Consider the plight of the new reader of sysudoku.com.  Maybe it’s you.  It looks interesting, but this is a party that’s been going on for more than two years.  You need to talk with somebody who’s been there the whole time, and can tell you what’s going on, and what the words and symbols mean.  Let’s pause to do something about that.

The informants that have obviously been at the party for a long time are the pages.  I’ve recently been editing the pages to be sure they are up to date and can guide the new reader accurately.  Also, and this is tough,  I want to avoid further overwhelming the new reader.   The idea here is to make the reference role of the pages very effective.  The pages are there to come back to, not to master immediately.

So here’s what I’ve done on the pages.

The Beginners page was revised slightly to focus on Sudoku beginners, rather than beginning Systematic Sudoku  readers.  Basic marking moves are illustrated, with basic logic concepts covered lightly and hopefully, just enough to support the illustrations.

The glossary, Sysudoku Speak, was updated with advanced and extreme solving terms.

The procedural map, Order of Battle,  was updated to include pattern slicing, Sue de Coq confirmation trials and other trials.

The Solving Tools page has a new title, sections were added on X-panels and trace text boxes.

A section was added to the About page to describe the theme of the blog and its main components

For the new reader, browsing the pages is a natural way to find out who to ask for what, but then, a newbie needs to start through the posts from the beginning, skimming and analyzing as necessary. Considering that, I edited the first two posts to reflect what the blog has actually done, rather than what it was originally intended to do. I’m not trying to revise history, but will continue to edit posts to be more accurate on the implications of what is being revealed, according to my experience since.

Getting on to what’s next, we’re not here to hunt monsters full time, and I know that tracking them down is not what many consider to be recreation.  So let’s give it a rest and do another puzzle collection review.  This time it’s a small, hand held, spiral bound puzzle book entitled Sudoku vol. 3. I bought my copy on Amazon.com a while back, and have taken it along on airline travels.

I’m going to start the review with the basic solving of an Expert puzzle, which like many vol. 3 Experts,  I messed up while solving in the airport. With a more careful effort, with supporting office software and tracing, I was successful, and I think I know why I messed up so many of these.  Perhaps you’d like to know.  Anyway, how about trying the basic solving of Pitkow’s Expert 2 for next time.  I’ll checkpoint you with a revealing 2-D trace, about the only kind I do anymore.