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Games

SueCenter has four games found in the Cmd popup. Everyone needs to play, right?

Bounce is a display (not really a game) of bouncing balls. You can modify the number of balls, their size, and speed. Do you prefer few, big and slow or many, fast and small?

Match is a memory game where you find matching pairs of words, colors, and sounds. Note that you cannot have both sounds and spoken words. 20 seconds of inactivity will abort a game.

UnScram is a word unscrambling game like Jumble in the newspaper. The Reset command will take back letters you've tried - repeating, if you wish, until all are taken back. Once the word is solved Reset will present you with a new word. The Scramble command will shuffle the letters around to hopefully give you a new perspective. If you unscramble the letters to an anagram of the correct word a congratulatory sound will be played but the puzzle is not yet solved.

Sudoku is the popular number placing puzzle. If Match and UnScram have become too easy for you Sudoku will present a challenge!

You are presented with 9 puzzles in each of 3 levels: Easy, Medium, and Difficult. Choose one to begin a game. Choose Done to return to the main screen.

Choose a square (that has not been pre-set) and a window will pop up nearby with the numbers 1 through 9. Select a number and it will be placed in the chosen square. If you decide you don't want to choose a number for the square you can either choose the same square again (to cancel) or choose a different square.

At the bottom are 3 commands:

Stop - Return to the choice of puzzle.

Assist - 3 levels of help.

Suspend - Suspend all activity until you choose Resume.

Assist level 0 provides no help at all.

Assist level 1 shows you which numbers would be allowed given what other numbers have been placed.

Assist level 2 colors wrong numbers in red.

In the puzzle choice dialog the 27 puzzles are marked as solved, in-process, or not yet chosen. You can begin the puzzles all over again by entering "RESET SUDOKU" in the message area and choosing "Go".

There are various techniques for solving Sudoku puzzles.

Below is presented a systematic Sudoku strategy that is sufficient to solve all the puzzles presented in Sue Center.

Singletons are squares in which only one number can be legally placed. In Easy #1 row 8, column 6 (denoted [8,6]) is a singleton where 3 is the only legal number. Assist level 1 helps a great deal to find these squares. Placing the correct number in a singleton square may create other singleton squares. All Easy puzzles can be solved by simply finding Singleton squares.

Lone Rangers - When you run out of Singletons you can look for what some call Lone Rangers. Look at puzzle Medium #1. There are 6 Singletons to be placed after which there are no more to be found. Look at the 5 empty squares in row 1. None of them are singletons but column 1 is the only square where a 6 can validly be placed. It is a 'lone ranger'. Lone rangers can occur in rows, columns or boxes. All Medium puzzles (and most Difficult ones) can be solved by finding Singletons and Lone Rangers.

Twin Pairs are two squares (in a row, column or box) that permit only two numbers. These two numbers can be eliminated from other squares thereby simplifying the puzzle. Solving Difficult #4 requires the finding of twin pairs. After all singletons and lone rangers are placed look at squares [8,4] and [8,5]. Since only 2 and 3 are permitted in these squares they can be eliminated from [8,1] and [8,3].

Happy Sudoku!