Life Lessons from Sudoku

For a number of years my morning mental warm up has been the solving of a sudoku puzzle. This started when The Times started publishing a daily puzzle and has carried on since. Some people do the crossword or other puzzles, but I find I enjoy the Sudoku. I go for the hardest one on offer and 95%+ of the time I  solve it within 10-15, ie about once a month I get stumped.

I should say this is not an addiction, ie if I don't do it in the morning I don't experience loss or withdrawal, and it is not an obsession, ie if I make a mistake (which I occassionally do) I don't beat myself up or indeed keep trying. On weekdays the limit of time I will devote to this is the length of my train journey - around 25 minutes and at weekends it depends what else is going on.

Overtime I have developed a number of solving techniques (and tried to teach my mother-in-law some of them!) I have found myself reflecting on some of the less obvious aspects that then have a parallel for real life. In this blog I am not providing a detailed "how to" guide for solving sudokus, but rather extracting some wider lessons.

In Sudoku there are the simple elimination techniques that are used for simpler puzzles where there is almost always at least one square where only one number can be put. Looking for this and the repeating the search is the basic way, but is not enough. Instead I find myself following these techniques

Play what you see

This is my first step. It would be easy to look at "1" first, then "2", and so on, but I have learnt(?) not to do that. I first look at the information/picture presented and I start filling in what I see, whether it be "9", or "3" or "7". I look initially for either squares where a specific number will go or pairs of squares within a block or line where a number could go.

I do this until I can see no more, at least not just by looking.

Lesson for life: Be agile and able to play what you see in front of you, and not be a slave to dogma.

Time for a little discipline

Having "felt" for early solutions I then, start looking at each number one by one. I don't always start with "1" and move up, but I do make sure that I scan each number to see if I can spot any other easy opportunities that I may have missed during the first step.

I will usually go around the set of numbers twice as the pieces of the puzzle I complete the first time around, may provide additional solutions the second time.

Lesson for life: There is certainly a place for discipline and it should be respected and embraced, but only so far as it is useful

Make the most of the latest number

As a more general comment I have noticed that many players will find a place for a number and then go looking for another, usually different number. My tip is having put a number in to then look again at the opportunities for that same number elsewhere, you may have created another certain solution. So if I put in a "2", then I will look again a "2"s elsewhere and only move to a different number when I see no more answers for "2".

Lesson for life: Make sure you take as much value from the information and opportunities you currently possess, before seeking something new opennings just for the sake of it.

Look, don't count

When I see an nearly yet incomplete line or block, it is very easy to start counting from 1 to 9 and seeing what is missing. This will get you the answer, but is not always the quickest. Like speed reading I have trained my eyes to almost defocus and just see a block and and "recognise" what is missing. This works best when one is missing just a few numbers, and can be a lot quicker. Of course it doesn't always come to me with a glance so sometimes I will go back and check the numbers off individually if I need to - the trick is knowing when to do that.

Lesson for life: You can often train yourself to get good answers, from knowing when to  look at the bigger picture and not always building up from the detail.

The value of combinations

As you get to more difficult puzzles, there comes a point when you cannot locate a specific square for a single specfic number. Instead what you will find are two squares where two numbers could go, or three squares where a set of three numbers can go. While you have not yet fully solved these squares, they are effectively elminated when looking to solve numbers outside of the set of two or three numbers involved. This knowledge can often provide the insight to provide a solution for another number.

Lesson for life: Things are not always simple, or fully known, but with good awareness you can often eliminate a set of options, and simplify other parts of a problem. You don't always need precison.

Positive negatives

One of the insights that combinations can give is knowledge of where other numbers cannot go. This is worth remembering that sometimes there is as much value in knowing where things cannot go as there is in knowing where they can go. This does not always come from combinations.

Lesson for life: Make sure not to lose valuable information as you solve problems, positive negatives can be as valuable as positive positives.

Don't take it too seriously!

Sudoku is only a game that I use to warm my brain up. If other aspects of life demand my time, sudoku can be put aside. If I fail to completely solve a puzzle then it is not the end of the world. I will have achieved my main aim of a mental warm up anyway, just by trying. I will be back the next day, but meantime I have a life to live!!!

Lesson for life: Few things are a matter of life or death, so keep a perspective and remember to take away the positives.