Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Hashiwokakero, or Bridges, is a sudoku-like logic puzzle in which you have to connect all the islands with the number of bridges specified on each island. They have to go in straight horizontal or vertical lines, and you get a maximum of two bridges between any two islands. The solution must also be connected; that is, there has to be a path over the bridges from any island to any other island. For a sample solution, see the FAQ.

You create a bridge by clicking on one island and dragging to another, and a second bridge the same way. If you try to do a third bridge, you go back to zero bridges. You don’t actually have to drag all the way to the second island, just a little ways in one of the four possible directions. Click the Ready button to check your progress.

Now you’re addicted, too!

I missed this back in November, but here’s the world’s hardest sudoku, and an article from USA Today about its creation.

Sudoku has come to the iPod! You can pick it up in the iTunes store, if you have a 5th-generation iPod. Those of us with nanos are out of luck.

It doesn’t do nonomino sudokus anyway, so I’m not bitter. Really.

Thanks to Stephen Lang for reminding me that Futoshiki was coming back. He has the latest puzzle from the Guardian up in his blog.

If you liked that one, justplayfreegames.com has a google module and a printable page of six random futoshiki. Uniqueness of solutions is not guaranteed. DoFutoshiki.com guarantees uniqueness.

The sudoku of the day is greater-than sudoku, where you get no clues; instead, every box is marked greater-than or less-than its neighbors. If you need more than the ten at the link above, Killer Sudoku Online has a weekly greater-than sudoku. The greater-thans I’ve tried so far have been less challenging than other variants, but I’ve seen people claim it can be fiendish.

Greater-than is sudoku-like enough to come in some of the standard variants: here’s a samurai greater-than sudoku and a jigsaw (nonomino, geometric) greater-than sudoku.

A related puzzle type is futoshiki, which got off to a bad start in the Guardian.

The Sudoku Variant of the Day is Hanidoku, which I discovered at Michael Mepham’s Daily Sudoku site. Hanidoku uses a hex-based board instead of a grid. As a longtime sudoku variant addict, I thought I’d start with the Moderate example, but it turned out to be pretty hard for a beginner.

There’s a whole site devoted to Hanidoku already with a daily HaniDoku, hints, and free Hanidoku software. You can also find some quick hints in this discussion thread.

I can’t resist blogging about weird new sudoku variants and the perpetual accident that is the T, so the blog is back. The website is also back at the ficml.org domain, although some links may be broken.

More news to follow at a more decent hour.

Sudoku Online now has a color version of their Jigsaw Sudoku of the Day. They also have a version with candidates, which is to say, the numbers 1 through 9 cluttering up the empty squares, and some examples of Jigsaw Samurai Sudoku.

GeekPress linked some handy illustrated Sudoku tips this weekend. And for the truly addicted Sudoku fiend, there’s now a 3D Sudoku Cube.

I also found a zigzag sudoku solver, but the instructions were cryptic and it didn’t solve anything for me.

In the news (/., MacRumors): yet another attempt at malware for your mac. This one’s being touted as a virus but seems to be just a trojan.

Nevertheless, I briefly considered some advice in the MacRumors comments to stop running as an admin user. (See also the explanation of admin user powers in this informative thread.) But I consider myself geeky enough not to double-click something dangerous, so I’ll wait until a real virus starts circulating before I do anything that inconvenient in the name of security.

On the positive side, today I stumbled across HyperJeff’s catalog of OS X Apps while surfing. It’s a huge, unwieldy list, but handy if you want to look up all the mac sudoku apps.