DamienF in hospital

Welcome back, you marvelous immortal bastard! :D

Man, this is the ultimate likefarming - just repost Damien's updates on his recovery.

So, Damien, please keep recovering. I need the likes.

Damien gets a custom title now, right?

Immortal Badass. Or something more creative maybe.

Walking Dead
Risen
Back From the Grave
Unstoppable

Bruce Willis.

I think that lawyer still has him beat.

C'mon, another Magister Mundi title? Even "Immortal Badass" is preferable. Or "The Juggernaut." Or "Six Million Dollar Man." You have tons of options here!

Most Unbreakable Broken Forumer, By Far.

Since I can not actually do it, I will do it in text.
/lays down the smoochin' on DamienF 's face and doesn't stop for the next few years

WELCOME BACK SO GLAD YOU'RE ALRIGHT

By the by, don't feel funny about the round, red object thing. It took me a while to think of a cherry tomato. I have not thought of anything else yet.

I'm still waiting on my finger, asshole.

Also grats on being alive and not a vegetable, I approve.

Arby's Most Wanted

Arbysbane should totally be his custom title.

Also Hooray for recovery! One of the few times I've been sad that I no longer live in the DFW area or I would totally visit you with some homemade cookies or something Damien.

I hadn't checked in with this thread for a couple of weeks, and now that I have I'm grinning to the fullest extent that is possible while I'm about to fall asleep at 4am. You're one hell of a trooper, DamienF, and I'm so so glad that recovery has started so well for you.

Happiness is seeing DamienF debate his hardcore right-wing friends on Facebook again :)

Sometimes I think you are me - except I don't know how to drive a train.

For the record, the absurd number of likes my back-home post got apparently got me forum trophies "A Force For Good In This World" and "I LOVE IT." Which is flattering but a little weird at the same time.

Incidentally, on January 16 I somehow drew the "Drunk Posting" trophy, which is super-weird because I'm pretty sure I was still laid up in the hospital at that point without a good internet connection and thus without any ability to post. Oh, and I've been alcohol-free entirely since this all happened. So.....it's confusing.

I am curious which FB thing Anders is reading. I honestly cannot believe in one that I'm having to defend the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Oh, one other thing, I've in the interim gone through all the written notes I got from people, and quite a few more than the one I knew about from Anders arrived. If you sent it, I got it (I'd list em but that stack of papers is a pain to go through...not organized at all). So thanks to you all.

That's the one. It's a bit baffling, to be sure, but I've always appreciated when seeing it go through my feed in the past that you do the important work of taking the time to engage those issues when I'd probably just get worn out in no-time. And seeing you back at it is pretty great :)

OK people, I need your help with rehabilitation. I've managed ok with the puzzles and such they occasionally give me to work out my brain, but today I got destroyed...BY SODUKU.

To be fair, I've never done Soduku before, so part of my time was just figuring the damn thing out. And I understand the rules, and how to eliminate a number from enough squares to find the one it's supposed to be located in. If it's a simple or mid-level problem, I can work it fine.

But they gave me some high-ranking problems, with barely any predefined numbers in the damn puzzle. And although i can get a pretty good amount of numbers filled in, I seem to end up in a place where a fair number of empty squares cannot be correctly filled in because there aren't sufficient eliminations along the row or column or within the sub-square. I figure there's got to be some sort of strategy I'm overlooking. Any tips would be much appreciated and would keep me from screaming in frustration at random nice rehab workers.

Prepare a legal brief explaining why Sudoku as a test of anything other than Sudoku solving is cruel and unusual punishment?

Not really possible, Ozzo. A number is forbidden in a square if it exists anywhere in the square's column, row, or sub-group. Dropping a number in there without eliminating all other possibilities (and making sure the number itself isn't forbidden) creates a big risk of borking up the whole soduku later on, in a way that is horrifically hard to undo. I know, because I did this horrible thing to the first high-difficulty puzzle I worked on.

Tempting, bloo, but unrealistic. These things are both strengthening my brain and evaluating how fast it works (it's a bit slower than it used to be pre-injury right now), so there's value to them. This is also why I'm not gaming the rehab by asking for strategy -- it isn't figuring strategy out that's being measured, it's more like how fast my brain can work through the problem.

If it helps, DamienF, I can't solve a fucking Sudoko puzzle to save my life, and I have never experienced significant head trauma. It seems like one of those skills you either have or you don't. I also sucked at the logic games that were on the LSAT, and they are very Sudoko-like.

Use pencil. Find a binary choice that affects a large number of other rows/columns. Choose one, pencil stuff in, find out you're wrong somewhere down the line, and backtrack, this time knowing the correct thing to put in that slot.

(This brought to you by Bad Ideas Inc.)

Ironically, LSAT-like logic games (the ones with the big checkbox chart as the main strategy) have also been made a part of my rehab. I'm better at those than I am at Soduku, thank God.

A tablet/phone app version is considerably less painful than pen and pencil, at least you know immediately that you've cocked it up.

I tend to take a pattern matching approach and pretty much work methodically through the numbers at the outset. I look for rows at the outset, in either direction, where I have two numbers and look to see if I can match the third. I do pretty quick scans repetitively until I start to fill up the rows and I do tend to think in terms of rows/columns than squares but I'm not averse to looking at grid level.

As lines/squares start to fill up the I move to a slightly different approach. There's always one or two numbers that are either missing completely or not well represented and I tend to if not ignore them then not really concentrate on them too hard but look to try and start completing rows, columns or grids that have the fewest gaps.

