Sudoku and Dion Cube Solvers

Sudoku is one of those phenomena's that jumped up and taken the world by storm. Most people like the challenge of solving such a riveting logical problem. Others think its just annoying craze that like the 'Crazy Frog' ring tone will die out in a couple of months.

I wrote the above paragraph about 5 months ago and thank the Lord that the 'Crazy Frog' ring tone is pretty well dead and buried. But not Sudoku, my brother and sister still when they have the chance sit down with the daily paper and work through them. I have notice recently that you can download daily puzzles onto your mobile phone (for a mere AUS $6~) and solve them while you take the bus to work.

Sudoku has expanded into several different types of puzzles. I have seen 12x12 sudoku puzzles, the Dion cube puzzle and for the past several months our state paper have been running Samurai Sudokus, which I will explain later.

Whether you like them or not, the puzzles do make some interesting programming work trying to create a program that solves them. My program at the moment is no where as near as sophisticated as some other programs that are available to solve sudoku, but they do provide a good frame work to expand to other different forms of sudoku puzzles.

Click here to find out more about Sudoku.

Sick of the Crazy Frog? Give this a go.

Here is a working version of the program in a GUI INTERFACE (a rarity for me) that solves the problems using a mixture of logic and brute force. There are two java files GUISolveSudoku.java and CannotCompleteSuduko.java. GUISolveSudoku.java is the main execution files while CannotCompleteSuduko.java is an error class.

GUISolveSudoku.java | CannotCompleteSuduko.java

I'm not sure how successful this program is in all situations. Don't get me wrong, it works and so far there has not been a problem that I could not solve with it. But there must be some instances where the initial Sudoku is valid but there is no possible way to complete it. I hope my error throwing and catching can cover this instance,

A Dion Cube is a 3D Sudoku puzzle available from www.sudoku.co.uk. People who do not like Sudoku would look at the puzzle and say, 'Why would you bother?'

This time I would agree, way too complex for someone who has enough problems keeping his mind focus on a normal Sudoku puzzle while watching the 'Simpsons.'

My friend gave my the puzzle in PDF format and I made a program so I would not have to use my brain to solve the Dion problem and any future one.

SolveDino2.java | CannotCompleteSuduko.java

The program is just a skeleton, I have not yet made a nice user interface to it yet. You have to put the initial numbers in by hand and then compile and run the program. Next project to complete...