(Quotes are paraphrased.)

Firstly, define Sudoku

Apologies: I foolishly assumed that anybody likely to be interested in this sort of problem would have heard of them. See the Wikipedia entry for lots of information about them.

Secondly, don't restrict the algorithm

I specifically did not restrict the algorithm that could be chosen. What I am personally interested in is golf approaches to "discovering the numbers when you don't already know them", but last time someone tried to express that as an imposition it led to a lot of discussion and some bad feeling. So I tried to find a different approach.

I'm hoping people will try different algorithms, but while I will applaud the artistry of any good solution I will look with more interest at the science of those that do not encode the answers as a priori knowledge.

What's with the silly verification stuff?

I provided the md5 checksum so that someone who didn't want to spoil themselves by looking at my implementation could verify that they were producing the right set of numbers. I provided some digits at either end to remove any doubt about the format of the string. If you want the full list, you'll find it as A109252 in the OEIS.

Why the arbitrary line length restriction?

I was expecting long lines, and was worried that it would be rude to impose such on the Monastery. Maybe that was foolish, since any entries will likely be in code tags and spoiler tags. I'll take the restriction out.

Thanks for the comments,

Hugo

In reply to Re^2: a couple of rounds of golf for the weekend by hv
in thread a couple of rounds of golf for the weekend by hv

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.