I do admit though that I've only been mucking around with it for a couple of weeks and I dare say there's a more optimal approach to it.

I'd say screw Sudoku and request Minesweeper.

Goddamit, Elyscape. If I end up addicted to Sudoku, I'm going to get you!

Looking forward to this. I would have solved for the 6 without any real problems, but placing the 1 is similar to the issue I'm having now. Even in the lower-left grid, it's hard to see how the two squares that 1 would work in get cut down to the winning square.

(I'd assume it's partially by solving for other numbers, my problem is the remaining handful of numbers end up with a similar problem to placing the 1 in the last image you posted without such additional number placements.)

Okay, DamienF, finally those years of wasting time at my job as a vendor rep are going to be utilized!

There are some elimination techniques that take some time to figure out, and unfortunately they don't come to mind because I haven't played sudoku in a few years. I used to be able to solve the highest difficulty without problem though.

If I remember right, a lot of the problem involved pencilling in all of the possibilities in the undiscovered blank spots, and then treating patterns of pencilled in numbers as definitive for the sake of eliminating stuff elsewhere. Lemme see if I can remember my way through this.

From websudoku.com, "evil" difficulty.



So the first thing we want to do is eliminate any obvious ones. On this level, there might not be any. Let's see...
I always start with whatever number is on there the most frequently and work my way down, so that there's less confusion on the board with my pencilled in stuff. 1 is pretty common so I'll start there. Then I'll do 3, 7, 5, 9, 6, 4, 8, 2.

Only two spots for a 1 in the first box, since the 1's to the right of that eliminate the top and bottom rows, and the one below it eliminates the rightmost column. Continuing on, I've got all the possible 1 positions inked in. This program sucks because it only shrinks the numbers when you have more than 1 in there. I would highly recommend pencilling them in small if you are working on paper and only doing large numbers when you have a 100% known entity.



3 is next.



7's.



Hopefully soon we'll see a pattern we can 'solve.' 5's!

AHA! Our first solve!



Having filled in the 5's, we get a "block" in the bottom left cell. This is one of those rules I forgot that you want to look out for - When you have a number in a block and another row in an adjacent block is fully occupied, that leaves exactly one row in that adjacent block that could be used (see 5 - 1,5 - 5 above the 7-9-3). Since that's the only row the 5's can go in, it can work to eliminate that row from the original block, allowing us to put 5 next to the 4.

Now that we know there's a 5 there, we can see if that one eliminates any other cells. It does!



There were only two spots for 5 to go in the left middle block. That means that the 5 below the (A) is the legit 5. That eliminates the middle row from that grouping as an option. With the middle row gone (B), it means that in column (C), there is only 5 viable option for a 5 - In the lower right block.

Result of this collapse:



Finally, some actual progress!

Okay, on to 9's.



We had some good eliminations happen there - Thanks to the bottom blocks, there was only one place for a 9 in the bottom middle block, and that set off a nice chain reaction in tandem with the top row of blocks that let us solve ALL THE 9's! Woot. Time for 6. Taking my own advice, I've added some characters to the things here to keep things shrunk small so I can spot patterns better. This is gonna be more critical soon.



Ooh, 4 is mean. We got a single 4 out of it, but also added a lot of detritus.



8...



Even uglier. I swear we're almost there. Last number. 2!!!! Oh, and I realized I accidentally started pencilling in other numbers besides 9 when I had solved for that in the bottom middle block. Derp.

2 was helpful because the top middle block only has 2 spots for the 2 to go. Both are in its middle column, which means that can work to eliminate 2 as a possibility down that set of blocks. And now we're looking at the partially completed puzzle after having done all the basic eliminations.



Now we can work to apply some logical rules (after triple-checking our work) to create more eliminations.

1) Are there any cells that only have 1 number pencilled in? Verify no other numbers work there, and then ink that baby.
2) Are there any blocks where X number of cells can be one of only X numbers and they're the same? Verify no other numbers work there, and then you can eliminate those X numbers from other pencilled in ones in the same block. If those X cells are vertically or horizontally aligned, you can ALSO eliminate cells in other blocks, since we know that the row or column they form must be unique.
3) Are there any rows or columns across the whole puzzle that share X number of blocks that have only X numbers in them that are the same? Again, verify, but that means you can eliminate other instances of those numbers from the row/column you're looking at.

Using these three methods, we're gonna solve the puzzle.

Starting with rule one, only 1 cell currently has a single number pencilled in - Lower left cell of the upper left block. Looking at the possible numbers that could go there (1,3,7,8), we can verify that neither 1,3, or 8 work in that cell. It has to be 7. Now we can get rid of all the 7's in that block, and that row/column. Here are the results:



Now re-check the cell - Are there any other cells where there is only one option? Sort of - We only have one 3 pencilled in, and we know based on the blocks below that's the only place for the 3. Bam.

I'll do one more elimination. In the upper-right block, we have two cells with 25 in it. We double-check and no other numbers work there. Since those two cells have only two options, 2 and 5 can't be used anywhere else in that square.

Bam. Removing the 2 and 5 leaves 3 and 7 all by themselves. That cascades into 3 more eliminations.



The rest is just following the rules and elimination logic outlined above. Solution is spoilered below. I'm sure you'll get there. This the hardest part, because it can be tough to remember to do eliminations in adjacent columns when you crack a combo.

Holy shit, you nerds.

Fucking hell, I would have trouble with that even if I didn't have traumatic brain injury.