Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
 Best Book for Beginners & Sudoku Lovers March 19, 2008
This initial Su Doku for DUMMIES book ranks as the first and the best book for Sudoku lovers. Hands down, no comparison. My husband and I cut our teeth on its instructions. We collected other books in the process, but we ALWAYS returned to this one. Even the other SUDOKU FOR DUMMIES books don't compare to this volume (I can't explain why this would be true... I just state it).
We have completed this particular volume twice; today I did the last DIABOLICAL Sudoku.
Now, I am about to purchase THE VERY SAME BOOK, AGAIN (that's why I came to this page in AMAZON... to place the order).
This is our first and favorite. It's family. Go figure.
If you want a book that will please you at all levels, START ... AND END ... HERE.
 There's no substitute for experience!! May 8, 2007
The explanations in the book are typical for "Dummies" books, where illustrations of methods accompany written instructions. Both are fairly easily understood even when logic, to me anyway, is a distant "second language." There are 80 "easy" puzzles that help develop skill with solving techniques; they get harder as you go along. Following these are 100 "tricky" puzzles that hone your skills to the point, theoretically, you can solve any Su Doku puzzle. To prove it, the book throws in 40 "tough" puzzles and 20 "diabolical" puzzles. I'm still working through the tricky puzzles and can't even imagine trying to solve the other two categories. Su Doku is entertaining and good exercise for the mind, especially as we grow older. "Dummies" is a good teacher and guide.
 Lots of practice puzzles not much instruction January 15, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I thought this book would provide more tactics on solving but it really has lots of practice puzzles at 3 levels -- from easy to difficult.
 Some serious flaws for a Sudoku Book (for Dummies) November 25, 2006
25 out of 26 found this review helpful
Allow me to explain how messed up are the levels of difficulty of the puzzles in this book.
There are computer programs that let you enter any Sudoku puzzle and then can tell you how hard the puzzle is by classifying it into certain levels of difficulty. A friend of mine who is very good at Sudoku got one such software, and that one uses the following difficulty levels: 1) Very Easy, 2) Easy, 3) Medium, and 4) Hard. There is a separate special level of difficulty called "Very Hard - Unfair", but that's reserved for Sudoku puzzles that require guessing / trial and error.
Sudoku puzzle number 3 in this book, supposedly an "entry level" puzzle according to the book, is ranked as "Medium" by the software mentioned above. Who considers a level of difficulty 3 out of 4 an "entry level"? And I do think these kinds of software have extremely powerful solving engines, making them capable of accurate assessments on the levels of difficulty of any puzzle.
This messed up level of difficulty in such an early exercise can be extremely discouraging for newbies, and on the other hand, in my opinion it is a sympton of little care and very poor editing when putting this book together.
Page 35 of the book (Spanish version) talks about one of the alleged "Beyond the obvious" strategies, a so called "Rule of the three numbers in three cells", or in more standardized terminology found online, the "Hidden Triples" strategy. In my opinion the strategy is very poorly exemplified and explained in the book. Any webpage describing it is much more enlightening and clear. And there are numerous other strategies very carefully explained in several online sources, which are not even mentioned in this book (not even in the Sudoku for Dummies vol 2).
The book has no alphabetical index at the end by the way, so you can't search for strategy names directly, or for key words, and there is a good reason for that: the book has really very little textual information. An alphabetical index would be ridiculous with so few entries. There is only a few pages of text at the beginning, 37 out of 342 pages, Spanish version again. Those text pages basically describe the only rule of Sudoku with some diagrams, and them attempt to explain very few basic solving strategies plus the poorly explained hidden triples. From the 37 first pages remove the first 12 which are mostly contents, intro, etc. So basically, 25 pages of text, in a small format book (7x5 inches). The bulk of the book is just exercises, and their solutions.
This book in general does not match the typical comprehensiveness I've seen in many For Dummies books.
What other reviewer indicates is also true, the paper this book was made of is pretty bad, doesn't stand erasing too well.
Conclusion: NOT recommended. Try other Sudoku books with less faults. And in any case, check the numerous Sudoku resources and compilations of strategies available for free online. This book in my opinion is not worth it. I really regret having purchased it.
Easy puzzles way too difficult October 30, 2006
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I read the full introduction, being new to sudoku. Thought I would have the tools from reading to certainly do the easy puzzles in this book, but found them way too brain-twisting. The puzzles were not a good followup teaching tool as way too difficult. I couldn't believe those puzzles were marked EASY even after reading a lot of these materials.
So I would have to rate this as not a good sudoku book for anyone but more advanced. Just my humble opinion.
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