This popular Japanese number puzzle has just one easy rule:
In every Row, every Column and every 3x3 sub-grid, all the numbers from 1 to 9 should appear, but only once in each row, column and sub-grid.
+------+-------+------+
| 0 0 0 | 7 0 0 | 4 0 0 |
| 0 3 0 | 0 9 0 | 0 2 0 |
| 4 0 0 | 0 0 5 | 0 0 0 |
+------+-------+------+
| 0 0 8 | 0 0 0 | 0 0 5 |
| 0 9 0 | 0 3 0 | 0 7 0 |
| 6 0 0 | 0 0 0 | 3 0 0 |
+------+-------+------+
| 0 0 0 | 4 0 0 | 0 0 6 |
| 0 7 0 | 0 2 0 | 0 9 0 |
| 0 0 5 | 0 0 8 | 0 0 0 |
+------+-------+------+
Replace the 0's with the digits required to satisfy the rule.
Thanks, Hugo, for a fun one--I rated it a 5.
Nikki, nice job on your manual solution. I actually tried to solve it that way, but ran out of patience after deducing 3 squares and staring at the remainder for an hour.
The programming exercise was fun...it was an eye-opener for me to see how fast VB.Net is, compared to the older Microsoft Basic languages. Compiling to native code certainly makes a difference. Thanks to Penny and Charlie for the feedback.
Ken
Thanks...
