From: Marcelo <marcelo.magallon@...>
Date: 2008-11-12T22:31:51+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Sudoku Generator (#182)

Hi Matthew,

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 10:30 PM, Matthew Moss <matt@moss.name> wrote:

> On Nov 11, 2008, at 10:12 PM, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>
>> On 2008-11-11, brabuhr@gmail.com <brabuhr@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>   64 times
>>>       pick a random spot
>>>       skip it if it is already a hole
>>
>> Is it really so difficult to make a sequence of integers from
>> 0 to 80, scramble its order (e.g. using the Knuth random
>> exchange method) and then take successive elements from this
>> sequence as the locations on the Sudoku board?
>
> That alone does not a Sudoku make. Unless you've got some other
> criteria in mind that you don't mention, that's just a 9x9 grid
> of random numbers.

 I think Kaz meant that you can do without the ugly "pick a
 random spot... darn! I had already looked at this one!"  IOW,
 shuffle a list of all the numbers between 0 and 80, and pick a
 random amount of them (1 .. 64) that are removed in order to
 generate the sudoku puzzle.

 It's an interesting question whether or not this generates
 better puzzles.

 Marcelo