The SuDoku Tutor 3i
By : Jalaj P. Jha


My local newspaper publisher had been featuring daily SuDoku puzzles for more than a year, but I never tried until recently, and since then my day starts with SuDoku. I am yet to solve the toughest SuDoku puzzles for want of guidance in places I get stuck. The SuDoku solver sites available on the net were of no use as guide as they just show up the result but not the steps taken to achive those... This made me start developing a software which could act as a tutor and assist when required in solving the problem ahead... and the result of which was the "SuDoku Tutor" software developed using Excel/VBA.Next came version 2 with modifications as the detail line and adding more logical ways that enabled to solve SuDoku puzzles that earlier version failed to solve...

Many SuDoku aspirants mailed me back that they don't have access to Microsoft Excel and hence the software was of no use to them. This led to rewriting of the software in HyperText/VBScript to enable running it in Internet Explorer. This was version 2i...

The latest version, as of now, the "SuDoku Tutor 3i" has capabilities to solve "Jigsaw SuDoku Puzzles" too.

The software is still under development and the next version will come up with increased performance, Interface to design Jigsaw puzzle and more ...

Rules for Solving SuDuku : A typical SuDoku puzzle is a 9x9 grid which is further subdivided into 9 'Regions' of 3x3 each. The grid is required to be filled with numbers from 1-9 such that none of the digit is repeated in a region or the horizontal or vertical line. To start with the grid comes with few numbers already filled in and are termed as 'Given'. The remaining grid is to be filled using logical reasoning. Filling with mere guesses may lead to a dead stop with blanks where no digit is eligible to be placed.

The procedure for solving the puzzle which is applied in the software is same as that which should be