Single Position Strategy in Sudoku

Video Transcript

"Hello! My name is Steve Kennedy and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to be showing you some tips and techniques in solving Sudoku puzzles. The very first strategy we're going to show is called single position. This is your very first easy strategy. It should be done at the very begining of each puzzle because it's a very powerful technique. Here we have a standard example of the Sodoku puzzle. We're going to use the single position strategy. Looking at the middle here, we'll look to see if we can find a 7. So we want to look at this row here. This row has a 7, this row has a 7, this cube has a 7, this cube has a 7. Then you go down rows. This one has a 7, so this can not be 7. This has a 7. So basically the only possible place for a 7 in this row here is right here. You've already started. You're already on your way to solving the puzzle. You can do that which each begining of every puzzle. For instance, what I do is I start off to see with how many 1's you can do that with, then 2's, then 3's, then move on to this next block, then move on to this. Then do it down this way. That will eliminate all the really easy ones. Depending on the difficulty of the puzzle, it'll start to fill in the spots that you can as quickly as possible, because obviously the object is to fill in all of the blanks or squares. So this is a very powerful technique. It's always a great way to start off all of your puzzles. In our next clip, we'll also do another simple strategy. It's called single candidate, and that'll be in our next clip. "