it was created by me. The solver is purely a combination of spreadsheets and formulas no macros or VBA code is used. The implementation does not employ any brute force calculations and is based on various logical techniques that exclude impossible options (with funny names like "swordfish", "skyscraper" or "x-wing") so you can basically trace back how to solve the puzzle as a human. It can solve the puzzles from a 2 Euro booklet, and "Expert"-level puzzles from specialized online resources and even some of the extremely difficult human-constructed Sudoku like this one. My solver is also not unique you can find many other versions on the internet, including those implemented with Excel.īut still, the solver does its job. It contains extremely long formulas that would be difficult to understand and maintain later. It requires a few manual inputs to push calculation to the next iteration. Sudoku is a popular puzzle that you solve by arranging numbers from 1 to 9 into a 9x9 grid so that every row, column, and 3x3 block contains all the numbers. Today I have finished an Excel-based Sudoku Solver.
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