About puzzleNpastimes.com

How I got interested in puzzles—and sudoku!

My name is Prakash. I’ve been interested in puzzles ever since I was a young boy.  That was when I read a series of articles on how to do cryptic crosswords which had appeared in the children’s section of a popular magazine.

I was hooked! And the last page of the newspaper which featured a daily cryptic became my favourite page.

Since then, I’ve done many different kinds of puzzles. Sometime in the nineties, sudoku puzzles started appearing in the newspapers. They soon became my favourite.

In the beginning I was completely at sea trying to do a sudoku. Putting in a number in one place seemed to change everything elsewhere, and it seemed hopeless. Then I learned the basics such as the scanning technique, the three-digit technique, and I was on my way.

There is plenty that Sudoku still has to offer. There are over 6 sextillion (6 followed by 21 zeroes) sudoku puzzles possible—that’s more than six times the estimated number of stars in the universe! No-one is going to exhaust the supply of Sudoku puzzles anytime soon.

There are many levels of difficulty in Sudoku. How difficult a puzzle is depends on how advanced a technique you have to use to complete it. If you don’t know the technique needed, it can seem like you’ve come up against a brick wall, with no way forward in sight.

That’s actually a good sign because it means you’re going to learn something new. There’ll be an exhaustive tutorial soon on this site, so you can come back whenever you’re stuck to help you find your way out.