Kevin Schmidt's Blog

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Today

I'm a big fan of the comic strip FoxTrot and today's strip is classic.

In it, Jason (the geeky youngest child) creates his own Sudoku game where instead of having numeric clues to start, the clues are various different math problems. There are square roots, cube roots, numbers in base 2 and hexadecimal, summations, integrals, and more. His sister aptly calls it "Sudorku".

Well, being a huge Sudoku fan and a bit of a geek myself, I had to try to solve it. First, I got to do all the math and dust off a little of gray matter that hadn't seen the light of day in a while (product management doesn't require integrals very often :)). Then it was a pretty straight forward Sudoku solution of medium to hard difficulty.

I've also recently started doing Killer Sudoku which adds a new twist to things. There are actually a few different variations, one that starts with no starting numbers as clues, but instead adjacent cells are grouped and a sum of those cells is indicated. In another there are no numbers at all and instead cells within a 3x3 box have a > or < between them indicating whether the values is greater or less than each other. And then they have a combination of the two.

Try them and have fun!

Comments:

can you post your solution for the sudorku puzzle? i banged my head yesterday trying to figure it out and must have something off. this is the only place on the internet i've read someone solving it. thanks!!

Posted by jj on October 16, 2006 at 12:46 PM PDT #

yeah if you could post the solution to the "sudorku" puzzle, that'd be great. i was wondering what some of it ment.

Posted by kay on October 16, 2006 at 04:14 PM PDT #

found it :) http://blogs.sun.com/dlacher/resource/ft061015-solved.gif

Posted by jj on October 16, 2006 at 04:45 PM PDT #

Yep, the solutions is:

1 7 3 8 9 2 6 4 5
9 8 6 4 5 3 2 1 7
4 5 2 6 1 7 9 3 8
8 4 1 2 7 5 3 6 9
7 6 5 9 3 4 8 2 1
3 2 9 1 8 6 7 5 4
5 9 7 3 6 1 4 8 2
6 1 4 7 2 8 5 9 3
2 3 8 5 4 9 1 7 6

Posted by Kevin on October 16, 2006 at 11:23 PM PDT #

Help! I need help with the math. Solving a sudoku is the easy part. It's derivatives and integrals I can't pull out of my head. And FF-F8? Huh?

Posted by RosieKG on October 17, 2006 at 08:23 AM PDT #

FF-F8 is hexadecimal (base 16) subtraction. F is 15 so 15-8 is 7.

The integral can be done by taking the difference of 1/3*x^3 between the 1 and 2 and multiplying that by 3. This is also 7.

-(i^2) is 1 because i is sqrt(-1) so squaring it is -1 and the negative is 1.

Posted by Kevin on October 17, 2006 at 10:18 PM PDT #

Hey, I'm in 8th grade and my teacher is making me do this 'sudorku' puzzle with some of my friends and I. We are confused on the -(2*2) thingy at the bottom square. Can someone help? Thanks.

Posted by Younngin' on October 19, 2006 at 01:56 PM PDT #

It is not -(2*2) rather that is an "i" which represents the sqrt of -1.

So, it is:
-sqrt(-1)^2

which would be 1.

Posted by Kevin on October 19, 2006 at 02:08 PM PDT #

Hey Younngin', that bottom square really bugged me. It's not -(2^2) Instead it is - (i^2) i is the sqaure root of negative one. It looks like a 2.

Posted by Math Booger on October 19, 2006 at 02:11 PM PDT #

thanks you helped me get extra credit in a class! i didnt have to do anywork. now i g2g to class.

Posted by Mr.Man on October 20, 2006 at 07:48 AM PDT #

Thanks alot.

Posted by Younngin' on October 21, 2006 at 03:41 PM PDT #

umm i have no idea what all these symbols mean please explain!

Posted by 68.89.166.119 on October 22, 2006 at 11:09 AM PDT #

what is 0110 in the bottom left box mean?

Posted by 68.89.166.119 on October 22, 2006 at 11:10 AM PDT #

on sin pi/2 what does sin mean? because pi divided by = 1.57 HELP!

Posted by 68.89.166.119 on October 22, 2006 at 11:25 AM PDT #

0110 is 6 in base 2 (binary). From the right, the values of the columns are the number of "1", "2", and "4" so there is a 2 and a 4 so 6.

"sin" is the trig function and the sin of pi/2 is 1.

Posted by Kevin on October 22, 2006 at 02:27 PM PDT #