FINALLY A PRACTICAL USE FOR SUDOKU — by Steve Nadis
[Author's note: I know this is supposed to be a volleyball blog but at times it seems more like a handball blog and at other times more like a sudoku blog. The following post falls into the latter category.] I have worried that sudoku, which has taken over my life, has become a major time waster. But now I find it’s good for something after all. This is just in from June/July Notices of the American Mathematical Society: In an article called “Sudoku Squares and Chromatic Polynomials”, Agnes M. Herzberg and M. Ram Murty “use tools from the branch of mathematics called graph theory to systematically analyze Sudoku puzzles. They also find that analyzing Sudokus leads to some unsolved problems in graph theory.”
So do not despair sudoku addicts. Your thankless efforts might someday shed light on previously impenetrable quandaries in graph theory.
Posted by in 14:51:30
For everybody who wants to try out something new in sudoku, try shendoku, using the sudoku rules but playing two people, one against the other, like battleshipps. They have a free version to download at http://www.shendoku.com/sample.pdf . Anything else they are bringing out or they are working on you can find at http://www.shendoku.com or at they´r blog http://www.shendoku.blogspot.com . Have fun, I am. I specially like one slogan I heard about Shendoku: SUDOKU is like masturbation (one person)…. SHENDOKU is like sex (it takes two).