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Masyu, also known as Pearls, is an NP-complete logic puzzle created by the makers of Sudoku. Brandon McPhail provides a few free puzzles to get your feet wet on his web site (Java applet). Once you've mastered those, UCLICK Games offers a free daily puzzle (Flash) with the past month of archives available too. [more inside]
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis on Jan 18, 2012 - 28 comments

FFF! Sudoku Combat - race head to head to complete the grid. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Dec 17, 2010 - 5 comments

Since 1980, Nikoli^{^} has been in the business of creating many different variations of logic puzzles (such as the very popular Sudoku and Kakuro). Unfortunately, as they're stationed in Tokyo, their magazine is unavailable to most Americans.

Luckily, over the decades they've inspired quite a few people to make their own puzzles and variants, including:

• The Art of Puzzles, by Thomas Snyder (updated weekly, plus bonuses)
• A Cleverly-Titled Logic Puzzle Blog, by Grant Fikes (updated several times a week)
• Melon's Puzzles, by Palmer Mebane (updated daily)
• Detuned Radio, by Tom Collyer (updated weekly)

posted by flatluigi on Feb 17, 2010 - 12 comments

Open Letter to the Sudoku community and the organizers of the Sudoku National Championship about the potential cheating of Eugene Varshavsky during this Saturday's tournament. An unknown "man in a hoodie" shows up late and unregistered to the 2009 Sudoku National Championship in Philadelphia, and wins third place despite skipping the first two rounds. Second-place finisher and 2007 World Champion Tom Snyder accuses him of having a radio transmitter concealed underneath the hood, feeding him computer-generated solutions. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Varshavsky, wearing a stocking cap, defeated a grandmaster in the 2006 World Open chess tournament. Has competitive puzzling lost its innocence?
posted by escabeche on Nov 15, 2009 - 97 comments

We all love Sudoku, and we like to play it. But now there is KenKen, a new version that includes simple mathematical equations. [previously in MeFi]
posted by dov3 on Mar 27, 2009 - 39 comments

Surviving Sudoku. Matt Gaffney, a crossword puzzle designer, examines the crossword community's ambivalent relationship with the phenomenally successful number puzzle. Meanwhile, it's high time to resurrect Done in Pen: The Poems of New York Times Puzzle Editor Will Shortz.
posted by staggernation on Aug 2, 2006 - 39 comments

Minimum Sudoku. It is believed (though not proven) that the minimum number of entries in a Sudoku grid that will lead to a unique solution is 17. Gordon Royle of the University of Western Australia has collected 36,628 "minimum Sudoku" grids. Additional reading: an article in American Scientist on determining the difficulty of a Sudoku problem; Wikipedia article on the mathematics of Sudoku; the Sudoku Programmers' Forum on Sudoku mathematics.
posted by Prospero on Jul 19, 2006 - 29 comments

Sudoku Combat. Sudoku, head to head style. The stress mounts as your challenger's board blinks and fills. Bring it on.
posted by jonah on Jul 8, 2006 - 20 comments

It's Friday, waste some time: Iron Sudoku, a daily sudoku challenge from the makers of Babble. (Free) registration required.
posted by sellout on Mar 31, 2006 - 15 comments

For those who tire of the usual paper and pencil-based puzzle, try Websudoku.
posted by Rothko on Nov 10, 2005 - 42 comments

The puzzle that ate the world?! It's called Su Doku. It came from Japan. It's deceptively simple, but a brief tutorial reveals hidden depths. It's spreading like gangbusters through the puzzle-obsessed British public, where it is making major news and being rapidly added to the country's newspapers. Fortunately, archived puzzles and free software are out there to provide puzzle addicts their latest fix. C'mon... give it a try. It's only *one* little puzzle. (Heh, heh.)
posted by insomnia_lj on May 10, 2005 - 30 comments

Su Doku. Fill in the grid so that every row, every column, and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9. That's all there is to it. It doesn't sound like much, but it's as addictive as hell. The Times is one publication with a daily puzzle (may be unavailable to overseas readers.) There a tuturial and sample puzzle here (flash).
posted by salmacis on Dec 10, 2004 - 6 comments