Related papers: The mathematics of Septoku
We investigate a type of a Sudoku variant called Sudo-Kurve, which allows bent rows and columns, and develop a new, yet equivalent, variant we call a Sudo-Cube. We examine the total number of distinct solution grids for this type with or…
It has been shown that any 9 by 9 Sudoku puzzle must contain at least 17 clues to have a unique solution. This paper investigates the more specific question: given a particular completed Sudoku grid, what is the minimum number of clues in…
The sudoku minimum number of clues problem is the following question: what is the smallest number of clues that a sudoku puzzle can have? For several years it had been conjectured that the answer is 17. We have performed an exhaustive…
This article describes how to solve Sudoku puzzles using Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO). To this end, a QUBO instance with 729 variables is constructed, encoding a Sudoku grid with all constraints in place, which is then…
Sudoku is a famous logic puzzle where the player has to fill a number between 1 and 9 into each empty cell of a $9 \times 9$ grid such that every number appears exactly once in each row, each column, and each $3 \times 3$ block. In 2020,…
A symmetry group for Sudoku is complete if its action partitions the set of Sudoku boards into all possible orbits, and minimal if no group of smaller size would do the same. Previously, for a 4 x 4 Sudoku variation known as Shidoku, the…
Over the last decade, Sudoku, a combinatorial number-placement puzzle, has become a favorite pastimes of many all around the world. In this puzzle, the task is to complete a partially filled $9 \times 9$ square with numbers 1 through 9,…
This paper deals with a generalized Sudoku problem and investigates the unicity of a given solution. We introduce constraint sets, which is a generalization of the rows, columns and blocks of a classical Sudoku puzzle. The unicity property…
The rules of Sudoku are often specified using twenty seven \texttt{all\_different} constraints, referred to as the {\em big} \mrules. Using graphical proofs and exploratory logic programming, the following main and new result is obtained:…
Calculations of the number of equivalence classes of Sudoku boards has to this point been done only with the aid of a computer, in part because of the unnecessarily large symmetry group used to form the classes. In particular, the…
Solving Sudoku puzzles is one of the most popular pastimes in the world. Puzzles range in difficulty from easy to very challenging; the hardest puzzles tend to have the most empty cells. The current paper explains and compares three…
Sudoku grids can be thought of as graphs where the vertices are the squares of the grid, and edges join vertices in the same row, column, or sub-grid. A Sudoku puzzle corresponds to a partial proper coloring of the Sudoku graph. We provide…
In this paper we provide a formalism, Sudoku logic, in which a solution is logically deducible if for every cell of the grid we can provably exclude all but a single option. We prove that the deductive system of Sudoku logic is sound and…
This paper presents a novel construction method for symmetric Sudoku-type games based on Lee distance perfect codes and diameter perfect codes. The proposed method utilizes the tiling property of these codes to define the structure of the…
A Sudoku puzzle often has a regular pattern in the arrangement of initial digits and it is typically made solvable with known solving techniques, called strategies. In this paper, we consider the problem of generating such Sudoku instances.…
Su-Doku, a popular combinatorial puzzle, provides an excellent testbench for heuristic explorations. Several interesting questions arise from its deceptively simple set of rules. How many distinct Su-Doku grids are there? How to find a…
We explore the capabilities of physical computing with Oscillatory Neural Networks (ONN) to solve combinatorial optimization problems. To solve Sudokus with ONNs, we define a novel mapping strategy that utilizes the unique characteristics…
Sudoku is a popular combinatorial puzzle. A new method of solving Sudoku is presented, which involves formulating a puzzle as a special type of transportation problem. This model allows one to solve puzzles with more than one solution,…
The mathematical aspects of the popular logic game Sudoku incorporate a significant number of the group theory concepts. In this note, we describe all symmetric transformations of the Sudoku grid. We do not intend to obtain a new strategy…
A free-form Sudoku puzzle is a square arrangement of m times m cells such that the cells are partitioned into m subsets (called blocks) of equal cardinality. The goal of the puzzle is to place integers 1,...,m in the cells such that the…