Here we savor one more basic solving 5-star gem by Dave Green, appearing in my paper, the Akron Beacon Journal, October 19, 2014.

My plan was to conclude the Dave Green portion of the Sysudoku basic solving clinic with the white knuckle 6/19/14 offering of the previous post. But a writing pen encounter with the newsprint version of Green 10/19 had me believing this one was going to escape Dave’s controlled delivery and get into advanced territory. A careful PowerPoint solving session brought relief, and was very entertaining, so I squeezed it into the blog schedule.

The checkpoints of the Green puzzles represents very well my current thinking on basic solving, including the latest innovation in the basic clinic. If you are a new reader, I recommend you work through the early posts on basic solving, then follow traces of the clinic, catching up on advanced solving later.

My dublex bypass took respectable advantage of Dave’s four “wells” in 10/19.

The DB clues speeded up the very productive box marking.

Line marking is tough, starting at 4 free cells and going to 7 at r8, when . . .

a naked quad triggers the collapse.

So here’s to Dave. Maybe someday I’ll review his 6-stars or higher. Right now, I want to continue the Sysudoku basic solving clinic by reviewing a collection of New York Post puzzles by Wayne Gould, the well known composer. Wayne made some intemperate remarks about pencil marking in his Train Your Brain Su Doku Fiendish Edition. I’m going to do what I can to refute them, as I review this collection.

You can get a jump on the review by tackling one of his “fiendish” puzzles, # 85. Before box marking, I’m going to do as Wayne suggests, and find as many clues as I reasonably can with no pencil marks( NPM).

NPM is very close to the recently introduced sublex bypass, excepting only that the naked pairs are remembered, not written. Try it NPM, and I’ll back you up with checkpoint tracing. As in the bypass, I won’t be listing NPM effects in separate lists by number.

There’s always a chance we might learn something new, don’t you think?